How the AI bubble ate Y Combinator • Hacker News Board

Re: How the AI bubble ate Y Combinator

#101

Post by Imustaskforhelp » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 4:01 PM UTC

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #43

Mistletoe wrote: post #25

AI ate HN also. It’s ridiculous how many articles are about AI now. Are we truly out of any new ideas? Can we not talk about something else? I kind of like AI but it’s a tool, I don’t talk about my screwdriver constantly.

I wouldn't say that. "AI" (quotes deliberate) is the biggest story in tech, right now, for better or for worse. HN is a news site, so it's fairly logical that "AI" would dominate. It wasn't that long ago, that you couldn't find a pitch deck, anywhere, that was missing the word "Blockchain." I'm finding it interesting. It's definitely a bubble, but unlike crypto, there's some real utility here. I do think that we'll b…

Brother go to something like r/cryptocurrency to see people trying to justify the real utility...

I am not a crypto advocate but there are definitely a lot of similarities.

The only One thing I can respect Sam Altman for is the line that he said about bubbles and "When bubbles happen, smart people get overexcited about a kernel of truth,”

This is the similarity... Both had some use cases, one might have more and the other but we are being so overexcited, I think being forced to be overexcited about this tech

Re: How the AI bubble ate Y Combinator

#102

Post by notahacker » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 4:01 PM UTC

pavon wrote: post #73

rappatic wrote: post #38

> Going through YC’s startup directory reveals that of the 170 startups in the most recent summer batch 154 are AI startups. The author calculates this by searching for the term "AI" in the name and description of each startup's YC page. But presence of the term "AI" doesn't make a startup an "AI startup," so to speak. For example, I picked one startup at random, Topological, which is "developing physics-based founda…

I agree in general that keyword searching for a buzzword will have false positives, as people work it in to their description just to ride the trend. However, that is a bad example. If the core of your business is developing new AI models, then you are an AI startup. Personally I think it is great that someone is using the recent breakthroughs in AI and applying it to something other than LLMs, as well as trying to f…

If anything, building a foundation model is a more legitimate "AI startup" than wrapping slick marketing and a bit of tuning around someone else's LLM or diffusion model...

Re: How the AI bubble ate Y Combinator

#103

Post by yawnxyz » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 4:01 PM UTC

tobias3 wrote: post #35

whatever1 wrote: post #12

The one thing that LLMs are good at is prototyping super fast. For accelerators/incubators etc this is a game changer since more ideas can be realized and tested for market fit. Now if the market fit indeed exists then someone needs to rearchitect and rewrite the thing. But wasn’t it always the case? The POC always was a hacked together solution with no real viability to be used as the final product.

LLMs are good at prototyping something that is similar to something that already exists and is open sourced. It may be that there are such projects which can be monetized or need better marketing. Innovative it is not, however.

there's only so many times (in fact, 3!) I want to implement oauth from absolute scratch

Re: How the AI bubble ate Y Combinator

#104

Post by 64d032fe » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 4:02 PM UTC

kordlessagain wrote: post #58

hshshshshsh wrote: post #16

Is it just me or anyone else fed up with the startup community. I cannot find anyone who actually cares about values and have backbone. The stories I grew up with of Wozniak, Jobs, Larry and the hacker community does not resemble them anymore. Everyone I know who raised money is a moron or narcissist. YC has became like a resume builder. And the genuine hackers I know of are wasting life away working on pointless pro…

The AI bubble isn't what everyone thinks it is. Everyone's panicking about "AI features" being bolted onto products like it's 2010 and we're adding social login buttons. That's not the bubble. The bubble is the assumption that current software companies have defensibility. Here's the thing: we're not adding AI to products. We're removing the need for most products entirely. Nobody shipped without search after Google.…

Chill, you are going to freak a lot of people here out.

Re: How the AI bubble ate Y Combinator

#105

Post by HillRat » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 4:03 PM UTC

saltcured wrote: post #74

Analemma_ wrote: post #19

If you drive through San Francisco on I-80, every single billboard between the Bay Bridge and the 101 is for some kind of AI service (except, amusingly, the one for Yudkowsky's new book about AI doom). All of them look terrible and completely useless. There was one that said "Still using PowerPoint? Use our AI slide maker instead" with a picture of a three-eyed cat, as though to brag that their service makes unappeti…

Yeah, a few times per year, I take a drive to SFO, and I am again struck by the absurdity. It's not just the current AI fixation. They always seemed bizarrely niche to me. I assumed billboards were for mass consumer marketing. What tiny percentage of the people on these highways are actually in a position to act on any B2B tech marketing? I don't understand the economic choice to pay for a billboard like that. The on…

It’s basically sifting through ore; 99% of the people who see it aren’t the target, it’s the 1% of viewers who are buyers or funders who you otherwise couldn’t directly advertise to. Same reason you see defense contractors putting up ads for weapons systems in the DC metro.

Re: How the AI bubble ate Y Combinator

#106

Post by jacquesm » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 4:04 PM UTC

I was at a meeting of a bunch of VCs a while ago (a couple of months). The principal partner of one of the larger funds said that they will now only consider investments that are AI related. Just to give you a data point, I'm not saying that that is a trend. But if that's a market representative you can't fault the supply side for adapting to it.

Re: How the AI bubble ate Y Combinator

#107

Post by pavlov » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 4:04 PM UTC

devin wrote: post #3

“All the smart kids of the Bay Area want to work on AI,” Operative word here is "kids", and from what I can tell they're not even the smart ones, just the ones who are more geared toward being money and status-obsessed.

In 2021 they all wanted to work in crypto / "web3".

Re: How the AI bubble ate Y Combinator

#108

Post by otherayden » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 4:05 PM UTC

frameset wrote: post #4

It's certainly eating up a lot of the threads on HN.

It seems to vary a lot by the day. HN still has enough good days so I keep checking, but on the bad days I just go to lobste.rs and usually there’s something quality to read over there

Re: How the AI bubble ate Y Combinator

#109

Post by jacquesm » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 4:06 PM UTC

kordlessagain wrote: post #58

hshshshshsh wrote: post #16

Is it just me or anyone else fed up with the startup community. I cannot find anyone who actually cares about values and have backbone. The stories I grew up with of Wozniak, Jobs, Larry and the hacker community does not resemble them anymore. Everyone I know who raised money is a moron or narcissist. YC has became like a resume builder. And the genuine hackers I know of are wasting life away working on pointless pro…

The AI bubble isn't what everyone thinks it is. Everyone's panicking about "AI features" being bolted onto products like it's 2010 and we're adding social login buttons. That's not the bubble. The bubble is the assumption that current software companies have defensibility. Here's the thing: we're not adding AI to products. We're removing the need for most products entirely. Nobody shipped without search after Google.…

This - unfortunately - goes for a lot of domains. Things that you used to be able to make a career out of now have a shelf life of a few years, sometimes less than that. This time compression is not just upsetting the VC world, it is upsetting just about everything in high tech societies.

Re: How the AI bubble ate Y Combinator

#110

Post by ChrisMarshallNY » Tue, Sep 30, 2025, 4:07 PM UTC

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #101

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say that. "AI" (quotes deliberate) is the biggest story in tech, right now, for better or for worse. HN is a news site, so it's fairly logical that "AI" would dominate. It wasn't that long ago, that you couldn't find a pitch deck, anywhere, that was missing the word "Blockchain." I'm finding it interesting. It's definitely a bubble, but unlike crypto, there's some real utility here. I do think that we'll b…

Brother go to something like r/cryptocurrency to see people trying to justify the real utility... I am not a crypto advocate but there are definitely a lot of similarities. The only One thing I can respect Sam Altman for is the line that he said about bubbles and "When bubbles happen, smart people get overexcited about a kernel of truth,” This is the similarity... Both had some use cases, one might have more and the…

Oh, there’s going to be some heavy-duty snake oil, but I can say that I’ve already found it quite useful, in its current, larval state. I just haven’t found it to be a “game changer,” for me, yet.

That said, I am not really an industrial-scale user.