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We Just Thought, 'This Is How You Start a Company in America'

forbes.com

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Re: We Just Thought, 'This Is How You Start a Company in America'

#51

Post by hnofcourse »

wyager wrote: post #45
xnull2guest wrote: post #38

How you start a (tech) company in America: * Move to the valley. * Come up with a really good idea. Or at least a gimmick that will be a fad for a time. * Find a generous person from the upper echelons of the wealth distribution (or a club of them) who have enough money to fund your idea or gimmick. * Make a deal with them so that your business becomes part of their diversified portfolio. The risk to them is hedged b…

>the common man never had a real chance to invest in your idea. This part of your very pessimistic comment is certainly true, and I would like to point out that this is the government's fault, not Silicon Valley's. People who aren't rich are legally not allowed to invest in startups. [1] But the unstated major premise of your comment, which is wrong, is that investment in startups is some kind of magic bullet for mak…

Startups used to IPO while there was still a large amount of risk, so it was possible for a public market investor to invest and capture value.

Today's startups choose not to. Anti-government types will say that the only reason is SOX. Honest and intelligent people will admit that there are a lot of other factors too, mostly around the finance sector getting better at capturing growth stage value.

Re: We Just Thought, 'This Is How You Start a Company in America'

#52

Post by hv23 »

_reality_check_ wrote: post #34
rokhayakebe wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From random readings, it appears that great musicians, scientists, artists live not only during the same era, but usually very close to one another. I guess today you could call the Internet the city/town. There is also something to be said about what seems to be serendipity. When there is a high concentration of people doing the same thing, you are more likely to bump into people who can help you turn your vision in…

> From random readings, it appears that great musicians, scientists, artists live not only during the same era, but usually very close to one another. I'm highly skeptical of this claim. Can you back it up?

More relevant reading: Where Good Ideas Come From [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003ZK58TA?btkr=1]

Re: We Just Thought, 'This Is How You Start a Company in America'

#54

Post by sparkzilla »

The part that interested me was that they were able to get meetings with 100 investors with just an idea. We have an in-production startup with traction in Florida and we are lucky to see an investor every few months. Trying to get email contact to VCs is next to impossible. If it's really that easy to get meetings in SV, then we are going to move too.

Re: We Just Thought, 'This Is How You Start a Company in America'

#56

Post by [deleted] »

xnull2guest wrote: post #48
wyager wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the common man never had a real chance to invest in your idea. This part of your very pessimistic comment is certainly true, and I would like to point out that this is the government's fault, not Silicon Valley's. People who aren't rich are legally not allowed to invest in startups. [1] But the unstated major premise of your comment, which is wrong, is that investment in startups is some kind of magic bullet for mak…

I completely agree that VC is not a magic money making bullet, but I don't think it matters for the post. Certainly there are patrons who will lose money. Having a portfolio full of lemons isn't going to make any financial elite any money. Most will hire accountants and financial and technological advisors. Some will provide extra services (advice, contacts, demo day audiences, etc) to bolster the prospects of their…

[deleted]

Re: We Just Thought, 'This Is How You Start a Company in America'

#57

Post by iancarroll »

tmuir wrote: post #53

Can someone explain AnyPerk to me? Is it just a middleman for employee perks? What is the added value? Why couldn't a company look at their landing page and say "thats a good idea, I should buy my employees movie passes", but not sign up for AnyPerk?

I believe you get a fairly significant discount buying through them.

Re: We Just Thought, 'This Is How You Start a Company in America'

#58

Post by neilunadkat12 »

kevin wrote: post #19

"We started in January 2012, and may still be the only Asian YC founders ever." So that is not true. 9gag is from Hong Kong. Semantics3 is from Singapore. Strikingly is from China. Memebox is from Korea. Cleartax is from India. Those are just off the top of my head, I'm sure there are more. That being said, I actually would love to see more Asian startups applying to Y Combinator. We should be funding one from each c…

When you are trying to solve a problem which is specific to the country, then I am not sure how very effective would it be for the founders to come to the US, work on something, and try it make it big from there. I guess YC would need some members who know about the scene in each country. That help would be a lot more effective I guess.

Re: We Just Thought, 'This Is How You Start a Company in America'

#59

Post by nrao123 »

xnull2guest wrote: post #38

How you start a (tech) company in America: * Move to the valley. * Come up with a really good idea. Or at least a gimmick that will be a fad for a time. * Find a generous person from the upper echelons of the wealth distribution (or a club of them) who have enough money to fund your idea or gimmick. * Make a deal with them so that your business becomes part of their diversified portfolio. The risk to them is hedged b…

"the common man never had a real chance to invest in your idea."

You may not realize that VCs are investing on behalf of the common man. Most of the LP's in VC funds are entities like pension funds who represent the common man's money.

Re: We Just Thought, 'This Is How You Start a Company in America'

#60

Post by jeffdavis »

tatterdemalion wrote: post #11
driverdan wrote: post #7

Living in a Mission dump trying to sleep three people to a bed is not how you should be starting a business. Why do people think this is how you optimize for success?

Right. Nothing against this company and all the best to them, but what is the larger narrative this story is building? Its really exploitative to tell young people that they should come to one of the most expensive places in the world and sleep in their cars so they can have the privilege of giving equity to Y Combinator. It's something really dark in California's culture (I have lived my entire life here). From '49…

I could just as easily say that you are building a narrative wherein people should become dependent on modern material goods (many of which did not exist decades ago and most of which would be considered frivolous luxuries 100 years ago), and therefore always forced to work on someone else's idea.

It might be more clear if you would describe utopia for us. If someone wants to try a zillion ideas without answering to anyone, who should pay them in the meantime? And would that money be enough to live comfortably in one of the most sought-after areas in the world?

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