> (now 10!)
Read that as a factorial and giggled.
Welcome Peter
21–30 of 161 posts
Re: Welcome Peter
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
this is not true. an accelerator can do earlier (before team or product or idea); wider (fund literally anyone who can write five pages in English in a timed setting about their idea); lower (take 0.075% for $2k); faster (an SaaS app that wires you a check within 24 hours, after a human lawyer verifies your details and contract); riskier (billion dollar ideas that don't even have the research paper worked out - like…
All those are valid. One you forgot: YC, like nearly all other accelerators, is implicitly age-ist. Note that I said implicitly. There is no explicit age discrimination that I am aware of, but the entire program is structured in a way that makes it horribly impractical for anyone who isn't a bachelor/bachelorette and childless. You must move to the Bay Area, put in family-unfriendly hours, and live on a quantity of m…
I disagree. I have 4 kids, I have been married for 15 and my co-founder had a 3 months old when we did YC. And we are from Portugal, so we were away from our families when we went through YC. It was hard and it required sacrifice, but it was certainly worth it and YC was super supportive. Our lives, and the lives of our kids are much better for it.
Re: Welcome Peter
#23Just finished reading Zero to One for a second-time, and it was interesting to see that Peter Thiel's contrarian approach to investing in startups ("What valuable company is nobody building") is very similar to PG's thesis that "all good ideas look like bad ideas to begin with (black swan investing) [0]
It will be even more interesting to see if their combined insights and approach can increase their chances of identifying these rare black swans.
Regardless, this has to be among the most formidable grouping of startup talent and brains in the valley.
Re: Welcome Peter
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
All those are valid. One you forgot: YC, like nearly all other accelerators, is implicitly age-ist. Note that I said implicitly. There is no explicit age discrimination that I am aware of, but the entire program is structured in a way that makes it horribly impractical for anyone who isn't a bachelor/bachelorette and childless. You must move to the Bay Area, put in family-unfriendly hours, and live on a quantity of m…
I disagree. I have 4 kids, I have been married for 15 and my co-founder had a 3 months old when we did YC. And we are from Portugal, so we were away from our families when we went through YC. It was hard and it required sacrifice, but it was certainly worth it and YC was super supportive. Our lives, and the lives of our kids are much better for it.
I didn't mean to imply that nobody with a family could do this, but that it's structured in such a way as to be strongly biased against people with families/kids. How many others did you see in YC with children?
Re: Welcome Peter
#25"Peter won’t invest in any companies while they’re in YC or for 3 months after they present at Demo Day (this will apply to Peter’s investment entities as well), which should eliminate any unfair advantage." I wonder if having Peter as an investor is a strong enough incentive that if they knew he liked them, a company would change their behavior for the 3 months after demo day.
I would change a lot of my behaviors for an investment from Peter
Re: Welcome Peter
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
this is not true. an accelerator can do earlier (before team or product or idea); wider (fund literally anyone who can write five pages in English in a timed setting about their idea); lower (take 0.075% for $2k); faster (an SaaS app that wires you a check within 24 hours, after a human lawyer verifies your details and contract); riskier (billion dollar ideas that don't even have the research paper worked out - like…
All those are valid. One you forgot: YC, like nearly all other accelerators, is implicitly age-ist. Note that I said implicitly. There is no explicit age discrimination that I am aware of, but the entire program is structured in a way that makes it horribly impractical for anyone who isn't a bachelor/bachelorette and childless. You must move to the Bay Area, put in family-unfriendly hours, and live on a quantity of m…
>Anyone over 25-30 or who has children is "washed up."
This is the price of the otherwise extremely liberal policies of YC. "Ageism," move to the bay area, etc., etc., maybe---but all of that is coupled with the implicit promise that "We won't fuck you over." And the bar for VC's is sufficiently low that that is a surprisingly rare value proposition---no, it's a breath of fresh air.
I'd love to see a competitor (dozens!) to YC arise and fund, like, capital-intensive bio-tech companies in Africa or something, but that's not really what YC is built for. I don't think that it should have to be.
Re: Welcome Peter
#27This is awesome for YC. Will he be reviewing applications?
Re: Welcome Peter
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
this is not true. an accelerator can do earlier (before team or product or idea); wider (fund literally anyone who can write five pages in English in a timed setting about their idea); lower (take 0.075% for $2k); faster (an SaaS app that wires you a check within 24 hours, after a human lawyer verifies your details and contract); riskier (billion dollar ideas that don't even have the research paper worked out - like…
All those are valid. One you forgot: YC, like nearly all other accelerators, is implicitly age-ist. Note that I said implicitly. There is no explicit age discrimination that I am aware of, but the entire program is structured in a way that makes it horribly impractical for anyone who isn't a bachelor/bachelorette and childless. You must move to the Bay Area, put in family-unfriendly hours, and live on a quantity of m…
This is absolutely false. It's an absurd thing to say that founders over a certain age are washed up — and it's a lie to say that is something we believe.
Startups move to the Bay Area for three months and go anywhere it makes sense to put their startup afterwards. Many companies even move the founder's families over the three months (easier in the Summer).
Also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9031697 and http://www.femalefounderstories.com/erica-brescia.html
Re: Welcome Peter
#29The idea that a startup's end game should be to "build a monopoly" is one of the most profound insights in Thiel's excellent book, Zero to One.
This move just deepens YC's monopoly in its domain, as sama would say, "in the Peter Thiel sense."
Re: Welcome Peter
#30I hope Peter encourages start-ups in longevity and nootropics. Or just nootropics. If there's more smart people then additional anti-ageing tech will follow—since all arguments against said tech are fallacious; even if they seem reasonable prima facie!
That depends on what actual results you can deliver. If it's not very much, that's not a fallacy, it's a demonstration.