Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Combinator? Should You Join Paul Graham's Gang For The Gifted?

onstartups.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 32 posts

Re: Why Combinator? Should You Join Paul Graham's Gang For The Gifted?

#11

Post by staunch »

"I think there's some value to actually thinking about business models earlier in the process. Simply identifying market opportunity (i.e. how do you make money)"

I think at least it's a valuable exercise to imagine that you're not going to have a free version of your product. Imagine that you're actually selling it to a real customer. Would you be embarrassed to say it costs money? How would support work differently? How about uptime? Who would actually pay?

I'm not sure that's necessary in all cases, but it does seem to raise a lot of interesting questions useful for self-examination.

Re: Why Combinator? Should You Join Paul Graham's Gang For The Gifted?

#12

Post by volida »

staunch wrote: post #9
volida wrote: post #7

"Teams vs. Individuals: YC leans strongly towards selecting startups that two or more founders. I'm a strong advocate of this myself as I believe that having two or more founders in an early-stage startup significantly improves the chances of success. By explicitly stating this requirement, YC forces early-stage entrepreneurs to find co-founders. This is a good thing as if there's a problem with finding a co-founder,…

"I don't really like the writer's attitude attacking his readers -- am I the only one here?" Surely you're being a bit sensitive because this topic hits so close to home. Try not being so defensive, sometimes the last thing you want to hear is just what you need. You may be discouraged, but I don't think he's trying to do that. He just happens to agree with almost everyone I've heard from on this issue. Feel free to…

I was honest responding to an honest attack.

I can't believe he wasn't aware and expecting single founders would read the article. I accept opinions. I don't accept misrepresentations of opinions.

I prefer sounding hard than being silent.

circa 2007 "The ideal company would have two or three founders. We'll consider those with four or five. We're very reluctant to accept one-person companies, though we have accepted a couple." http://ycombinator.com/s2007.html

Re: Why Combinator? Should You Join Paul Graham's Gang For The Gifted?

#13

Post by dshah »

volida wrote: post #12
staunch wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I don't really like the writer's attitude attacking his readers -- am I the only one here?" Surely you're being a bit sensitive because this topic hits so close to home. Try not being so defensive, sometimes the last thing you want to hear is just what you need. You may be discouraged, but I don't think he's trying to do that. He just happens to agree with almost everyone I've heard from on this issue. Feel free to…

I was honest responding to an honest attack. I can't believe he wasn't aware and expecting single founders would read the article. I accept opinions. I don't accept misrepresentations of opinions. I prefer sounding hard than being silent. circa 2007 "The ideal company would have two or three founders. We'll consider those with four or five. We're very reluctant to accept one-person companies, though we have accepted…

I must be missing it. To help me understand the error in my ways, can you:

a) identify specifically the part where I attacked?

b) cite where my position on the issue tried to be a statement of fact that was wrong.

Truth is: I do believe (as do many others) that having more than one founder increases of success. PG has gone on record as saying he won't fund startups with just one founder. Neither of these is factually incorrect. I could be wrong to believe it, but the statement of fact that I believe it is true.

Re: Why Combinator? Should You Join Paul Graham's Gang For The Gifted?

#14

Post by pg »

The "gifted" is a little misleading. We're pretty explicit that we think succeeding in a startup depends more on determination than intelligence. Oddly enough, though, "gang" is on the mark. One of the unexpected consequences of funding large batches of startups is that they form a fairly tough peer-to-peer mesh to help one another.

Re: Why Combinator? Should You Join Paul Graham's Gang For The Gifted?

#15

Post by volida »

dshah wrote: post #13
volida wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was honest responding to an honest attack. I can't believe he wasn't aware and expecting single founders would read the article. I accept opinions. I don't accept misrepresentations of opinions. I prefer sounding hard than being silent. circa 2007 "The ideal company would have two or three founders. We'll consider those with four or five. We're very reluctant to accept one-person companies, though we have accepted…

I must be missing it. To help me understand the error in my ways, can you: a) identify specifically the part where I attacked? b) cite where my position on the issue tried to be a statement of fact that was wrong. Truth is: I do believe (as do many others) that having more than one founder increases of success. PG has gone on record as saying he won't fund startups with just one founder. Neither of these is factually…

a)the use of "explicitly": means absolutely--categorically

"there's a problem with finding a co-founder, that's an early signal of a problem (either with the founder or the idea or both),"

b) the fact that YC states they funded single founders is contrary to what you refer to

I never said that is not better to have more people.

Re: Why Combinator? Should You Join Paul Graham's Gang For The Gifted?

#16

Post by dshah »

volida wrote: post #15
dshah wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I must be missing it. To help me understand the error in my ways, can you: a) identify specifically the part where I attacked? b) cite where my position on the issue tried to be a statement of fact that was wrong. Truth is: I do believe (as do many others) that having more than one founder increases of success. PG has gone on record as saying he won't fund startups with just one founder. Neither of these is factually…

a)the use of "explicitly": means absolutely--categorically "there's a problem with finding a co-founder, that's an early signal of a problem (either with the founder or the idea or both)," b) the fact that YC states they funded single founders is contrary to what you refer to I never said that is not better to have more people.

Got it. Fair enough.

Re: Why Combinator? Should You Join Paul Graham's Gang For The Gifted?

#17

Post by paul »

dshah wrote: post #6
herdrick wrote: post #2

"7. Projects vs. Businesses: Personally, I think YC is... not really concerned with selecting what may... become "real" companies... I think YC leans a bit too heavily towards the "build it and they will come" model..." I'm not sure he understands the YCs' insight that startups with lots of happy users almost always succeed financially, one way or the other - the only things that kills them are founder fights, and ma…

Well, I could argue (and will) that the two are not mutually exclusive. Startups that think at least a wee bit about how to build a business may earn themselves more runway and hence have higher chances of ultimately building something users will love.

I have never met a YC company that wasn't thinking about how to build a business.

The key thing to understand is that if problem A is 100 times harder than problem B, and problem A is critical to success, then you should spend a lot of time worrying about problem A. In this case, problem A is building something that people will want to use. If you fail at that, then none of the other problems matter, because you have failed.

Re: Why Combinator? Should You Join Paul Graham's Gang For The Gifted?

#18

Post by danielha »

pg wrote: post #14

The "gifted" is a little misleading. We're pretty explicit that we think succeeding in a startup depends more on determination than intelligence. Oddly enough, though, "gang" is on the mark. One of the unexpected consequences of funding large batches of startups is that they form a fairly tough peer-to-peer mesh to help one another.

This is a huge advantage for small startups that I hope others are realizing. As programmers or hardware hackers, we can make something of value to other people but there might be difficulties in selling it to them (not even in the monetary sense, just adoption). The YC funded teams have become a network in itself to help you get some momentum and spread word of your new creation. And everyone uses everyone else's stuff. It's just cool.

I was visiting Crystal Towers yesterday and, well, YC really needs to just buy that whole complex.

Re: Why Combinator? Should You Join Paul Graham's Gang For The Gifted?

#19

Post by danielha »

Dharmesh is a smart guy and I enjoy his blog entries, but I just don't see eye-to-eye with him on #7 (Projects vs. Businesses).

We're not business people (most of us); we're just trying to create cool things and subsequently be freed from the shackles of the nine-to-five life. The great thing about Internet entrepreneurship is that it's relatively easy to get off the ground, and subsequently we can create products that are solutions and not immediately worry about the business model. It doesn't hurt to keep it in mind, but we don't have to let it weigh us down. I mean, search wasn't the best business to begin with.

Re: Why Combinator? Should You Join Paul Graham's Gang For The Gifted?

#20

Post by daliso »

I think with Internet based companies, it is kind of counterproductive to focus on monetization at an early stage. This is because many innovative web companies tend to change the economics of how people make money in an industry. The best example of this is Google, that is shaking up the software industry by practically giving software away but earning revenue through advertising.

Changing industries requires a lot of industry clout, which I think YC gives its budding companies, freeing them to concentrate on designing good products that create value. If the product is really good and creates real value, the industry will reshape itself somehow to reward the entrepreneurs.

Post reply on HN