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How I Crashed and Burned in Y Combinator

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Re: How I Crashed and Burned in Y Combinator

#101

Post by drumdance »

larrys wrote: post #93
HorizonXP wrote: post #6

What a great story. Charlie is very brave for telling this, and it's something that more people need to hear. Getting into YC is not an achievement. Even if you get in, you're not special. You still have to bust your ass like everyone else trying to build a company. Not getting into YC isn't a big deal either, because you're still not special. Stories like Charlie's should help others highlight this fact. He said tha…

"PG's advice to Charlie about focusing on an idea they're passionate about, and an idea that they could see themselves working on for the next 5 years is sound." Except for one thing. Passion about something is not something that you wake up in the morning, think about a bit, and then go pursue it. You won't find a single story in legacy business history of someone who started a wildly successful business because the…

> You won't find a single story in legacy business history of someone who started a wildly successful business because they woke up one morning and thought "I want to start a business".

Eh, maybe. Motorola and HP were both started this way. The founders of both companies hated the idea of working for other people. (I know this because waaaaay back in the mid 90s I read an article about humble beginnings in Inc Magazine, and these are the examples I remember.)

Re: How I Crashed and Burned in Y Combinator

#102

Post by rdtsc »

> We researched Bitcoins, smart devices, 3D printing, biometrics, and a host of other industries.

Is this common? As in people first decide they want to do a "startup thing". Then they fish for idea. Just curious, is this how most startup idea begin?

I kind of thought it was always someone first having a burning and interesting idea that eventually they want to develop and it gets developed as a startup or patent or something like that.

Re: How I Crashed and Burned in Y Combinator

#103

Post by aerovistae »

solve wrote: post #26
edent wrote: post #12

Am I missing something here? You can get $$$ and top quality advice for an _idea_ and then just turn around and say "bored now - let's do something else"? And then, so it seems, when that idea runs out you just say "uhhh... let's do this instead!" So, what are the YC people investing in? Two guys who seem pretty smart? I appreciate that you might need to pivot from "a social network for dogs" to "a social network for…

> So, what are the YC people investing in? Two guys who seem pretty smart? The fully loaded market rate for "two guys who seem pretty smart" in Silicon Valley is somewhere between $200,000 to $300,000 per year -- at regular day jobs. Even boring regular employers invest a ton of money in people just based on an interview. Remember this, when thinking about all of the investors who are always demanding tons of up-fron…

Well of course! The hiring managers at "Regular day job employers" aren't dispensing their own money, and the company they work for is already established and likely doesn't have any shortage of money with which to "take risks."

Re: How I Crashed and Burned in Y Combinator

#104

Post by jimbokun »

drumdance wrote: post #99
femto113 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can accept this rationale for investing in teams over ideas, but when did "pivoting" go from meaning "a modest change in direction" (e.g. switching the target market for your SASS product from consumers to enterprise, or making what was initially a secondary feature a primary one) to "start over from scratch with an entirely unrelated idea"? Seems like another term is needed--"flailing" perhaps?

pg called Soylent "the biggest pivot in YC history" "Affordable wireless networks" somehow became a food company. http://blog.soylent.me/post/51007573199/the-biggest-pivot-in...

That's an odd one, but still something with an empirical basis for the decision.

If I remember correctly, the creator of soylent invented it for his own needs, blogged about it, then was stunned by the amount of interest.

In this case, it seemed like the idea kept changing before they had even figured out much about it, or had any evidence to justify a different direction.

Re: How I Crashed and Burned in Y Combinator

#105

Post by Animats »

Now YC gives startups less money, so they can't try to "pivot" after the first failure. Win big or die fast.

Comment below: "Building a success startup takes a long long time. Years. Lots of years." Not in the YC world. That's not the model.

Re: How I Crashed and Burned in Y Combinator

#106

Post by Meekro »

researcher88 wrote: post #21

When I read about FanHero on techcrunch, I thought it was a good idea despite the article's tone. Mainly because I watch a lot of alternative content and listen to podcasts, and I want a way to support what I like. It wasn't an original idea but with awesome execution I think it could had worked.

I agree! And if you read the comments on the TechCrunch article, many of them agree about the article being badly written.

I get that it's sarcasm, but what was the TechCrunch writer's message supposed to be? That nobody needed this product? That it was badly built? That the author just doesn't like YC kids? Whatever the author was trying to say, there was probably a better way to say it.

Re: How I Crashed and Burned in Y Combinator

#107

Post by jerguismi »

solve wrote: post #26
edent wrote: post #12

Am I missing something here? You can get $$$ and top quality advice for an _idea_ and then just turn around and say "bored now - let's do something else"? And then, so it seems, when that idea runs out you just say "uhhh... let's do this instead!" So, what are the YC people investing in? Two guys who seem pretty smart? I appreciate that you might need to pivot from "a social network for dogs" to "a social network for…

> So, what are the YC people investing in? Two guys who seem pretty smart? The fully loaded market rate for "two guys who seem pretty smart" in Silicon Valley is somewhere between $200,000 to $300,000 per year -- at regular day jobs. Even boring regular employers invest a ton of money in people just based on an interview. Remember this, when thinking about all of the investors who are always demanding tons of up-fron…

Recruitment is quite a different to investing. First of all, the upside-risk is pretty much eliminated from the employee, usually. And the employees can be fired. Yep, I guess that it is somewhat rare, but at least there is that possibility.

Re: How I Crashed and Burned in Y Combinator

#108

Post by jonathankoren »

wpietri wrote: post #24
edent wrote: post #12

Am I missing something here? You can get $$$ and top quality advice for an _idea_ and then just turn around and say "bored now - let's do something else"? And then, so it seems, when that idea runs out you just say "uhhh... let's do this instead!" So, what are the YC people investing in? Two guys who seem pretty smart? I appreciate that you might need to pivot from "a social network for dogs" to "a social network for…

I had similar questions based on this: "In college I had started an ed-tech company, ClassOwl, that raised nearly a million in seed funding. My two cofounders and I attended StartX, an incubator affiliated with Stanford, but ultimately decided to finish our degrees instead of pursuing the startup dream." Am I understanding that right? Twice in two years this guy took other people's money for something and then quit?…

How about the "I had countless friends who were nearly finished with their computer science (CS) degrees and had an idea for a company, but they struggled to move from concept to finished product. I wanted to help them bridge that gap", says they 21 year old that never launched anything.

Something is fucked up here. I don't blame Charlie Guo, he's just a product of the environment, but why would anyone invest in him doing this idea? There's no knowledge or experience. It's like investing in my idea for in home brain surgery. It doesn't make any sense, and the article thing raised multiple red flags to me.

Re: How I Crashed and Burned in Y Combinator

#109

Post by arfliw »

trwhite wrote: post #68
yesimahuman wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having been in an accelerator before, I definitely related to their sense of dread that they might mess up this opportunity and never be successful again because of it. Watching peers strike it big must have been super hard. I quickly realized after that most "success" is exaggerated in the media, etc. and true success takes a lot longer than we expect. Raising $1M isn't success. Hell, raising $5-30M in today's clima…

I think it was Patrick Collison who also spoke about 'impostor syndrome' when joining YC. I imagine this is probably quite common. The whole question of what it means to succeed or fail is interesting; OP's perception of failure contradicts what I thought was the common view in SV - that to 'fail' (i.e. not get funding) is part of a greater process of learning and enhancement. I also can't understand how a 21-year-ol…

>I also can't understand how a 21-year-old Stanford graduate who already has experience in the market he's about to launch in could ever feel he "must have just been lucky".

You don't seem to understand how competitive YC is. Guys like that are a dime a dozen when your acceptance rate is less than 3%[1].

[1]http://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-portfolio-stats

Re: How I Crashed and Burned in Y Combinator

#110

Post by jerguismi »

reledi wrote: post #72
nakovet wrote: post #20

I don't get it, I have been working with web development for the past 10 years, I never had problems finding a job but I wouldn't know how to do remote consulting while I travel around the work to "take a break", nevertheless the tone set from OP is confusing you don't know if he is humble, spoiled or bragging. It's all mixed up, and like other people noted pivoting is not changing your idea completely, this is start…

I'm also interested in how he's travelling the world while doing consulting work. Travelling (for leisure) and working don't go well together in my experience, curious how he's pulling it off (so I can try too).

I have seen pretty many doing that. However, don't except a work like in a stable, salary-based job, with a little risk. More like shorter freelancer gigs, maybe some small software products/apps/websites which generate some passive income along the side, etc.

Also I wouldn't say that you can travel just to have fun, you also have to get the work done. That means settling for some place longer than you would recreationally. I have met these guys in coworking places, for example.

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