101–110 of 161 posts
Peter Thiel is a political extremist, and I don't like a lot of his views at all. My point of view is that this is bad for YCombinator, and that this is a bit of a shame.
Why would YC want an ideologically homogenous board of directors? Surely there exists great value in diversity of opinion?
Thiel joining forces with YC, and Musk with Google Ventures... Clash of the titans!
Musk has no involvement with GV and SpaceX raised from Google Inc., not Google Ventures.
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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…
25-30 year olds smart enough to build their own business wouldn't waste their time with YC. Most of the information and knowledge YC provides is openly published for free online. Aside from that the partners are always open to emails and communication. So why waste your money?
Thiel joining makes YC look like the 1992 Olympics "Dream Team" compared to all of the other accelerators.
99% joking, but they have a big enough brand that it would be interesting, at least.
Not that they'd necessarily want to - they get to pick the best YC graduates and take bigger stakes in them, anyway.
Wolf in the hen house? I'm not sure how accurate this is, but I perceive a significant contrast in cultures and philosophies between PT and YC.
And YC is roughly a representation of Sam Altman's philosophy.
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25-30 year olds smart enough to build their own business wouldn't waste their time with YC. Most of the information and knowledge YC provides is openly published for free online. Aside from that the partners are always open to emails and communication. So why waste your money?
I didn't find it a waste of time.
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Doing a startup when you have kids is (almost) always harder. YC actually makes it easier. Since you are more likely to get funding, you can actually pay yourself at least enough that you don't have to worry if you will be able to make rent. There is advantages to it also. When you have kids you are more aware of the consequences of failing, you value your time more and are less likely to "play house" as PG calls it,…
Very good answer, thank you. > When you have kids you are more aware of the consequences of failing, you value your time more and are less likely to "play house" as PG calls it, in my opinion. Yes I agree with this. I think having kids is kind of training for some aspects of start-up life. Definitely in juggling a lot of things at once with limited time. In terms of success I just wanted to know if it carried on beyo…
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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.
"It was hard and it required sacrifice." because of the implicit bias brought up by the GP. For someone in their mid twenties, no relationship or dependents, moving for 3 months is no big deal. Good, even.
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Why would YC want an ideologically homogenous board of directors? Surely there exists great value in diversity of opinion?
Depends. Is somebody who decries the extension of franchise to women because they don't adhere to libertarian views somebody that you'd willingly associate with? Personally, I wouldn't, because I like looking myself in the mirror, but your mileage may certainly vary.
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Also, if you're a 25-30+ year old tech worker, and aren't financially incompetent, you probably have some savings and can use that as your seed funding instead of needing to join an accelerator.
That and the fact that you can bootstrap _most_ startups either by maintaining a full time job or consulting part time. The options for creating a tech business are endless but the Silicon Valley hive mind has done a good job of convincing a lot of people that you need to do it a very specific way.