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Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth

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Re: Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth

#111

Post by dotty- »

jmull wrote: post #96
dotty- wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The beauty of forking/open source is the ability to contribute back to the original project or take over an abandoned project. In this case, the original project Continue.dev isn't abandoned and actually has more traction/commits than the PearAI fork. But what PearAI did not do is a traditional fork. They took the commit history, re-branded everything to PearAI, pushed it up to their own repo, and claimed that the co…

Well, VS code isn't abandoned either. Shall we raise the pitchforks against Continue too?

No, because Continue actually added value on top of VS Code. PearAI has not added value on top of Continue -- yet.

Re: Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth

#112

Post by MOARDONGZPLZ »

candiddevmike wrote: post #76
paulgb wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YC doesn’t benefit from founders who are just looking to pad their resume because they don’t follow through to a liquidity event for YC.

How do you tell the difference? Especially when so many YCs seem almost like comical vaporware or shovelware but with a charismatic CEO.

Very true.

Saw one recently that literally forked VSCode and Cursor and called it a company with some really shady practices. Not even sure what YC was thinking with that one, but it indeed falls into the category of comical vaporware.

How did something like this get funded? They must think there will be a follow through to liquidity event, but no clue how. Maybe YC is playing into the bigger fool theory that someone else will come along and pay more so YC can extricate their equity.

Re: Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth

#113

Post by octopod12 »

noobermin wrote: post #102
pj_mukh wrote: post #57

"The issue isn't that PearAI did something illegal—it's that they got funded by YC with nothing more than a codebase copied from another YC-backed company. This shows that (1) YC is willing to fund just about anything, (2) they’re not doing any real due diligence, and (3) they don't particularly care about their existing portfolio companies." This shows a fundamental misunderstanding on how YC functions. YCombinator…

I think something people might be missing is the context around this post, which is that the founders are being dragged on twitter, essentially. Since a lot of you hate the site, I'll summarise briefly: one of the founders did a thread starting with the following post: " I just quit my 270 000$ job at Coinbase to join the first YCombinator fall batch with my cofounder @not_nang We're building PearAI, an open source A…

The founders showed hustle, as every founder must. nothing wrong with that in my book.

But they need adult-guidance on communication. You dont go around twitter boasting about your 270K job etc. They need to show grown up hustle (grit, perseverence, etc). Not high-school (mine is bigger than yours) hustle.

Re: Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth

#115

Post by ahstilde »

> (1) YC is willing to fund just about anything, (2) they’re not doing any real due diligence, and (3) they don't particularly care about their existing portfolio companies.

YC never said they were anything else, though? YC's strategy is simple.

Vet for y intercept, do little due diligence, and make it up through investing in enough people.

They never claim to be perfect. In fact, there's a number of YC founders who have had scandals:

- Bitfinex $4.5 B hack was a YC founder

- uBiome (wire fraud) was a YC co: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30899352

- Stablegain ($44M crypto fraud) was a YC co https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31461634

- DreamWorld is a YC co: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26898266

I guess hucksters are inevitable?

Re: Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth

#116

Post by jedberg »

This entire article is premised on the idea that YC accepts more startups now than before, but if I'm not mistaken, their acceptance rate has gone down every batch.

And since the OP specifically called out Harvard as a paragon of prestige institution, it should be noted that YC acceptance rate is lower than Harvard's too.

Re: Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth

#117

Post by fallinditch »

cheschire wrote: post #41
toomuchtodo wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would YC 2.0 look like? How would you build it?

YC was a child of its time though, right? Are you asking what could YC have done differently in the context of its history, or are you asking what a new accelerator started today would look like? I ask because I’m not sure that now is the time for a new startup accelerator to succeed, and we have no way to predict the circumstances that are required for success without couching it in some major changes to externaliti…

It's interesting to consider what the evolution YC 2.0 could be. I do think we're going to be seeing more innovative organizational models that can be facilitated by adept use of AI.

For example, a network organization that hires individuals and small teams. The organization works on various projects and product streams, which which can be spun out as new businesses.

This is a flexible model that allows for many different outcomes and journeys for the people. Less of a startup factory and more of an enterprise garden.

I like the idea of gateways as a system for managing ideas and new business developments. Regular gateways every 6 or 12 months that assess projects for continuation, funding and further development. People can be involved in several projects.

I see this type of organization structure as a kind of 'hyper network'. By using AI to monitor and report on network activity it should be possible to have effective management oversight, direction and communication ... beneficent controlled creative chaos.

Re: Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth

#118

Post by spamizbad »

octopod12 wrote: post #113
noobermin wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think something people might be missing is the context around this post, which is that the founders are being dragged on twitter, essentially. Since a lot of you hate the site, I'll summarise briefly: one of the founders did a thread starting with the following post: " I just quit my 270 000$ job at Coinbase to join the first YCombinator fall batch with my cofounder @not_nang We're building PearAI, an open source A…

The founders showed hustle, as every founder must. nothing wrong with that in my book. But they need adult-guidance on communication. You dont go around twitter boasting about your 270K job etc. They need to show grown up hustle (grit, perseverence, etc). Not high-school (mine is bigger than yours) hustle.

I feel like that "270K job" comment was some sort of cultural signal to Zoomer devs on the FAANG leetcode job grind. I'm in my 40s so it just seems both tacky and unimpressive but maybe for folks half my age it's a meaningful signal towards competency?

Re: Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth

#119

Post by cal85 »

paulgb wrote: post #8

IMHO this post misses the fact that YC becoming a prestige institution is itself a sort of failure mode. You don't want to attract founders who figure YC is a low-risk alternative to grad school that will look good on their resume. It's tough to avoid that outcome while still conferring positive signal to VCs/potential employees, though. I'm sure YC/Garry see something in the PearAI founders' ability to market themse…

Just looked up the etymology of prestige and it’s interesting.

It comes from Latin praestigium ("delusion, illusion"), then 1500s French prestige meaning “deceit, imposture, illusion”. In the 1800s it started to mean “an illusion as to one's personal merit or importance, a flattering illusion”.

I would have wrongly guessed it originally meant “good reputation” (same as the article author meant it, I assume) and that the association with bullshit/fakery is just a modern twist from people using the word with cynical irony. But bullshit/fakery was in fact the core meaning.

Re: Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth

#120

Post by neom »

a1371 wrote: post #108
paulgb wrote: post #8

IMHO this post misses the fact that YC becoming a prestige institution is itself a sort of failure mode. You don't want to attract founders who figure YC is a low-risk alternative to grad school that will look good on their resume. It's tough to avoid that outcome while still conferring positive signal to VCs/potential employees, though. I'm sure YC/Garry see something in the PearAI founders' ability to market themse…

For the uninitiated like myself, PearAi just took the source code of continue.dev (not fork, they copy pasted) and did some clunky work on it. That was their entry to YC.

And to save anyone else looking it up, seems to be continue.dev is using Apache License in their repos.

(also, I did some poking around, this is the founder 3 months ago talking about using continue https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0OylwLzBQw&t=257s - no horse in this race, just sharing)

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