Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> 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 Each
How I Crashed and Burned in Y Combinator
111–120 of 129 posts
Re: How I Crashed and Burned in Y Combinator
#112Re: How I Crashed and Burned in Y Combinator
#113"I don’t want to start another company until I find a problem that I care about. A problem that I eat, sleep and breathe. A problem worth solving."
Re: How I Crashed and Burned in Y Combinator
#114Hey everyone! Author here. First off, thanks for reading! To be honest, I really didn't expect to get this much attention. This is a story that I've wanted to share with friends and family for a long time, and was thoroughly surprised when it was picked up by Backchannel (and then posted here). Regarding some of the points made here, I (mostly) agree. Getting into YC or raising money is not success. Changing your ide…
Cool story, great read! I'm surprised how negative some of the comments here on HN were. They're probably just envious about how they're not getting that sweet, sweet investor money!
Also, YC isn't just about getting "sweet sweet" money, it's also about commitment, many times to the point of collapse due to overwork. This may be a worthwhile tradeoff for you, but it doesn't mean that whoever is critical towards the way YC works is actually broke and bitter. I'm actually quite confident that HN has a sizable population of mature, fulfilled and well-off readers who have better things to do than to pick on the unsuccessful.
Not to mention that many young people are in way over their heads when getting into this, and lack the experience necessary to come out on top. Some pull through, but in this case it was clear more or less from the start that it wasn't the case.
No one's envious nor blaming them for being too young or with half-baked ideas, it's understood that young people are naturally less adept at things. My impression is that they're rather criticizing YC for using inexperienced youngsters as fodder for investors, for just dumping responsibility on them, then leaving them to do the sweating and feel like hell for getting in without a clear plan.
Before being judgemental and assuming the worst about people, maybe you should stop and evaluate your own negativistic projections.
Re: How I Crashed and Burned in Y Combinator
#115Am 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…
Re: How I Crashed and Burned in Y Combinator
#116Please tell me that this Ryan Lawler from TechCrunch is writing in that style to insinuate his utter disdain not only for the FanHero business model, but for the whole "free money for 21-year olds with a half-baked idea" industry. He can't possibly write that way for real, could he?
Re: How I Crashed and Burned in Y Combinator
#117They seemed like good guys who had no sense of wherewithal. I liked the FanHero idea, it seemed pretty good.
Re: How I Crashed and Burned in Y Combinator
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 Each
Bullshit.
Re: How I Crashed and Burned in Y Combinator
#120What 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…
I don't know that it's woke up one morning, but the narrative I'd read on Amazon suggests that Bezos did something along those lines. As I recall it, he didn't care what he sold, he just wanted to sell something on the internet and searched for something that made sense to sell that way, settling on books.
Obviously, it's morphed and expanded since then, and I doubt he literally woke up one morning and decided to move to Seattle and start Amazon, but it's not like he was already running a web company and decided to add commerce, nor already selling books and deciding to add an online channel.