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Y Combinator and Power in Silicon Valley

commoncog.com

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Re: Y Combinator and Power in Silicon Valley

#121

Post by mistrial9 »

foobarian wrote: post #119
klooney wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A Google can stop 10000 potential startups simply with RSUs The real killer here is the Bay Area housing market. You need those RSUs to pay for a place to stay.

If the engineers are just middlemen for plumbing that money to property owners, seems like owning property in the Bay Area might be a good idea.

older generations did just that. In the Internet boom, people commonly talked about "place being obsolete" and other detached thinking.. perhaps lessening the emphasis on buying real property nearby. Of course, not everyone played by the same rule book. Observe the result.

Re: Y Combinator and Power in Silicon Valley

#122

Post by theptip »

rqtwteye wrote: post #89
cj wrote: post #6

If you’re wondering what to take away from this article: the simple take away is that YC has the power to get what it wants, for the companies it wants. If you happen to be in YC’s good graces, they will reward you in ways described in the article. If you’re not, they won’t take the time. I was in YC in 2012 (2 yrs after the founder writing this article, and one of the last years PG was directly involved). By that ti…

Why does everything need to scale? Why couldn't they stick to taking a few high quality companies every year? There was enough money to be made that way. Seems the belief is that everything needs to scale until it doesn't work anymore.

As the article states, YC’s key asset is their deal flow. You simply don’t get that if you only write 1% of the best seed checks.

If you don’t eat the pie, someone else will. If someone else eats more pie than you, they will be stronger than you and eat your pie.

Switching analogies, unless you have a defensible niche with a wide moat, your position of power is an unstable equilibrium; in the open market only a monopoly is a stable attractor state.

Re: Y Combinator and Power in Silicon Valley

#123

Post by breck »

adastra22 wrote: post #15
jf wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not any more than you need to in any public forum

Not the point. One should be allowed to be critical of the institutions of the valley without getting their name written down in a secret blacklist.

[dead]

Re: Y Combinator and Power in Silicon Valley

#124

Post by tim333 »

skeeter2020 wrote: post #110
tim333 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's a bit of an oversimplification. A lot of people are well meaning.

Very few extend this to their own livelihood or survival. It's easy to do when you're not playing with your own resources, or they're just crumbs.

It's hard to disentangle motivations as treating people well is also usually good business too but in my experience a lot of people are motivated by doing good as well as making an income. If you look at the history of YC, Paul and Jessica started it primarily to help out the young would be founders without much expectation of making money. And in the story here it seems his main motivation was to stop the founders being screwed over rather than to enrich himself.

The attitude that all business / political people are no good can be counterproductive as it can lead to not differentiating between the helpful and iffy ones.

Re: Y Combinator and Power in Silicon Valley

#125

Post by throw4847285 »

pjmorris wrote: post #118
throw4847285 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man, glad I'm not the only person who won't shut up about the Power Broker. I think the best takeaway is that a bubble forms around the powerful where they cease to have to engage with the world as it is.

Hear, hear. It's interesting to me how Moses, per Caro, moved from being idealistic to being pragmatic in ways that look like corruption to those outside the 'bubble' but look like appropriate means and measures for accomplishing one's goals if you're inside the bubble. He came to be in possession of a great many opportunities to build, and so, to spend money, and he, using these opportunities and the money flow, ove…

One could even argue (and Caro implies this) that it's a worse form of corruption because all the beneficiaries are already powerful wealthy people being further enriched. At least Tammany corruption was democratic: they needed votes, so new Irish immigrants to the Lower East Side would get a turkey, and if they were loyal, they could get a cushy job. It was a subversion of democracy, but one that required spreading the wealth around.

Because Moses never had to run for office (and the one time he did, he failed spectacularly), he pioneered a purely bureaucratic form of corruption that conspired to extract as much money from the federal and state governments as possible and pour all of it into this ever turning hamster wheel of massive public works that weren't really for the public and didn't work, but did enrich the powerful people who took part in it.

But of course you know all this already, because you read the book. Which means you also know, damn, what a good book. It's very hard not to just talk about it all the time, and drive other people crazy.

Re: Y Combinator and Power in Silicon Valley

#126

Post by throw4847285 »

specialist wrote: post #108
throw4847285 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My takeaway that I'll bluntly admit is based on being another one of those people who won't shut up about Robert Caro's book The Power Broker is this: the mark of true political genius is the ability to constantly take in new information that challenges your existing viewpoints, while also having the force of will to try and make your values manifest despite knowing that your views on the best way to do that will cha…

To your point: Moses never learned to drive, was chauffered everywhere. So he never directly experienced the horrors he wrought.

My favorite fact from the book is that the windows in his limo did not even go all the way to the back seat, so he didn't even have to look at what he'd wrought unless he chose to. And the horrible traffic jams that were his legacy were something he likely enjoyed, because it meant more time to work in his limo office uninterrupted.

Re: Y Combinator and Power in Silicon Valley

#127

Post by itsoktocry »

rqtwteye wrote: post #89
cj wrote: post #6

If you’re wondering what to take away from this article: the simple take away is that YC has the power to get what it wants, for the companies it wants. If you happen to be in YC’s good graces, they will reward you in ways described in the article. If you’re not, they won’t take the time. I was in YC in 2012 (2 yrs after the founder writing this article, and one of the last years PG was directly involved). By that ti…

Why does everything need to scale? Why couldn't they stick to taking a few high quality companies every year? There was enough money to be made that way. Seems the belief is that everything needs to scale until it doesn't work anymore.

>Why couldn't they stick to taking a few high quality companies every year?

Because they don't actually have the ability to pick high-quality companies.

Re: Y Combinator and Power in Silicon Valley

#128

Post by shombaboor »

cj wrote: post #6

If you’re wondering what to take away from this article: the simple take away is that YC has the power to get what it wants, for the companies it wants. If you happen to be in YC’s good graces, they will reward you in ways described in the article. If you’re not, they won’t take the time. I was in YC in 2012 (2 yrs after the founder writing this article, and one of the last years PG was directly involved). By that ti…

I always wonder how it feels to be in one of the companies who compete against each other in the same domain. I think they funded 3 AI code editors as once, how do you know the others aren't getting preferential help

Re: Y Combinator and Power in Silicon Valley

#129

Post by 0_____0 »

foobarian wrote: post #119
klooney wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A Google can stop 10000 potential startups simply with RSUs The real killer here is the Bay Area housing market. You need those RSUs to pay for a place to stay.

If the engineers are just middlemen for plumbing that money to property owners, seems like owning property in the Bay Area might be a good idea.

That was the policy intention in the 70s. Prop 13 plus zoning most land area for SFH ensured that boomer property owners could get rich. Back then it wasn't clear just how rich, though.

Re: Y Combinator and Power in Silicon Valley

#130

Post by light_triad »

rqtwteye wrote: post #89
cj wrote: post #6

If you’re wondering what to take away from this article: the simple take away is that YC has the power to get what it wants, for the companies it wants. If you happen to be in YC’s good graces, they will reward you in ways described in the article. If you’re not, they won’t take the time. I was in YC in 2012 (2 yrs after the founder writing this article, and one of the last years PG was directly involved). By that ti…

Why does everything need to scale? Why couldn't they stick to taking a few high quality companies every year? There was enough money to be made that way. Seems the belief is that everything needs to scale until it doesn't work anymore.

The need to scale is inevitable if you consider 2 trends: startups have become mainstream and the internet is orders of magnitude bigger. When YC applications consisted mostly of PG essay readers the chance of success per company was higher. Also some niche ideas can now work because of a more developed communications infrastructure, easy payments, better targeting, etc.

And knowing which companies are high quality is almost impossible at the early stages.

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