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How the AI bubble ate Y Combinator

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Re: How the AI bubble ate Y Combinator

#121

Post by minimaxir »

It's funny because it's causing a tragedy of the commons where there are so many AI startups that YC is funding companies that compete with each other. Case in point, the the PearAI incident a year ago where a YC company forked and rebranded an open source repo from another YC company against its license: https://unfashionable.blog/p/yc/

HN thread on the apology: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41701265

Speaking of which, apparently PearAI deleted their apology in the intervening year.

Re: How the AI bubble ate Y Combinator

#122

Post by randycupertino »

Timsky wrote: post #82

YC remains a great source of creative inspiration for me. However, I tend to skip most AI-related content on HN, as the topic does more harm than good to me in my daily life. Some people around me delegate more and more decisions to the chat, and that frightens. Especially if you are somehow dependent on them or your work gets evaluated by some creepy AI-driven bossware. We should admit that AI, particularly LLMs, is…

I was recently in a work AI training where we were encouraged to have AI review all our vendor and contractor budgets and find holes and create rebuttals to line items. Was wondering what if the vendor has ai review our rebuttals and create counter-points to our ai-created arguments. At some point it will just be AI talking against itself to another AI chatbot.

Re: How the AI bubble ate Y Combinator

#123

Post by tedggh »

The article starts by assuming there’s an AI bubble.

Then it goes to label all these startups as AI companies.

This is how they are categorized (2025 batch only):

AI Agents (15%)

Productivity/Ops Tools (11.4%)

AI Infrastructure (10%)

Healthcare (10%)

Consumer Apps (9.3%).

We cannot argue that AI infrastructure is AI, but what about say back office automation and healthcare? Are these AI companies? Or are they automation/healthtech that happen to use LLMs?

Many Fintech and e-commerce companies use ML, are they ML companies?

Re: How the AI bubble ate Y Combinator

#124

Post by Macha »

minimaxir wrote: post #121

It's funny because it's causing a tragedy of the commons where there are so many AI startups that YC is funding companies that compete with each other. Case in point, the the PearAI incident a year ago where a YC company forked and rebranded an open source repo from another YC company against its license: https://unfashionable.blog/p/yc/ HN thread on the apology: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41701265 Speaking…

Is placing bets on competing companies that against YC's business model?

Like I'd assume the best case for YC's business model is to pick a winner, fund them, sell off at the company's peak, then find a competitor likely to unseat them and fund that competitor so they can enjoy the profits of capturing the same market again.

Re: How the AI bubble ate Y Combinator

#125

Post by skeeter2020 »

jacquesm wrote: post #106

I was at a meeting of a bunch of VCs a while ago (a couple of months). The principal partner of one of the larger funds said that they will now only consider investments that are AI related. Just to give you a data point, I'm not saying that that is a trend. But if that's a market representative you can't fault the supply side for adapting to it.

until recently I worked in learning management systems (LMS) including the content creation, libraries and delivery. At a recent event with many VCs they all considered the learning space dead because AI was going to do it all. Don't hold your breath!

Re: How the AI bubble ate Y Combinator

#126

Post by leoc »

f30e3dfed1c9 wrote: post #83
hshshshshsh wrote: post #16

Is it just me or anyone else fed up with the startup community. I cannot find anyone who actually cares about values and have backbone. The stories I grew up with of Wozniak, Jobs, Larry and the hacker community does not resemble them anymore. Everyone I know who raised money is a moron or narcissist. YC has became like a resume builder. And the genuine hackers I know of are wasting life away working on pointless pro…

The self-described "startup community" hasn't produced much of any value to me in a really long time. Dropbox-like things are somewhat useful, but that started in 2007 or so and the one I actually use in maybe 2011 or so. I just took a look at yclist.com, which ends in 2019. Noticed only a few that I've ever heard of and none that I use. Possibly there are some since then but I sort of doubt it. There are a couple of…

To be fair, there are probably quite a few useful startups hidden in the B2B world, especially given how much accepted startup strategy appears to have shifted to focusing on that segment.

Re: How the AI bubble ate Y Combinator

#127

Post by bix6 »

Macha wrote: post #124
minimaxir wrote: post #121

It's funny because it's causing a tragedy of the commons where there are so many AI startups that YC is funding companies that compete with each other. Case in point, the the PearAI incident a year ago where a YC company forked and rebranded an open source repo from another YC company against its license: https://unfashionable.blog/p/yc/ HN thread on the apology: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41701265 Speaking…

Is placing bets on competing companies that against YC's business model? Like I'd assume the best case for YC's business model is to pick a winner, fund them, sell off at the company's peak, then find a competitor likely to unseat them and fund that competitor so they can enjoy the profits of capturing the same market again.

Is it fair for someone with privileged information to back a direct competitor? I say no but YC clearly thinks otherwise.

Re: How the AI bubble ate Y Combinator

#128

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #114
pixl97 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I see far fewer discussions of open source as compared to AI. Because the big discussions of open source were decades ago now. If you add up all the discussions of open source in the past I'd assume they'd out number the AI discussions now. Also, there is very little novel to discuss about open source. Now novel and 'important' are different things, but novel is what tends to write articles and get eyeballs.

I don't really know man half the population doesn't know what open source means or cares whereas a lot of people seemingly have lots of opinions about AI. One can liberate people from big tech and the other ties them to it in sorts. And there are very very more conversations about the latter than the former. The point of discussion is to bring change. There has been a real change in how usable Linux has been lets say…

> I don't really know man half the population doesn't know what open source means or cares whereas a lot of people seemingly have lots of opinions about AI.

I'm not the person you responded to, but I'm certain that way less than half the population knows about or considers open source, that's one of those living in a bubble illusions.

Ultimately those people aren't here and have no interest in being here.

Re: How the AI bubble ate Y Combinator

#129

Post by jollyllama »

gjgtcbkj wrote: post #95
Timsky wrote: post #82

YC remains a great source of creative inspiration for me. However, I tend to skip most AI-related content on HN, as the topic does more harm than good to me in my daily life. Some people around me delegate more and more decisions to the chat, and that frightens. Especially if you are somehow dependent on them or your work gets evaluated by some creepy AI-driven bossware. We should admit that AI, particularly LLMs, is…

I welcome the bossware. Bye bye bosses.

Better the devil that you know...

Re: How the AI bubble ate Y Combinator

#130

Post by skeeter2020 »

rappatic wrote: post #38

> Going through YC’s startup directory reveals that of the 170 startups in the most recent summer batch 154 are AI startups. The author calculates this by searching for the term "AI" in the name and description of each startup's YC page. But presence of the term "AI" doesn't make a startup an "AI startup," so to speak. For example, I picked one startup at random, Topological, which is "developing physics-based founda…

If you put "AI" into your name or TLD (Description or Domain) you are intentionally playing the AI angle/game, so it's going to guide everything from the core values on down, and that's what I think is the critical influence, more so than actually doing "real" AI (whatever that means)
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