YC went downhill during Sam Altman and then Garry Tan pushed it off a cliff. There’s no point in joining YC anymore.
What's the most successful yc company started in the last 5 years ?
Replit and Vanta stand out
Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth
151–160 of 272 posts
Re: Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the bigger issue is that the main signal to YC (and other elite institutions) is the acceptance rate ( The main criticism I have of YC is their constants chants of "everyone should apply!". Here is what you commonly hear: YC: You should apply to YC! Person: But I don’t have a product YC: You should still apply, we let in a lot of people with just an idea! Person: But I don’t have a co-founder YC: You should s…
The reason they want you to apply is twofold -- the application itself is a good exercise in getting you to think about things you should be thinking about. Honestly even if you have no intention at all of applying to YC you should still fill out the application for yourself, it makes you think about important things. And the second reason is that they get to see as many options as possible, because that's obviously…
> they get to see as many options as possible, because that's obviously better for them.
That assumes that evaluating a candidate is zero-cost, which surely isn't true.
Re: Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth
#153IMHO 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…
The "something" that they see is that they have a 1% chance of success. YC is an investment strategy. They noticed that equity which is 99% sure to be worthless is heavily under priced and bought a ton of it. That bet paid off handsomely.
If your batchmates are seeing embarrassment from who else is at the top of such a funnel I don't think much of their judgment. Investors provide capital, not prestige.
Re: Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth
#154One of the biggest shocks to me was that YC now invests in war and killing people. Before their closest connecting to killing people was investing in companies that had severe negative effects for society, like Doordash or AirBnb. Now they're helping people make missiles. https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/ares-industries
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Re: Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth
#155Something that I think is a bit misguided about this is that YC, at founding, was pretty unfashionable itself. The "accelerator" model wasn't particularly proven, and the thesis was that there was an untapped talent pool of "hackers" who just needed to figure out how to run a business and get connected to the right people/resources in order to be successful founders. Compared to other accelerator-type opportunities a…
Well said. Things change
Re: Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth
#156Full disclosure, I'm a YC alum whose last start-up was acquired by Google, who applied to this batch and didn't get an interview. YC is not the stamp of quality it once was, to be sure, though it still works as social proof, because investors (especially VCs) want to invest in companies other investors like (or failing that, companies they imagine other investors would like). YC would say that they aren't trying to b…
> … yield a big company …
I assume that this sort of says it all.
Everyone wants “big.”
The article talks about brand curation, really.
That seems to be a lost art, these days. I worked for a corporation that had one of the most powerful brands in the world (but has taken some real hits). I watched them dilute that brand, and make lots of money, but really get clobbered. They are now regrouping, and, I hope, re-establishing their original luster.
They were able to take a fairly small corporation, and compete with mega companies, on the strength of their brand. When they grew rather explosively, in the 1990s, they sowed the seeds of their own demise, in the mid-2010s.
Re: Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth
#157How many times did the author apply and get rejected from YC? I have heard this sentiment before, from a less successful VC. After comparing them based on track record, it was clear YC is in a league of its own. I want to get advice from people who have built startups before. Looks at YC advisors on YouTube and you'll find they're all very successful. Look at the partners and advisors at most VCs or accelerator progr…
> How many times did the author apply and get rejected from YC? Author is not wrong. This “YC is actually a negative signal” sentiment started back in 2018-2019. The “actual” good entrepreneurs (e.g., the folks you expect from Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Berkeley) stopped applying to YC a while back. There are different signaling mechanisms in 2024, which I won’t reveal here, because the “plebs” will turn it into shit, j…
You have a good hart
Re: Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth
#158Full disclosure, I'm a YC alum whose last start-up was acquired by Google, who applied to this batch and didn't get an interview. YC is not the stamp of quality it once was, to be sure, though it still works as social proof, because investors (especially VCs) want to invest in companies other investors like (or failing that, companies they imagine other investors would like). YC would say that they aren't trying to b…
> … yield a big company … I assume that this sort of says it all. Everyone wants “big.” The article talks about brand curation, really. That seems to be a lost art, these days. I worked for a corporation that had one of the most powerful brands in the world (but has taken some real hits). I watched them dilute that brand, and make lots of money, but really get clobbered. They are now regrouping, and, I hope, re-estab…
Strong brand value seems like insurance.
You don't think about it when you don't need it, but it bails your ass out of otherwise-impossible situations when you do need it.
Everything's fine for uninsured property... until it's not.
Re: Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth
#159Note that when YCombinator first started in 2005 (the batch that Sam Altman was part of, as a college dropout), they were not prestigious. They largely funded college students that nobody else would invest in. But part of Paul Graham's philosophy for it is that "If you do anything well enough, you'll make it prestigious" [1].
Rather, I think that what's happened with YCombinator is that it's followed the growth arc common to all institutions. You start with somebody who has a good idea and a passion for making things better for some subset of humanity. That attracts other people in a virtuous cycle. But eventually you hit a growth limit and saturate your market. At that point, the focus of the people in charge turns to wealth extraction, leveraging your brand, reputation, and market position to make ever increasing profits. Eventually you squeeze everything there is out of your market, your product is shit, your employees don't care about you anymore, and you get replaced by a younger more beautiful que^H^H^Hstartup.
I wouldn't bother applying to YC now - I don't feel like they give enough for the equity they take, their advice has become formulaic and well-known, and I'd rather go do what I love. But in 2005, when nobody was funding college students and the popular wisdom was that the Internet was a dead fad, they were revolutionary.
Re: Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth
#160I love the posts about how YC was better back in the day.
It was the same, it's the same. It's just bigger and there's more timeline now to reflect.
If you think the partners (the core of which have been there since day 1) have really changed their outlook that much then you've not been paying attention.
YC has always been a smorgasbord of status seekers, dreamers, ruthless pragmatists, creators and artists. It's a big community that keeps growing, the good parts and the bad parts.
There were scandals then, there are scandals now. They pick some teams perfectly and others totally wrong. The most important thing is that they keep doing it every year and more people get access and a shot at doing their thing.
FWIW I was YC W14 and yes it was totally better back then and we were all geniuses and pure lovers of startups only with no ego...