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Ways YC has changed in the last year

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Re: Ways YC has changed in the last year

#161

Post by avocabros »

RestlessMind wrote: post #157
snowmaker wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the comments in here are about the debate on whether companies should be remote or in-person. That's an important debate but orthogonal to what I wrote. The YC batch is not a company. It doesn't really have a close analogue, but if you forced me to choose, I'd say that doing YC is more similar to going to college than working at a company. And as all we all know, while many companies are staying fully remote…

Agreed with most of what you say, except: > YC is more similar to going to college than working at a company. The 3 ways you mentioned are also critical for a successful company. 1. Strong connections: you want to make strong connections in your company. That is what your network is and those connections help you in countless ways like referrals, job search or mentorships. 2. A company with "tougher, savvier, and mor…

I've come to the same conclusion - having thoroughly enjoyed remote work for the first ~year of Covid, I realized it was a net negative on many long-term aspects I valued.

I do believe remote work can "work" - so can four day work weeks (probably even three day) and many other arrangements. Companies and individuals can do it and not go bankrupt.

But I think to reach your fullest potential as a team/company/unit, you simply need to spend a lot of time together. If you don't want to reach your full potential, then that's a choice you can make.

Re: Ways YC has changed in the last year

#162

Post by avocabros »

hackernewds wrote: post #134
stanleydrew wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why not? Is this a serious question? For one thing, every founder will obviously know whether they are in-person or not, so it's not even possible to do a single-blind study.

My point is there are other statistical techniques, none of which seems to be utilized against #vibes let's go #RTO

You can make an argument in the other direction too - prove that WFH is better than RTO, or else we should return to the default that modern society has worked in for the massive majority of our history. There is not reliable data on either side - some of the most important things are also incredibly hard to measure. Will company X do better choosing C++ or Rust? Static or dynamic typing? These questions aren't easily answerable with a study.

I'm certain CEOs of FAANG are looking at stats to make these decisions. And what many WFH diehards miss is that your (or my) individual productivity is irrelevant, because all that matters is the output of the company as a whole. I can work really efficiently on the wrong thing and/or not spend time helping others in a way that my overall output for the company, not myself, is worse vs. in-office.

Re: Ways YC has changed in the last year

#163

Post by subarctic »

b112 wrote: post #128
tomp wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "tedious recipe blogs that require so much scrolling" usually first start with an emotional story about how the dish reminds the author of their childhood, which is included (presumably) to milk SEO and also annoy readers, followed by a recipe with maybe one photo. This is a recipe with short (but not one-liners) yet helpful instructions, including images of how the cooking process would work. Do you have an exam…

There was some guy here a year ago, who made a simple, easily searchable recipe site, but I don't know the link. It was just recipes.

if you find it let me know

Re: Ways YC has changed in the last year

#164

Post by majani »

eropple wrote: post #86
jacquesm wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And not the most elegant display of the power dynamic between investors and founders, to put it mildly. Note that this self selects for people able and willing to jump through hoops for their investors.

Having a family or a house or a dog simply means you are not hardcore enough , woo.

It's just 3 months. Before cellphones went mainstream, most people used to travel and simply disappear from their families for years. This need to be in constant communication with everyone back home is a phenomenon that just started in the 2000s

Re: Ways YC has changed in the last year

#165

Post by subarctic »

Plasmoid wrote: post #107
Terr_ wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often highlight that every claim of +X% "productivity" with RTO is based on an implicit assumption that the commute is uncompensated , and that employees will eat all the costs (man-hours, fuel) of coming into the office.... At least for a few quarters, until angry people leave for closer or better-paying jobs. So we've got (A) a misleading "productivity" metric sometimes being used to rationalize (B) one-sided pol…

I've always wondered how modern cities would look if employers had to bear partial responsibility for the commute. Would we see a lot more mixed housing around the place? Would transit be much better?

My guess is you'd see more company housing and stupid restrictions on where you have to live if you work somewhere

Re: Ways YC has changed in the last year

#166

Post by wokwokwok »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #83
seabass-labrax wrote: post #10

It's a risky investment strategy to put so much emphasis on AI startups. Not only do you have the already volatile nature of early-stage software companies (which YC is of course used to), but this is a bet on whether machine learning, chiefly LLMs, are going to continue to outperform other technologies and become sustainable to run. There's no question in my mind that 'Open'AI is subsidizing the vast majority of LLM…

The underlying assumptions in this post don't really make sense for an organization like YC. It's probably a good idea for YC to have some thesis about which technologies will be big, and "AI" is probably a good bet. The entire point of investing in so many AI startups is that I'm quite sure YC expects the vast, vast majority to fail (for various definitions of "fail"). But I think most people believe that there will…

?

Concentration and diversification are fundamentally opposed in risk management.

It’s ludicrous to suggest that somehow YC is “immune” to the risks that are associated with concentration of investment in one area.

I don’t buy the “we pick founders not technology” argument.

Rubbish. It’s a hype bubble. You’re seeing that as emergent behaviour because it gets funding; there’s no amount of hand waving that makes any of the risks in the parent comment either a) wrong, or b) YC somehow magically exempt from.

Are you seriously suggesting that YC just doesn’t do risk management or cross-startup risk analysis?

I simply cannot believe that.

Re: Ways YC has changed in the last year

#167

Post by unusualmonkey »

quadcore wrote: post #108
seabass-labrax wrote: post #10

It's a risky investment strategy to put so much emphasis on AI startups. Not only do you have the already volatile nature of early-stage software companies (which YC is of course used to), but this is a bet on whether machine learning, chiefly LLMs, are going to continue to outperform other technologies and become sustainable to run. There's no question in my mind that 'Open'AI is subsidizing the vast majority of LLM…

Friendly reminder: the strategy here is to invest in the founders, not the ideas. So great founders right now create AI startups. So either AI solves problems or they arent great founders.

That seems to beg the question.

Maybe YC isn't investing in the right founders, and that's why it has so many AI startups.

Re: Ways YC has changed in the last year

#168

Post by rtpg »

mentos wrote: post #26

Would have liked to read why in person is better. I imagine the biggest reason is it raises the sense of commitment for everyone involved.

I can see in person being "Better" for the novelty factor of people moving out to SF. But if they're doing 4 autonomous groups anyways, having groups spread out in different places would be an interesting experiment.

I do wonder what percent of YC companies force moves to SF. If a bunch of those people are moving anyways, running a batch in some other city (hell, Seattle or NY is surely filled with decent stuff) would be interesting. And on the YC-side, moving out somewhere for 3 months might give them their own novelty bonus as well.

Re: Ways YC has changed in the last year

#169

Post by Terr_ »

Plasmoid wrote: post #107
Terr_ wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often highlight that every claim of +X% "productivity" with RTO is based on an implicit assumption that the commute is uncompensated , and that employees will eat all the costs (man-hours, fuel) of coming into the office.... At least for a few quarters, until angry people leave for closer or better-paying jobs. So we've got (A) a misleading "productivity" metric sometimes being used to rationalize (B) one-sided pol…

I've always wondered how modern cities would look if employers had to bear partial responsibility for the commute. Would we see a lot more mixed housing around the place? Would transit be much better?

IMO that's not really about commute-costs as much as about bargaining-power, labor relations, and competitive markets.

Commute costs are kind of like inflation: In the very long term it's balanced by wages... but there's a lot of living that happens at shorter timescales. The longer before the situation is renegotiated, the more time one side has to exploit the imbalance.

Re: Ways YC has changed in the last year

#170

Post by somsak2 »

yuvadam wrote: post #151
seabass-labrax wrote: post #10

It's a risky investment strategy to put so much emphasis on AI startups. Not only do you have the already volatile nature of early-stage software companies (which YC is of course used to), but this is a bet on whether machine learning, chiefly LLMs, are going to continue to outperform other technologies and become sustainable to run. There's no question in my mind that 'Open'AI is subsidizing the vast majority of LLM…

Bitcoin hash rate is steadily growing no matter which time frame you look at [1], what do you mean by "craze"? [1] - https://www.blockchain.com/explorer/charts/hash-rate

I mean, not "no matter which time frame you look at." Look at the drop in May 2021, from which the rate didn't recover until 2022. Similar situation for October 2018 - June 2019.
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