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YC Annual Letter 2017

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: YC Annual Letter 2017

#21

Post by sama »

gregoire wrote: post #8

Is there a reason why this is published on Sam's blog and not on YC's blog? Oh and a remark on the letter's typography: the double spaces after periods should be single spaces.

I had emailed this out to the YC community over the weekend. I got word from a journalist it was about to leak, and I couldn't get in touch with the person that runs the YC blog (I don't yet know how to post on the new one, but I'm sure going to figure it out now). I didn't want to wait, so I just posted it where I could.

Also I happen to think documents are easier to read with double spaces after sentences. Surely there is something more important to complain about than that.

Re: YC Annual Letter 2017

#22

Post by ForrestN »

ridruejo wrote: post #2

"Our mission is to enable the most innovation of any company in the world in order to make the future great for everyone." I know many people will read that and roll their eyes back and believe it is just a marketing gimmick for the gullible and like most investors YC just cares about the money. The thing is that they do deeply care about founders and making things better in the world, as naive as that may sound to o…

It's funny you say this—the first thing I did, even before reading the article, was search for "Thiel." It's going to be hard for me to take this sort of thing seriously, this telegraphing of benevolence which is so central to YC's branding, until they address the fact that one of their "partners" is such an obviously destructive force within society. They don't even have to do anything but say goodbye, and they won't.

Re: YC Annual Letter 2017

#23

Post by AndrewKemendo »

pyb wrote: post #18
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #14

Companies like Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple, and Microsoft have powerful advantages that are still not fully understood by most founders and investors....This trend is unlikely to reverse without antitrust action, and I suggest people carefully consider its implications for startups. I think the "startup community" needs to have a serious conversation about this [2]. If we agree that machine learning is going to b…

Reading between the lines, wasn't Sam complaining about a trend whereby many promising startups get acquired way too early ?

I can't speak for sam but in my mind that is a big piece of it.

If you don't sell, then the big companies don't get bigger. Unfortunately in that case if you do get big enough despite that, they will just target you and take a chunk of your market (Instagram Stories vs Snapchat) so that you can't dominate.

Look, it's brilliant and exactly what every firm should do. The question is really, if it's a net positive to have 5 companies run everything* in consumer technology. I don't know but history seems to not like that.

Re: YC Annual Letter 2017

#24

Post by nicholasjbs »

kukac wrote: post #10
ridruejo wrote: post #2

"Our mission is to enable the most innovation of any company in the world in order to make the future great for everyone." I know many people will read that and roll their eyes back and believe it is just a marketing gimmick for the gullible and like most investors YC just cares about the money. The thing is that they do deeply care about founders and making things better in the world, as naive as that may sound to o…

Any evidence of this ?

YC continues to support my company nearly seven years after our batch, even though we're still tiny and have no plans to exit (and thus will likely never give them any financial return).

Re: YC Annual Letter 2017

#25

Post by adamsea »

neom wrote: post #6
rcar wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you know the truth behind a statement like that, it's hard to read something that earnest and not have an initial eye roll in response. As someone who doesn't know the YC team's motivations, it's nice to know that at least someone thinks that some of the earnestness is real.

Maybe I'm a fool then because I would read that and take it in earnest as I read and take much of the HN community in earnest. I have a great deal of respect for YC and the HN community - I guess the point of my original post was it's a little disappointing that isn't the case.

Maybe you just haven't watched the show "Silicon Valley" ;). It's all about "making the world a better place." ;)

Re: YC Annual Letter 2017

#26

Post by AndrewKemendo »

neom wrote: post #20
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #14

Companies like Amazon, Facebook, Google, Apple, and Microsoft have powerful advantages that are still not fully understood by most founders and investors....This trend is unlikely to reverse without antitrust action, and I suggest people carefully consider its implications for startups. I think the "startup community" needs to have a serious conversation about this [2]. If we agree that machine learning is going to b…

Oh and they also don't care about you anymore. I feel like there was a time when you could sorta build next to one of these companies and then if you did a decent job they would make sure they don't step on you. Maybe I misread the climate, or eng talent was less plentiful then, but these days it doesn't seem friendly in tech. When we founded the company I'm a part of today I was strongly advised against it by a grou…

Well I think everyone looked at what happened to PARC and said, "no way that is happening to us", so lets keep it quiet, and don't collaborate as much.

The competition is too high now to be friendly.

Re: YC Annual Letter 2017

#27

Post by [deleted] »

adamsea wrote: post #25
neom wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm a fool then because I would read that and take it in earnest as I read and take much of the HN community in earnest. I have a great deal of respect for YC and the HN community - I guess the point of my original post was it's a little disappointing that isn't the case.

Maybe you just haven't watched the show "Silicon Valley" ;). It's all about "making the world a better place." ;)

[deleted]

Re: YC Annual Letter 2017

#28

Post by pyb »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #23
pyb wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading between the lines, wasn't Sam complaining about a trend whereby many promising startups get acquired way too early ?

I can't speak for sam but in my mind that is a big piece of it. If you don't sell, then the big companies don't get bigger. Unfortunately in that case if you do get big enough despite that, they will just target you and take a chunk of your market (Instagram Stories vs Snapchat) so that you can't dominate. Look, it's brilliant and exactly what every firm should do. The question is really, if it's a net positive to ha…

If they're implying that a recent 'shortage' (if there is?) of Airbnb/Stripe/Dropbox sized successes is due to acquisitions, I'm not sure that's entirely fair.

Re: YC Annual Letter 2017

#29

Post by roymurdock »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #23
pyb wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading between the lines, wasn't Sam complaining about a trend whereby many promising startups get acquired way too early ?

I can't speak for sam but in my mind that is a big piece of it. If you don't sell, then the big companies don't get bigger. Unfortunately in that case if you do get big enough despite that, they will just target you and take a chunk of your market (Instagram Stories vs Snapchat) so that you can't dominate. Look, it's brilliant and exactly what every firm should do. The question is really, if it's a net positive to ha…

Oligopolization happens from time to time when productivity growth decreases. Firms are forced to downsize, merge, acquire and consolidate to shrink the levels of capital and labor they invested in when projecting forward into a future with the baseline assumption of higher productivity growth.

ML in its current form - efficiency optimization across a ton of different vertical industries - is also a reaction to decreasing productivity. If you can't grow your revenues, you need to shrink your costs, and ML/analytics do that well.

Once we see a new technology or infrastructure driver that jumpstarts productivity growth (distributed electricity, refrigeration, plumbing/running water, public roads, combustion engines, more recently the internet and mobile phones) startups will be able to once again flourish and will be able to return to the public markets with their own company/brand rather than look for acquihire exits as many do in the current climate.

Something that makes sense to me would be some form of basic human sleep/energy acquisition optimization. We spend 1/3 of our time asleep - is there a way to use VR/AR to enhance productivity during this time, or to avoid it altogether without killing us? It seems unnatural, but many facets of our current lifestyle would have seemed unnatural to someone 50, 100, 200 years ago.

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