Sarah Lacy writes fantasy, not journalism. Ah, I suppose I should say more. For the technical co-founder (the person who writes the code) YC offers the opportunity to complete avoid the "professionals" that are brought in to run things (often into the ground). Sarah makes her living writing PR fluff to support those same people. YC is a direct threat to her source of income, and thus needs to be attacked.
I Don’t Understand Y Combinator Hate
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Re: I Don’t Understand Y Combinator Hate
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the explanation usually is more emotional and less analytical. People start to dislike anything that gets a lot of publicity. Everyone is susceptible to this to some degree, but some people more than others. As for the question of whether we help people or not, I don't think many people who know what goes on inside YC would argue that we didn't improve startups' prospects by 6.4%, which is what we have to do…
PG - I think no matter how well or how often you try to explain this point, the real haters don't understand the derivation nor the impact of the 6.4% figure. If they did, it would be a moot point!
"... I think the explanation usually is more emotional and less analytical. People start to dislike anything that gets a lot of publicity ..."
No but explaining this might help HN readers to resist posting these types of stories.
Competition of any sort generates "trash-talk" from competitors and the like. Joel has a nice explanation in "Fire & motion" ~ http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000339.html why competitors might do this. HN readers are ( "unnecessarily" ) getting caught up in the cross-fire.
Re: I Don’t Understand Y Combinator Hate
#23With all due respect to the talents of the best and brightest college grads, 250K, or 125K per head seems about right when compared to the starting salary those grads could get at a MS or Google. YC puts up a bit of funding and takes a small cut.
More importantly, I think is that it's giving young programmers a big leg up in understanding how the VC game is played and an opportunity to build a software career that is very independent. For really good programmers I suppose there is always demand, always a place to work and more or less define your own path. But if you sell your company for 15 mill, you get a nice piece of what I like to call FU money.
I've sort of followed this YC project from the beginning as an outsider and my sense is that the folks behind YC are putting back some of their good fortunes. It's a cool way to spend some of their money and possibly grow it even more.
All the negative press and trash talk about burned out programmers, etc. looks to me like a good measure of success. The others are looking at the backs of your sneakers
Re: I Don’t Understand Y Combinator Hate
#24Note that Lacy's original post contains links to and descriptions of current YCombinator companies.
TechCrunch also usually covers every YC project as it launches.
This is the main value of YCombinator: It provides guidance and media exposure that would otherwise take years to achieve, if at all - how many people can say that every project they do will get a story on TechCrunch?
Judging it as a VC company is misguided. The money involved is less than a year's tuition in many US colleges, and the recipients are mostly young enough to just live with their parents for a few months, and not need it anyway. The funding is minor, but the other parts - startups pay, a lot, to get this level of publicity and consulting.
I'd go with the "record label" metaphor instead of Lacy's American Idol one (I'm older ;)): Find talent, give them some producer and studio hours to record a single, then use your connections with DJs to get it some airplay hope it will catch on. Watch "24 Hour Party People" for more details :)
The one piece missing here, though, is the fact that ultimately the public (pre-mp3) was paying money for the singles. YC's audience is big companies with money to spend - it may prove less sustainable in the long run.
Re: I Don’t Understand Y Combinator Hate
#25I guess I've been living under a rock lately... I've only seen one article so far
Re: I Don’t Understand Y Combinator Hate
#26Note that Lacy's original post contains links to and descriptions of current YCombinator companies. TechCrunch also usually covers every YC project as it launches. This is the main value of YCombinator: It provides guidance and media exposure that would otherwise take years to achieve, if at all - how many people can say that every project they do will get a story on TechCrunch? Judging it as a VC company is misguide…
Why would big companies with money to spend be a less sustainable customer than music single consumers?
Re: I Don’t Understand Y Combinator Hate
#27the original post on Sarah Lacy's blog is atrocious, I can see why MA responded...
If I may agree with your sentiment, while disagreeing with your conclusion:
the original post on Sarah Lacy's blog is atrocious, I can't see why MA bothered to respond
It seems like publishing link bait never fails to garner an undue amount of attention.
Re: I Don’t Understand Y Combinator Hate
#28Note that Lacy's original post contains links to and descriptions of current YCombinator companies. TechCrunch also usually covers every YC project as it launches. This is the main value of YCombinator: It provides guidance and media exposure that would otherwise take years to achieve, if at all - how many people can say that every project they do will get a story on TechCrunch? Judging it as a VC company is misguide…
Why would big companies with money to spend be a less sustainable customer than music single consumers?
Because there are less of them, and the value they get out of buying companies - especially companies who don't earn money - isn't completely clear. (I'm not saying there isn't any, just that it may be harder to explain to stock owners in a down market)
Re: I Don’t Understand Y Combinator Hate
#29I think much of what we see here is the media engaging in the age-old sensationalist tradition of turning on its darlings.
However, I think there is some legitimate discussion going on in these anti-YC articles.
For example, it is an interesting and open question whether it's wise or healthy for the market to develop so-called "built to flip" companies. While YC isn't exclusively in the built-to-flip business, it happens to be a vocal advocate for this model where there once was none.
Generally, PG (chief ideologist for YC) is interested in doing disruptive things in the realm of startup funding. Disruptive people tend to often be both spectacularly right and spectacularly wrong -- PG no exception -- and I think that traits make a person more polarizing.
I don't think it's necessarily a knee-jerk to dislike a company because you disagree with it's chief ideologist. Look at Apple and Steve Jobs -- it seems to me that everything about the guy permeates every nook of the company. If you don't like him, you're probably not going to love Apple products.
Re: I Don’t Understand Y Combinator Hate
#30I think part of the reason for the Y Combinator hate is that the valuations YC offers are so low and it's not clear whether YC significantly helps the teams it funds. Wait, don't throw those tomatoes, let me explain! The valuation YC offers -- a median of 250k for a two-person team -- would be absurdly high if it was being offered to any team of two recent college graduates; but YC doesn't make offers to just any tea…
I'm a fan of YC and I don't need convincing that YC provides great value to a young startup -- more than the 6% equity it takes. However, I just don't believe that PG & co are capable of separating the potential winners from the losers based on a short application and a 10 minute interview. So many factors affect the success of a startup and I don't think that anyone can have such predictive abilities based on so little input. Maybe YC knows is good at filtering out the lowest 40% or so, but between the teams that have some viability I believe it's simply impossible to call which will succeed and which won't using YC's selection method.
The only way to measure YC's ability in picking winners is to to have PG & co rate a bunch of non-YC founding teams at the early stage of their startups, wait a few years, and see how well their predictions held up against more or less random predictions. The experiment must involve non YC startups is that YC enhances their startups' chances of success, which can create the likely false impression that YC excels at picking successful teams rather than at guiding the teams it happens to pick to success.