21–27 of 27 posts
The wanting of something never creates the appearance of it, but the continued wanting of it. Life is the dialectic of choosing to create and being surprised by what ensues.
It's completely natural to appear to want something that you want/need.
The wanting of something never creates the appearance of it, but the continued wanting of it. Life is the dialectic of choosing to create and being surprised by what ensues.
1)Be Desireless 2)Be Excellent 3)Be Gone
I wouldn't quite say we look for people who don't need us. Roughly speaking, we look for people who are like we were when we started Viaweb, and we certainly would have found YC helpful.
However, we think that YC is one of the best deals out there. There's the networking of course, but then there's the PR, or the 'social capital'. If we impress PG enough, he'll say something shiny about us in an essay, and suddenly our website grabs the starry eyes of thousands of readers. It's also probably worth a lot in confidence to be picked as a probable winner out of an application pool of more than a thousand.
I wouldn't quite say we look for people who don't need us. Roughly speaking, we look for people who are like we were when we started Viaweb, and we certainly would have found YC helpful.
Let me clarify, since a few people are misinterpreting slightly. YC is certainly very helpful, and that's why we're all applying. Being accepted undoubtedly helps a startup's chances for success. So let me append to "for a team to be accepted, it can't need YC" a parenthetical phrase: "(in order to be willing to proceed full steam ahead)".
We're not banking on YC to fund us. We're chasing two other deals concurrently, and if that fails we'll get day-jobs elsewhere to bootstrap. However, we think that YC is one of the best deals out there. There's the networking of course, but then there's the PR, or the 'social capital'. If we impress PG enough, he'll say something shiny about us in an essay, and suddenly our website grabs the starry eyes of thousands…