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Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth

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Re: Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth

#231

Post by signatoremo »

pbiggar wrote: post #195
mschuster91 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

There are 40,000 people killed in Gaza by US weapons, in what even Biden called "indiscriminate bombing". YC should not be making cheaper ways for our allies to commit genocide.

If you put it that way, lot of people have been killed by Russia’s weapons in Ukraine. US’s weapons are used to protect civilians there. Think of all the Russia’s missiles shot down, or artillery depots blown up.

Contemporary weapons are also much more precise. That means lower collateral damages. A lot of development efforts are to further enhance on that front.

Weapon development is essential. Of course we should condemn mis- or excessive use of force, especially against civilians.

Re: Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth

#232

Post by mlhpdx »

mike_hearn wrote: post #228
mlhpdx wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you ever go after 3) sign me up. The most inexplicable miss by VCs (YC included)is the lack of interest in funding climate change remediation. Billions of people to help and billions of dollars to be made. E.g.: Could funding protection of Tuvalu’s dry land and status as a nation pay dividends through licensing/leasing fishing rights? Such things are an area for innovation, and tech could be a part of it, but isn’…

That's not inexplicable. There's not much interest in it because a lot of things founders believe about climate are false and believing false things is a quick way to lose money. Tuvalu is a good example of this phenomenon. If you'd invested in a startup planning to make money by protecting Tuvalu from global warming, you would have lost all your money because Tuvalu is growing, not shrinking. https://www.nature.com/…

The study you reference is from 5 years ago, perhaps the impacts cited here[1] are less “incorrect”.

My anecdotal evidence of VC’s level of knowledge is very consistent with people at large. That is, flawed.

[1] https://zenodo.org/records/8069320

Re: Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth

#233

Post by jedimind »

signatoremo wrote: post #231
pbiggar wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are 40,000 people killed in Gaza by US weapons, in what even Biden called "indiscriminate bombing". YC should not be making cheaper ways for our allies to commit genocide.

If you put it that way, lot of people have been killed by Russia’s weapons in Ukraine. US’s weapons are used to protect civilians there. Think of all the Russia’s missiles shot down, or artillery depots blown up. Contemporary weapons are also much more precise. That means lower collateral damages. A lot of development efforts are to further enhance on that front. Weapon development is essential. Of course we should c…

We can clearly see from how the US aids and abets genocide[0] in Gaza that they make no judgments based on international law, ethics or sound moral values but only based on the geopolitical interests of their ruling elite and their lobbyists regardless of what the majority of the population they rule over thinks in this regard. If you believe for a second that America is helping Ukraine out of the goodness of their hearts or because "it's the right thing to do" then I have a bridge to sell you. It's a proxy war for them and the US would let happen to Ukraine and Ukrainians that which it lets happen to Gaza and Gazans if it were aligned with their geopolitical interests. US politics couldn't be possibly more machiavellian than it already is.

[0] https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/prof-amos-go...

Re: Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth

#234

Post by sub7 »

YC appears to be spending all it's time marketing itself on Twitter and pretty much all the partners, including the lead have companies that were acquihired i.e. failures

Class size of 7 = quality, class size of 300 or whatever = noise filter

But they again only need that 1 company to be the 1000x and return LP capital at a decent multiple. Any pool of their batch size is likely to produce that and allow them to self platitude after the fact.

Re: Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth

#235

Post by askafriend »

lupire wrote: post #54
minimaxir wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between forking to make a OSS project better and forking to create a clone just for the sake of VC funding that doesn't trickle down back to the original code. Even if it's allowable by the permissive license of the original code, it's not a net positive for OSS.

That's your opinion. Maybe the original authors of this project don't care and are just happy that their invention is helping people. I'll take the authors' published intent over your speculation.

Great take.

Re: Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth

#236

Post by throw14082020 »

chronic9304 wrote: post #148
throw14082020 wrote: post #9

How 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 posting "better" signalling mechanisms (in your opinion) will not be the end of them... People don't do things because you think they're good. They'll find them by looking and copying existing companies' approaches.

You have failed to mention anything except to say approximately "YC sucks and I have something better but I don't want to share"

Re: Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth

#237

Post by raydev »

cherryteastain wrote: post #185
jhanschoo wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's just hard to convey the sense from the early days of YC that they really didn't care about the return, or the progress so far, or VCs, or fads, or anything. That said, I really was at the right place at the right time and got very lucky. It seems to me that there was an early '10s milieu that enabled YC to behave like it did. Web apps and mobile fundamentally transformed everyday life and communication in very…

> It seems to me that there was an early '10s milieu that enabled YC to behave like it did. Definitely, it's called ZIRP and QE.

It didn't hurt that there was also a burgeoning new computing platform that everyone and their grandma was buying into for the first time.

Re: Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth

#238

Post by slashdave »

codingwagie wrote: post #104

Starting a startup is now a prestige game. Its a career path. Spend enough time with ivy league grads and youll realize this is true

In the VC arena, yes, it's always been. There are other types of startups that get funded differently, so let's not forget that.

Re: Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth

#239

Post by slashdave »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #202

> they got funded by YC with nothing more than a codebase copied from another YC-backed company. This shows that (1) YC is willing to fund just about anything, I don't see it that way. This is NOT the first time YC has funded startups that are in direct competition. It seems to me that having multiple companies with the same product makes your net larger for customer acquisition, and the startups can always merge lat…

Not to mention that the code base is probably the easiest part of a business like this.

Re: Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth

#240

Post by slashdave »

ninetyninenine wrote: post #72

It’s true. With 40k applications and roughly only 100s accepted… they likely only chose pearai because of nepotism. It would be self sabotage if they regularly do this so likely only a few companies are selected this way with pearai being one. The above is a very educated guess on pearai, but whether or not YC engages in nepotism or not is unmistakable to me. They do and there is real corruption in the selection proc…

Indeed. Maybe the next successful incubator will learn to find hidden talent from more diverse sources. Woman. Certain underrepresented ethnicities and economic backgrounds.
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