BTW, if anyone is wondering why Arrington is making a big deal over a moderately negative article, it's been rewritten since it was originally posted and most of the more egregious mistakes removed.
I Don’t Understand Y Combinator Hate
31–40 of 41 posts
Re: I Don’t Understand Y Combinator Hate
#32" Remember, these startups are usually 2-3 people with little more than an idea. Generally speaking there are few other investors who will be willing to invest in them until they have some sort of code written or an initial product out the door. " That's not exactly true. I think majority of the startups were launched or had extensive prototypes before they joined YC. This makes sense, because it filters out the peop…
That seems to only be true of the last batch or two.
Re: I Don’t Understand Y Combinator Hate
#33I 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…
"but YC doesn't make offers to just any team. YC only picks the best teams (about 5% of applicants if I'm remembering the statistics correctly)...
distinguishing teams which have a 50%+ chance of success from those with a 5% chance of success"
Perhaps we should give them a few more years of operation before we assume those to be facts. So far the vast majority of funded teams haven't resolved one way or the other, which is actually a pretty good sign, but I think I'd still bet the under on 50%.
Re: I Don’t Understand Y Combinator Hate
#34Honestly, I didn't know there was any Y Combinator hate... I suspect that particular attitude might be local to the start-up center of the US where Y Combinator is direct competition for the other residents.
I'd like to say that I have learned a LOT from reading the contents of this site. I'd imagine any YC hatred is a sign that YC is actually do it's job well!
Re: I Don’t Understand Y Combinator Hate
#35Note 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…
"This [free press coverage] is the main value of YCombinator: It provides guidance and media exposure that would otherwise take years to achieve, if at all".
No no no. It truly is not-- it blows me away how often people say this. Look at the traffic graphs of most YC companies and they have a healthy spike around Demo Day and then nearly flatline (and start the rough/long trudge up the hill).
If I were going to put things at the top of the list of values YC provides, I'd say it's:
- the (very) public declaration of intent-- it becomes DAMN awkward to quit once you're a YC company.
- the investor relationships, introductions, and acceleration. It's nearly impossible to pitch 150+ investors at once without YC. That setting results in faster investment oftentimes (but not fast enough).
- YC guidance. They've shepherded 100+ startups thru this now-- they have more data and better instincts about the "right" thing to do than most advisors... And invest way more time.
- The peer relationships. Very few early stage questions can't be (very effectively) answered by the collective wisdom of YC founders (who have all gone thru the same issues).
Re: I Don’t Understand Y Combinator Hate
#36BTW, if anyone is wondering why Arrington is making a big deal over a moderately negative article, it's been rewritten since it was originally posted and most of the more egregious mistakes removed.
I was wondering that a little, since the article (by the time I got to it) didn't seem particularly hateful. But it didn't seem very insightful either. It's pleasing (and a healthy sign) that it hasn't gotten any traction on News YC.
Re: I Don’t Understand Y Combinator Hate
#37Most YC companies seem not to be technically revolutionary, but applying existing technology to solve real problems (not a criticism, an observation - after all, there is great opportunity there for making money). - Are there any technology-based startups funded by YC? - A proxy could be patent applications: how many YC startups have filed for patents?
YC startups are often technology companies; I'd argue Justin.tv, where we wrote our own video server software from scratch, would count. The ones who file patents tend to be slow burn, and are still under the radar.
Re: I Don’t Understand Y Combinator Hate
#38I 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 lit…
"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"
In poker, if a pot is very large, calling a bet (ie investing some money) can have positive expectation even if the probability of winning the pot is quite low.
Similarly, YC's filtering ability only needs to be "good enough" to generate positive expectation, which can happen even if their predictive ability for selecting winners is quite low. Picking winners at a slightly better rate than the competition gives them an edge, even if they're not actually good at it. ie being "barely competent" at something extraordinarily difficult can often be enough to achieve considerable success.
Of course, I don't see any reason to believe that they aren't actually quite good at choosing winning startup teams -- it would certainly be interesting to be able to measure that. It will also be interesting to see if their hit-rate goes up over time.
Re: I Don’t Understand Y Combinator Hate
#39Most YC companies seem not to be technically revolutionary, but applying existing technology to solve real problems (not a criticism, an observation - after all, there is great opportunity there for making money). - Are there any technology-based startups funded by YC? - A proxy could be patent applications: how many YC startups have filed for patents?
YC startups are often technology companies; I'd argue Justin.tv, where we wrote our own video server software from scratch, would count. The ones who file patents tend to be slow burn, and are still under the radar.
Thanks for explaining the slow-burn/patent correlation.
I'm looking at Justin.tv, and I've never seen smooth live video online before. It's consistently smooth (though minor freeze-frames every so often). Your implementation is a better method for live video.
Is this because your implementation is coded better - tighter, more efficient, cleverer - or is there a fundamental new insight behind it, that makes it faster?
Re: I Don’t Understand Y Combinator Hate
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
YC startups are often technology companies; I'd argue Justin.tv, where we wrote our own video server software from scratch, would count. The ones who file patents tend to be slow burn, and are still under the radar.
Thanks for explaining the slow-burn/patent correlation. I'm looking at Justin.tv, and I've never seen smooth live video online before. It's consistently smooth (though minor freeze-frames every so often). Your implementation is a better method for live video. Is this because your implementation is coded better - tighter, more efficient, cleverer - or is there a fundamental new insight behind it, that makes it faster?
It's just better coded, for the most part. It was actually better before we started growing a lot; now we have scaling problems. We're working on smoothing everything out now.
Of course, there have also been insights that I think may be fundamental, but they aren't patentable as far as we know.