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Don't expect this lacklustre quality from Axios. The body of the article says nothing.
I am sure he would agree with me that the YC game has changed, and perhaps it requires more work from VCs than ever before, but it's definitely the biggest game in town (or even globally), and it would be foolish to ignore it. There are plenty of VCs for whom this game no longer works, but that's more of a reflection on them than on YC. You can still make boat loads of money with the best YC companies, and you have to evolve your signal gathering and ability to close rather than reminiscing the good old times when just having a large fund alone was enough to get into any deal you wanted.
I used to read the articles about the YC batches and the launch threads here, hoping for many of them to succeed and be interested in the various ideas. But later years I've stopped. First reason is because it's so damn many. If all of them had a launch thread here on HN it would probably be more than one a day. Secondly because so many of them now feels like "X for Y". Or just X in a new geography.
> MadEats is an online ghost kitchen food delivery service in the Philippines
That to me is nothing new, just a way to kill my local restaurants.
> An online store builder that claims to have a setup process 10x faster than Shopify.
Might be a cash cow and useful, but nothing exciting, eessentially Shopify in a different wrapping.
> Tinai aims to help modernize this with a digital bookkeeping service
Other than being in a new geography, it's nothing new.
> Membo: A premium way to grocery shop. Membo is a next-day grocery delivery service in Europe that optimizes for freshness and quality, instead of 15-minute speed.
We got many of these already.
There are of course exciting ones as well. But so much not-new that I just don't bother shifting through it all anymore.
I used to read the articles about the YC batches and the launch threads here, hoping for many of them to succeed and be interested in the various ideas. But later years I've stopped. First reason is because it's so damn many. If all of them had a launch thread here on HN it would probably be more than one a day. Secondly because so many of them now feels like "X for Y". Or just X in a new geography.
I used to read the articles about the YC batches and the launch threads here, hoping for many of them to succeed and be interested in the various ideas. But later years I've stopped. First reason is because it's so damn many. If all of them had a launch thread here on HN it would probably be more than one a day. Secondly because so many of them now feels like "X for Y". Or just X in a new geography.
Following YC launches, it seems to me like YC, after analyzing where they made their money over the last 15 years have taken the “spray and pray” model to the extreme. If it’s only one company per batch that makes most of the returns, you just need to make sure there are enough companies and let natural selection run its course. The problem is this model doesn’t really work for traditional VCs - they can’t support so…
Supporting that many companies is easier if you don't really support them. Toss them a little cash, tell them to get a shared house in SF for a months-long hackathon and hope for the best. After the first 12 months, start looking more closely at the fraction of startups that got anywhere.
You framing it this way helped me put a finer point on the vibe I'd noticed but couldn't quite articulate: that it's become less like building a business and more like chasing the prize on a reality show.
I used to read the articles about the YC batches and the launch threads here, hoping for many of them to succeed and be interested in the various ideas. But later years I've stopped. First reason is because it's so damn many. If all of them had a launch thread here on HN it would probably be more than one a day. Secondly because so many of them now feels like "X for Y". Or just X in a new geography.
From a TC article I googled from this week: > MadEats is an online ghost kitchen food delivery service in the Philippines That to me is nothing new, just a way to kill my local restaurants. > An online store builder that claims to have a setup process 10x faster than Shopify. Might be a cash cow and useful, but nothing exciting, eessentially Shopify in a different wrapping. > Tinai aims to help modernize this with a…
At least in the Bay Area the ghost kitchen model seems to be a way for local food entrepreneurs to try new brands. I know of several brick and mortar restaurants that are operating ghost kitchens out of their storefront, along with “startup” restaurants operating from ghost kitchen commissaries.
I don’t get this article. In order to objectively claim YC has somehow lost value, they’d need some measurable proof. Unless YC companies are failing to find funding, which is exceedingly doubtful, I don’t know how you could claim they’ve “lost luster”.
Seems like pretty lackadaisical coverage with no actual data backing it up other than a line about "many investors told Axios..." which might be interesting if we understood how many they talked to, quality of the firm, etc. Generally, I'm actually inclined to agree with the article, but what is essentially an opinion piece presenting itself as real coverage annoys me.