Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Y Combinator has lost its soul: A YC founder's perspective

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 436 posts

Re: Y Combinator has lost its soul: A YC founder's perspective

#351

Post by shard »

chrisco255 wrote: post #201
doorstar wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a silicon valley success story in our family. His parents were telling me how he built everything up out of nothing, clearly unaware of their own contribution. He could pour all his money into his start-up because if he'd lost every dime he could have moved back in with them. He'd have his own bedroom, bathroom, and a fresh-cooked meal every night. He could have stayed with them as long has he wanted. Very fe…

Uh, most parents would take their kids back in the event of financial disaster. That's not even rare. Many folks live with their parents until late 20s / early 30s these days.

I suspect that people living with family until 20s/30s is likely to be much more common than people here expect, and that not doing so is an anomaly of the current age in only certain cultures, with a possible return to norm in the future.

Re: Y Combinator has lost its soul: A YC founder's perspective

#352

Post by hpcjoe »

Alex3917 wrote: post #346
hpcjoe wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As one who bootstrapped, took that risk, and lost ... everything ... I've been talking passively about this for a while. I speak with startups who have a product that is poorly differentiated, me-too like, that think they are going to take over the world. The reality, the vicious Darwinian reality, is that you and your team have to bust your collective rear-ends. And get lucky. Really, I hate to deflate many many bub…

But if you're bootstrapping you can just make money doing consulting for a few months each year. Between having a job or having a VC-backed company, bootstrapping seems like arguably the lowest risk option of the three.

I did that at the beginning. Until I had enough cash to build and market product. But it was barely enough cash.

Then big orders started hitting.

Before I knew it, we were at $3MM/y sales, growing about 33% yoy.

And then we crashed. We needed more capital. Those who wanted to put money in via convertible notes demanded terms that would have killed the company's ability to raise capital going forward. Our lawyers told us that it appeared that the large company wanted to buy us on the cheap, and these terms enabled that.

I've replayed that in my head many times. It was a crappy deal, and they weren't willing to budge. But I would have had a sort-of-exit had they exercised one of the convertible clauses, to basically demand payment in full if we couldn't raise more money.

If someone tells you corporate VC is less slimy than the regular version, don't believe them. Different type of slimy, but still slimy.

Re: Y Combinator has lost its soul: A YC founder's perspective

#354

Post by dang »

dencodev wrote: post #338
dang wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You guys need to understand that people have been saying things like "a lot of them look like duds" and "almost all the others are just X for Y" literally, and continuously, since YC got started.

Famously dropbox was ridiculed on HN

Yes, although I do think the user who posted that comment has gotten a bit of a bum rap over the years - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23229196

Re: Y Combinator has lost its soul: A YC founder's perspective

#355

Post by dang »

TigeriusKirk wrote: post #301
dang wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's quite wrong. pg always said that YC should operate like a startup and his primary definition of startups is growth. The original spirit behind YC was let's-hack-the-economy with an experiment in the mass production of startups. That's encoded in the name itself. In other words, much larger batch sizes were guaranteed as YC grew. How pg and the original founding team might have gone about it, compared to others…

>The original spirit behind YC was let's-hack-the-economy with an experiment in the mass production of startups. If the experiment is no longer working as well as it was, it's time to change the parameters. That's how experiments work.

Who says it's not working? That would be an argument that batch sizes haven't grown large enough—something no one here seems to be saying. Actually that would be more interesting than the things the OP and some of the commenters are saying, most of which have been going around for 10 years or more.

Re: Y Combinator has lost its soul: A YC founder's perspective

#356

Post by czbond »

bananaface wrote: post #289
czbond wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would Y comb need to compete with someone who is considering an offer to G? In that case, the founder would leave for the better deal anyways - so it's best to leave before it gets REALLY hard.

Ok, but now you're filtering out a good chunk of people smart enough to work for G - so your applicant pool just got dumber.

Disagree. If someone's choice either is to work for G, or start the company, it is the founders risk to take and give up that job for the outsized risk and return of starting up. It is not YC's need to compensate a founder for their alternative.

Re: Y Combinator has lost its soul: A YC founder's perspective

#357

Post by shard »

Jommi wrote: post #93
doorstar wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a silicon valley success story in our family. His parents were telling me how he built everything up out of nothing, clearly unaware of their own contribution. He could pour all his money into his start-up because if he'd lost every dime he could have moved back in with them. He'd have his own bedroom, bathroom, and a fresh-cooked meal every night. He could have stayed with them as long has he wanted. Very fe…

I don't know think this is as clear. Can you link me to some researcher where a stronger social net leads to better entrepreneur outcomes? Because looking at country level data, USA, with it's terribly scary and risky path of entrepreneurship completely outperforms welfare state countries like the Nordics. You could say the difference is from capital markets, but still even the difference in startups that are not suc…

It's easy to find many countries with much worse social nets than the USA, but with worse entrepreneurial outcomes. The social net versus entrepreneurial outcome function might not be a monotonically increasing one.

Re: Y Combinator has lost its soul: A YC founder's perspective

#358

Post by doorstar »

chrisco255 wrote: post #342
doorstar wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are parents with ample incomes and large comfortable homes that will welcome their child with open arms, proud of them for risking everything on a start up and encouraging them to try again. There are parents with little extra cash and homes without space for permanent guests who are going to accept their children back with some disappointment and disapproval for taking large risks and failing. Children of the…

There are parents with ample incomes and large comfortable homes that will accept their children back with some disappointment and disapproval for taking large risks and failing. There are parents with little extra cash and homes without space for permanent guests who will welcome their child with open arms, proud of them for risking everything on a start up and encouraging them to try again.

Point being - there are a lot of factors outside of one's control that affects one risk adversity

* having a place to live if you go broke

* a place within some manageable travel distance ( i.e. same state/country/continent )

* a place where you will feel a warm sense of welcome

* a place where you will have creature comforts: a comfortable bed, a private room, an bathroom with minimal wait times

* a place where you don't need to contribute to living expenses, at least not right away and not until you can get back on your feet

* a place which is a good launching point for your next career

* (US) health care

Successful founders I know have all of these - every last one.

Re: Y Combinator has lost its soul: A YC founder's perspective

#359

Post by _curious_ »

KerryJones wrote: post #157
_curious_ wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, it's not even about the money. My last company had a technical cofounder who by all means was highly sought after and managed a team of 15-20 other developers in their primary dev consulting company meaning not only did they rock technically but also had biz acumen. That individual worked FOR FREE for 3 years 25 hrs/week before collecting any money. Don't ever think you have to pay a developer some market sal…

This is rich with availability bias. Just because you have had this experience doesn't mean that's possible for other people to do routinely. It sounds like a long tail event and using it as an example seems to be baseless. Congrats on being able to get him going, but I certainly wouldn't rely on that happening.

Care to elaborate on what "rich with availability bias" means? I've never heard that one before.

Also, the individual in reference wasn't the of the gender you're assuming.

Re: Y Combinator has lost its soul: A YC founder's perspective

#360

Post by _curious_ »

ricardobeat wrote: post #149
_curious_ wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, it's not even about the money. My last company had a technical cofounder who by all means was highly sought after and managed a team of 15-20 other developers in their primary dev consulting company meaning not only did they rock technically but also had biz acumen. That individual worked FOR FREE for 3 years 25 hrs/week before collecting any money. Don't ever think you have to pay a developer some market sal…

> Don't ever think you have to pay a developer some market salary (or any salary) upfront "A developer" should definitely be paid market rates, otherwise they are a founder and should be rewarded accordingly with equity. I think this mindset of "getting work for free" is very damaging to the person holding the short end of the stick. Someone who already has a well paid job, is willing to do a startup on the side, and…

"otherwise they are a founder and should be rewarded accordingly with equity."

Of course - as they were. My point was on cash money comp. Never said they worked for free hence their title of technical cofounder which implies equity.

"...and actually be effective at it is extremely rare. What you'll usually find is someone at the beginning of their career that doesn't really understand what they are getting into."

The onus is on the founding team to be sufficiently compelling to attract such a rare breed and if they execute correctly there is no short end to the stick to be had.

Post reply on HN