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

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

#371

Post by hpcjoe »

jngreenlee wrote: post #350
hpcjoe wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here here. When you empty your 401k to build your business, and don't contribute to it for 15 years while you are building, as you simply don't have the cash, and cannot afford it ... Yeah. The implicit assumptions of the "live in poverty" of the OP, are wrong. I'm 54, and I was financially wiped out at 51. I will not ever recover from this. No family wealth to fall back on. I do not believe I will ever be able to re…

Have you blogged or told your story anywhere? I'm curious to learn more!

Not all of it. I blog here[1]. The post where I talked about the end is here[2]. Note the 'laws' I quote at the end of the post. My first post is here[3]. There I talk about the HPC market, accelerators, and some of our plans. We were working on board level inexpensive accelerators before these were a thing. We gave up trying to get funding for this in 2006.

I did say, you have to be at the right place, at the right time. And be lucky. We got 2 of 3. Luck eluded us.

[1] https://scalability.org

[2] https://scalability.org/2017/03/requiem/

[3] https://scalability.org/2005/10/venture-capital-and-high-per...

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

#372

Post by doorstar »

ballenf wrote: post #335
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 think it's perfectly ok that if I save and work that my kids will have a leg up on my peers' kids who don't do the same. Don't we want, as a society, to encourage parents to do these things for their kids? Isn't that a net win for society as a whole? The alternative would require a near 100% estate/death tax, wouldn't it?

Don't misunderstand me, the parents did nothing wrong.

Their problem was their mental model where their child's success was entirely due to their child's talents and drive, and that since they ( the parents ) had not provided any seed money, they had nothing to do with their child's success.

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

#373

Post by Jommi »

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.

Where are you seeing this kind of a stats? Are you just talking about the US? Remember that were on an online multinational discussion board.

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

#374

Post by Jommi »

doorstar wrote: post #276
chrisco255 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

You really need to implement some 2nd level thinking.

It seems to me that you're just taking the logical argument of better safety net --> lower overall risk --> better performance.

In reality the flow I've seen throughout the years is more like:

Big risk of failure --> additional motivation to succeed --> world changing technology.

If you have a safety net and your life is stable, why even take such a big risk like entrepreneurship?

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

#375

Post by mrep »

site-packages1 wrote: post #114
jfengel wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I take it FAMGAN is FAANG+Microsoft? Googling failed to turn up any other usages of this term.

I always hated that Microsoft wasn’t represented.

French wikipedia has GAFAM [0] which I think makes the most sense as they are the biggest by market cap.

[0]: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/GAFAM

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

#376

Post by MFLoon »

lisper wrote: post #82

I find it disturbing that this is getting so much attention. The argument (such as it is) is utterly without merit, unsupported by anything other than the tweeter's personal opinion. It is, quite simply, a troll. And it seems to be working. In fact, the whole cultural phenomenon of paying attention to what people tweet is deeply disturbing. Twitter is not designed to support rational argument supported by data, it's…

It appears to be a literal troll account - "Peter Weyland" is the villain from the Alien cinematic universe.

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

#377

Post by Alex3917 »

hpcjoe wrote: post #361
Alex3917 wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 should also point out that this is a common misconception for hardware/solution companies. Very hard to make enough money to fund R&D with consulting. I did that for the first 4 years of the company. Put bluntly, that model, the consulting bit, is not for the faint of heart. It is just as hard, as in you absolutely have to hustle hard this whole time, to get business. Leaving you with precious little time to develo…

Right, it doesn't really work if you need to spend a lot of time selling consulting. It works better if you write a bestselling book at some point so that you're recognized as the #1 person in your field, and then you just have a waitlist of clients willing to pay $250 an hour or whatever. That way you can just consult a few months a year and still support a family, and then spend the rest of the year working full time on your startup.

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

#378

Post by adnzzzzZ »

doorstar wrote: post #372
ballenf wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's perfectly ok that if I save and work that my kids will have a leg up on my peers' kids who don't do the same. Don't we want, as a society, to encourage parents to do these things for their kids? Isn't that a net win for society as a whole? The alternative would require a near 100% estate/death tax, wouldn't it?

Don't misunderstand me, the parents did nothing wrong. Their problem was their mental model where their child's success was entirely due to their child's talents and drive, and that since they ( the parents ) had not provided any seed money, they had nothing to do with their child's success.

In a way that's true though, because the majority of kids who have that soft-landing available don't go on to achieve any kind of success like that.

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

#379

Post by [deleted] »

adnzzzzZ wrote: post #378
doorstar wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't misunderstand me, the parents did nothing wrong. Their problem was their mental model where their child's success was entirely due to their child's talents and drive, and that since they ( the parents ) had not provided any seed money, they had nothing to do with their child's success.

In a way that's true though, because the majority of kids who have that soft-landing available don't go on to achieve any kind of success like that.

[deleted]

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

#380

Post by willcipriano »

aty268 wrote: post #156
eggsnbacon1 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah a lot people can't do that. Specifically anyone caring for someone, so like 50% of adult population. A huge proportion of adults are caring for a parent or child. Its also impossible if you have any health problems, or need to save for retirement or have student loan debt. Its really only possible if you're young and healthy, so this would filter out probably 80% of adult population

Why not? Lot's of people live off and raise families off of food stamps + medicaid. That's how I was raised. No reason you couldn't also throw building a company in the mix.

If I am going to struggle and have my family live off food stamps, you can be sure some VC isn't getting a dime if it all works out in the end.
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