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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

#411

Post by hpcjoe »

Melting_Harps wrote: post #403
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…

> 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. Even being Early (or in our case the first to do something) doesn't always work, we had to give our services away for free, or at a significant loss when oper…

Excellent post. I messed up my back a few years ago on a long trip. Messed up my workout routine. Just got it fixed a week before Covid.

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

#412

Post by yters »

treis wrote: post #298
yters wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the point of economic filtering is to only accept single young men, who can devote every waking moment to their startup without any concern for dependents and such. You can get great velocity from such a pool. Myself, with family, mortgage, etc. I would never be able to achieve that kind of velocity if I were accepted to YC. So, even if I had incredible ideas, as people around here keep saying, and PG makes cle…

>Maybe the point of economic filtering is to only accept single young men, who can devote every waking moment to their startup without any concern for dependents and such. Maybe I am missing something here, but why can't women do that too?

They can, but mostly men like to waste their youth on such moonshots.

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

#413

Post by nine_k »

Alex3917 wrote: post #25
awillen wrote: post #9

The idea that check sizes should be small so people should be forced into dire financial situations is a terrible one, and one that would absolutely hurt diversity. You're going to end up with a bunch of rich white dudes as founders (because very, very obviously the other way that people can afford to take smaller checks is if they have a lot of money in the bank). The smaller class size issue is probably fair, but r…

It also doesn't make any sense from an investment perspective. Reddit would have been one of the most successful YC companies of all time, except for that they basically had to shut down because they couldn't raise money. This happened to lots of early YC companies that could have otherwise been successful. Had Reddit not sold for pennies on the dollar to Conde Nast, that alone would have probably paid for the extra…

Did Reddit have a monetization model? A working one?

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

#414

Post by yters »

jfk13 wrote: post #173
yters wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am just saying the small grant makes a lot of sense from the YC worldview. And, if someone has family, house, etc. to provide stability do they need YC financial assistance?

Family and house do not necessarily provide stability; they may just provide added responsibilities. I can't feed my house to my kids.

That's why farming was the original startup!

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

#415

Post by _jahh »

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.

the point is that the vast majority of people able to have that sort of success do have the soft landing and it is that advantage that enables them to create the successes they do.

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

#416

Post by pragmatic »

Alex3917 wrote: post #377
hpcjoe wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ti…

Are you serious? You keep upping the ante. Just consult, just write a best selling book, then consult.

I'm assuming you're joking.

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

#417

Post by eloff »

softawre wrote: post #300
eloff wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on what stage of life you're in. Ramen profitable works for a 20-something just out of college. It does not work for a married middle-aged person potentially with kids. It's a lot harder to start a startup once you get to that stage of life because of this and other reasons.

Is making it easier for a middle-aged person to start a startup something that YC has to care about? There could be a separate organization that focused on that.

I believe the average age of successful startup founders is mid thirties. I don't remember the source, might have been one of the YC partners.

So yeah, it's in their best interest to care.

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

#418

Post by djhn »

btilly wrote: post #102
Jommi wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Do you have statistics demonstrating that, per capita, the USA outperforms Nordic countries on entrepreneurship? I don't either way. But I have run across the counterintuitive fact that Nordic countries outperform the USA on how many people per capita are worth at least $30 million. And at least some of them got there through entrepreneurship.

Can't ignore old money. Nordics (most obviously Sweden and Denmark), Baltics (Lithuania) and many CEE countries (Poland) have hundreds of old aristocratic families with family trees two to four times as old as the US.

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

#419

Post by grugagag »

Jommi wrote: post #374
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…

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…

Because the risk is to become homeless and that sounds even scarier than it is in reality. Ive met people who had a stretch of being homeless and they eventually got back on their feet. They were also young.

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

#420

Post by Lordarminius »

hpcjoe wrote: post #252
sangnoir wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And often, getting credit card debt is not a material risk, but a minor embarrassment when they ask their family to bail them out and/or move in the guest house for a few months, rent-free. When poorer folk take the "same" risk, they can be ruined for decades.

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…

> ...I'm 54, and I was financially wiped out at 51. I will not ever recover from this....

You need a fighting spirit to achieve great things. Many people have overcome far greater problems. Never give up you are only one transaction away from financial success. Good luck

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