Y Combinator has lost its soul: A YC founder's perspective • Hacker News Board

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

#431

Post by SamReidHughes » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 12:50 PM UTC

cardine wrote: post #162

SamReidHughes wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What sort of joke is this? Having parents with an extra bedroom, once used by kids, is perfectly ordinary.

Perfectly ordinary for you and people in your peer group who share largely similar upbringings. I think this comment is (no offense intended towards you specifically) very indicative of how insulated and lacking in diversity tech is.

The parent said "very few people have that kind of soft landing."

The fact is, having parents with a place you can crash at is perfectly normal. If your parents weren't complete degenerates or very unlucky, they have a couch you can sleep on. Anybody who's startup founder material can at that point find themselves a job.

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

#432

Post by peterwoerner » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 2:07 PM UTC

kaitai wrote: post #347

peterwoerner wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint. As a father of a baby, I have significantly less energy and time for work. With starting a company you tend to have to plow a ton of hours and energy into the endeavor, especially if you want to move at bottleneck speed. With the baby there are many weeks where I have a difficulty working a mere 40 hours. That being said, I have significantly more insight (due to experience) than I did when I was more f…

But that's the thing -- most successful businesses (as opposed to youthful adventures that paint one as 'innovative' on a resume) are started by older founders who have a depth of experience in their field. As parent of a 3-yr old, babyhood goes fast. You'll be sleeping & able to put in extra hours, if you wish, at some point. You'll also notice that your patience for bullshit has decreased, your patience with actual…

Super valid point.

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

#433

Post by peterwoerner » Fri, Jul 24, 2020, 2:07 PM UTC

hkt wrote: post #133

peterwoerner wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counterpoint. As a father of a baby, I have significantly less energy and time for work. With starting a company you tend to have to plow a ton of hours and energy into the endeavor, especially if you want to move at bottleneck speed. With the baby there are many weeks where I have a difficulty working a mere 40 hours. That being said, I have significantly more insight (due to experience) than I did when I was more f…

As a father of a 4 year old I don't think it is my job (or yours) to vet who gets the help they need when they decide they need it. You may not have felt you had the time and ability to commit, but why should you be able to speak for anyone but yourself?

Very valid.

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

#434

Post by oigursh » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 8:32 AM UTC

SamReidHughes wrote: post #142

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…

What sort of joke is this? Having parents with an extra bedroom, once used by kids, is perfectly ordinary.

I'm guessing your parents are still alive and live in the same country?

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

#435

Post by hpcjoe » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 2:51 PM UTC

magicalhippo wrote: post #404

hpcjoe wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Or when you go visit customers, they love your product, the benchmark results are mind blowing … and then the CIO/CFO kills the deal because, you know … you are too small. We've been in similar situations several times. We're serving a niche, but this niche is a core piece of our customers business. Without software like ours, their whole operation stops. Anyway, we'd have demos. Department heads were on fire, wond…

We had a customer that POCed on our systems, then bought some crap from HP + one of the SSD card vendors in 2013. They then called us up in 2014 and asked to pay us to help them achieve the performance they saw on our system, on their 5x as expensive "low risk" HP + SSD card system.

My response was simple. No.

I invited them to throw away the crap they bought and buy the right thing from us, but that was politically untenable. Turns out spending multiple millions of dollars for crappy half baked "solutions" versus a lower sum of money for something that actually worked, would likely get some people fired.

The world isn't fair, and sometimes not even sane. The people who made these decisions, despite being disastrous ones, were promoted. Enough of these built up that we couldn't survive.

Incredibly frustrating.

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

#436

Post by hpcjoe » Tue, Jul 28, 2020, 3:01 PM UTC

Lordarminius wrote: post #420

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…

> ...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

(really not sure why this was down voted ... it is a good comment)

Thanks. I'm aware of others struggles. I figure that my story could be a cautionary tale for some, and others may take lessons from it.

When I say in other fora, never, ever take debt financing of anything if you can avoid it, this is coming from personal agonizing experience.

If I go back into the startup world, I'm going with a very clear perception of what is what. No rose colored glasses. No "if you build a better mousetrap" mentality. I know how things can go horribly wrong. I know where the traps and mines are.