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What I Learned Going Through YC as a 17 Year Old

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Re: What I Learned Going Through YC as a 17 Year Old

#51

Post by rdlecler1 »

neom wrote: post #50

From my experience east cost VCs are mostly former wall st folks, lawyers or family offices who are playing VC. Very few of them have any operating experience, and if they do, it's at BigCo, not in or around startups. I don't think they are well tuned to what non-traditional success looks like, and as a result they have problems pattern matching.

This has been exactly my experience. Even in the earliest stage startupS they’ll be looking for the fastest line to profitability rather than prioritizing to build something that’s big and important. It’s low conviction investing where the financial model matters more than traditional west coast indicators of future success.

Re: What I Learned Going Through YC as a 17 Year Old

#52

Post by R0b0t1 »

fortran77 wrote: post #42
blocked_again wrote: post #18

> Silicon Valley doesn't care about your background This is BS. You have a much higher chance of rasing money for the same idea if you worked in FAANG than if you worked in Accenture. Same goes to someone who went to Harvard vs someone who went to University of Colorado.

I agree. You can certainly do it without the "background", but we specifically had to get some well-connected "right-backgrounded" people involved before folks would answer our calls because all our principals had degrees from schools they never heard of (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) and experience in little niche defense contractors that aren't "cool" by SV standards. (However, we did what we needed to do--ge…

That's a little disappointing. It's still more about who you know?

Re: What I Learned Going Through YC as a 17 Year Old

#53

Post by bt3 »

> But I was able to get a job in SF with a single cold email and zero connections.

Care to share anything more about this, purely out of intrigue? My own experiences have shown me that folks aren't as quick to respond, especially when you have limited value (experience) to show, even if you're just looking for mentorship.

Re: What I Learned Going Through YC as a 17 Year Old

#54

Post by frockington1 »

raverbashing wrote: post #19
alehul wrote: post #6

> East Coast VCs are much more conservative, which is ultimately bad because it results in less moonshots succeeding. This is really accurate, at least from my experience as someone of a similar age working on my first startup at the time. With cold outreach to VCs in NYC I had zero responses, and only two meetings with BigCos curious about us; they seemed easier to get the attention of. When I reached out to investo…

I can see a parallel with the "why Europe doesn't have as many big tech companies as the US" discussions. Now change the question to "How many companies does the East Coast have in comparison with the West Coast." Or even SV. (Even if most companies are actually established in Delaware) Ease of finance and management vision (which kinda related to the first point) seems to be the main drivers.

If you Wikipedia List of largest companies by revenue, most seem to be headquartered in the East Coast and Midwest

Re: What I Learned Going Through YC as a 17 Year Old

#55

Post by thesz »

petejames wrote: post #22
blocked_again wrote: post #18

> Silicon Valley doesn't care about your background This is BS. You have a much higher chance of rasing money for the same idea if you worked in FAANG than if you worked in Accenture. Same goes to someone who went to Harvard vs someone who went to University of Colorado.

I think you are right if trying to raise money at the idea stage but if you have built something people want, investors don't care about your background. Growth chart will get anyone funded.

For that growth chart to materialize you have to be lucky. And nothing brings luck down on someone like rich parents.

Re: What I Learned Going Through YC as a 17 Year Old

#56

Post by derivagral »

parasubvert wrote: post #44
tenbino wrote: post #3

>> No one knows the right answer Hmmmm. Be careful about this. Lots of people do know the right answer. Youth energy and enthusiasm count for a lot, especially backin the earliest days of computing like when bill gates got started. That was because adults knew very little. > Experience is only loosely correlated with age These days age and experience count for a lot. Lots of older people have incredibly valuable answ…

There is a pretty good book called “the Death or Expertise” that discusses the broad trend towards people with little specialized knowledge feeling they can learn a domain quickly and know more than experts. So many problems we have in society seem to be caused by this mass weaponized Dunning-Kruger effect.

I personally view this as less DK and more just removing fences[1] until the externalizations blow up. By then you've probably moved on or can divert some profit to putting the fences back.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence

Re: What I Learned Going Through YC as a 17 Year Old

#57

Post by ffggvv »

lordnacho wrote: post #8

It may be true that you don't need to have worked in a white shoe firm to be respected in SV, but I'm pretty sure there's certain characteristics that are advantageous: - Got into a top university. Good grades are popular, unsurprisingly. A proxy for intelligence and hard work. - Speaks English. How many YC folks don't? I'm sure there are a lot of smart people in the world who just didn't grow up with English and so…

funny hearing you say high EQ and then looking at Zuck, Elon and even bill gates.

all of whom are bordering on the spectrum

Re: What I Learned Going Through YC as a 17 Year Old

#60

Post by austinl »

neom wrote: post #50

From my experience east cost VCs are mostly former wall st folks, lawyers or family offices who are playing VC. Very few of them have any operating experience, and if they do, it's at BigCo, not in or around startups. I don't think they are well tuned to what non-traditional success looks like, and as a result they have problems pattern matching.

This reminds of startups founded by folks that were former executives at BigCos. Of course, it varies from person to person, but many of them reek of big business formalism that's kind of off-putting. Certainly there are pros and cons that come with that experience.
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