51–60 of 225 posts
YC is a one-trick-pony. If you have a simple product, it can guide you to get users, investors and to scale it up. But don’t expect anything else. It would not help, if you are outside of that scenario. It easily can screw you, by using any product ideas that you’ve refined and sharing these freely with a relevant startup in the batch.
One trick pony? They have created 5-10% of all unicorns in existence
Would have liked to read why in person is better. I imagine the biggest reason is it raises the sense of commitment for everyone involved.
Networking is fundamentally an in-person thing. The remote-only people can whine all they want, but that is simply an immutable fact.
Building a startup requires most of your time on non-coding tasks.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quite possibly; I'm not sure why calls would be better than straight-up buying the stock, but I am certain that Nvidia is going to have a pretty good time of the LLM hype. Nvidia seem to me to have been consistently competent in improving their product lines. Perhaps my only criticism would be of their artificial hampering of some of their products, which they do in order to appease certain PC gamers by excluding the…
> Perhaps my only criticism would be of their artificial hampering of some of their products, which they do in order to appease certain PC gamers by excluding the gaming market from usual supply/demand effects Can you elaborate what you mean by this? I thought Nvidia is outpricing their PC gamer customers because of their focus on AI? I’m curious how they have hampered their products in your opinion.
My reading of the saga is that the cryptocurrency mining bubble was causing huge demands for Nvidia GPUs as parallel processors (with ASICS for mining only starting to appear at this point). This meant that GPUs were being priced-out of the market for most PC gamers, as it was always profitable for cryptocurrency miners to buy more of them.
Nvidia introduced a lock on 'non-professional' cards which prevented alternative firmware from being loaded on them, effectively splitting the market into two, one for 'gamers' and the other for 'miners'. That lock interferes with the open source driver for Linux, Nouveau, meaning that normal things like CUDA (and not least running games!) couldn't be done on Linux without a labyrinthine network of proprietary drivers that, for instance, couldn't be updated automatically.
It seems as if Nvidia succeeded, because from my passive awareness of the PC gaming world, people seem very happy with their new GPUs. But for those using Linux for servers, at home or for AI research, it has been an ongoing nightmare.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was determined the same way FAANG, Banks, and others have determined in-person is best: "haha, the economy is slowing, get back to the office you F*(&# losers". Absolutely breathtaking level of cynicism from executive class that as soon as interest rates went up, hiring market cooled, and the power balance between workers & bosses swung back their way, suddenly in-office was "most productive". 100% vibes and "beca…
You didn't actually give an alternative reason for why FAANGs and banks are doing this. Some also obviously don't hold for YC (real estate losses).
Aka - the old Wall St saying that when the economy turns and labor loses power, casual Fridays go out the window and everyone is back to wearing suits.
So I do think that the debate is all kayfabe. There is no data.
They really see remote/hybrid as just an accommodation like allowing jeans, paying for your lunch, or having yoga classes on site... and look forward to cutting it at any time of their choosing, when they can get away with it.
It's a risky investment strategy to put so much emphasis on AI startups. Not only do you have the already volatile nature of early-stage software companies (which YC is of course used to), but this is a bet on whether machine learning, chiefly LLMs, are going to continue to outperform other technologies and become sustainable to run. There's no question in my mind that 'Open'AI is subsidizing the vast majority of LLM…
I guess what you are saying is buy calls for Nvidia
It's a risky investment strategy to put so much emphasis on AI startups. Not only do you have the already volatile nature of early-stage software companies (which YC is of course used to), but this is a bet on whether machine learning, chiefly LLMs, are going to continue to outperform other technologies and become sustainable to run. There's no question in my mind that 'Open'AI is subsidizing the vast majority of LLM…
> We've now tried every point on the spectrum: fully remote, hybrid and fully in-person. So now we don't have to worry if we're being luddites: in-person YC just really is the best. How was this determined to be best? (Obviously, they haven't controlled for variables like the switch to 4 smaller batches, and the high percentage of startups all doing one exciting thing (AI). And do they realize the costs. And is it be…
It was determined the same way FAANG, Banks, and others have determined in-person is best: "haha, the economy is slowing, get back to the office you F*(&# losers". Absolutely breathtaking level of cynicism from executive class that as soon as interest rates went up, hiring market cooled, and the power balance between workers & bosses swung back their way, suddenly in-office was "most productive". 100% vibes and "beca…
I understand some people are more productive at home but I’m yet to see a _team_ that is more productive being remote. I lack the experience working in remote-first companies like gitlab though.
Pretty sure this plays fast and loose with the history of American naval warfare. The only battleship built in San Francisco, that I can think of, is the 19th-century relic USS Ohio.