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Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth

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Re: Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth

#51

Post by EarthBlues »

I don’t see how any of the evidence martialed in this article proves the conclusion.

There’s a tendency in contemporary online culture to want to condemn the whole person. It’s not enough, it seems, to condemn Altman’s self-serving decisions with OpenAI. We also have to pretend he’s a bungling businessman, whose self-inflicted downfall is imminent. The same pattern can be observed with other public figures. It just doesn’t seem to me to beget a workable understanding of reality.

I don’t have a dog in this fight, except that I like reading HN, and I’d like it if this place didn’t descend into the kind of friend-enemy thinking so prevalent on much of the internet.

Re: Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth

#52

Post by pbiggar »

One of the biggest shocks to me was that YC now invests in war and killing people. Before their closest connecting to killing people was investing in companies that had severe negative effects for society, like Doordash or AirBnb. Now they're helping people make missiles.

https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/ares-industries

Re: Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth

#53

Post by yayitswei »

YC did not have prestige in their early years (Jessica mentions they had to beg their friends to come to demo days). Yet people were dropping out of Harvard to join. So it seems prestige is not necessary for success and in fact may be a negative signal.

Re: Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth

#54

Post by lupire »

minimaxir wrote: post #18
jmull wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get the objection here. Forking is part of how open source is supposed to work.

There's a difference between forking to make a OSS project better and forking to create a clone just for the sake of VC funding that doesn't trickle down back to the original code. Even if it's allowable by the permissive license of the original code, it's not a net positive for OSS.

That's your opinion. Maybe the original authors of this project don't care and are just happy that their invention is helping people.

I'll take the authors' published intent over your speculation.

Re: Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth

#55

Post by tines »

EarthBlues wrote: post #51

I don’t see how any of the evidence martialed in this article proves the conclusion. There’s a tendency in contemporary online culture to want to condemn the whole person. It’s not enough, it seems, to condemn Altman’s self-serving decisions with OpenAI. We also have to pretend he’s a bungling businessman, whose self-inflicted downfall is imminent. The same pattern can be observed with other public figures. It just d…

> martialed

I think you mean “marshaled,” correct?

Re: Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth

#56

Post by paulgb »

hobofan wrote: post #26
paulgb wrote: post #8

IMHO this post misses the fact that YC becoming a prestige institution is itself a sort of failure mode. You don't want to attract founders who figure YC is a low-risk alternative to grad school that will look good on their resume. It's tough to avoid that outcome while still conferring positive signal to VCs/potential employees, though. I'm sure YC/Garry see something in the PearAI founders' ability to market themse…

> You don't want to attract founders who figure YC is a low-risk alternative to grad school Of course YC would want that (in the short- to mid-term). The only thing YC has to do is produce a portfolio of companies that looks good enough that other VCs invest into that. This is completely disconnected to building viable businesses, as they just don't have to be the ones that are left holding the bag, and as an acceler…

YC doesn’t benefit from founders who are just looking to pad their resume because they don’t follow through to a liquidity event for YC.

Re: Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth

#57

Post by pj_mukh »

"The issue isn't that PearAI did something illegal—it's that they got funded by YC with nothing more than a codebase copied from another YC-backed company. This shows that (1) YC is willing to fund just about anything, (2) they’re not doing any real due diligence, and (3) they don't particularly care about their existing portfolio companies."

This shows a fundamental misunderstanding on how YC functions. YCombinator was never a test of how good (or unique) your code was. At its core it was a filter of people, people who can work well together and people who can build something useful. That's it. You can read more about this straight from one of the founders [1]. The fact that you used open-source code (within legal bounds) to get their quicker just shows your resourcefulness, something YC actually optimizes for.

More often than not, "good people" tend to be domain experts sometimes really good and unique coders but that, to me, was always a byproduct of the search pattern.

You can obviously disagree with this methodology, but it has worked pretty well.

[1]: https://foundersatwork.posthaven.com/the-social-radar-what-i...

Re: Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth

#58

Post by sottol »

Part of the earlier appeal of YC was that it was a batch of approval that, at least imo, was a strong signal to VCs to take a good look at the company and more-likely-than-not invest in.

With larger batches and more lax selection that signal is so weak that YC comapnies are mostly like other companies with some traction.

Re: Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth

#59

Post by lupire »

tines wrote: post #55
EarthBlues wrote: post #51

I don’t see how any of the evidence martialed in this article proves the conclusion. There’s a tendency in contemporary online culture to want to condemn the whole person. It’s not enough, it seems, to condemn Altman’s self-serving decisions with OpenAI. We also have to pretend he’s a bungling businessman, whose self-inflicted downfall is imminent. The same pattern can be observed with other public figures. It just d…

> martialed I think you mean “marshaled,” correct?

It's used as an attack, so both.

Re: Y Combinator Traded Prestige for Growth

#60

Post by vergessenmir »

pj_mukh wrote: post #57

"The issue isn't that PearAI did something illegal—it's that they got funded by YC with nothing more than a codebase copied from another YC-backed company. This shows that (1) YC is willing to fund just about anything, (2) they’re not doing any real due diligence, and (3) they don't particularly care about their existing portfolio companies." This shows a fundamental misunderstanding on how YC functions. YCombinator…

VC firms are betting on the people. Most early startups are still looking for their market fit. The VC firm is betting that the people are able to identify that market which they'll be able to scale.
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