The Aha Moments That Made Paul Graham's Y Combinator Possible • Hacker News Board

Re: The Aha Moments That Made Paul Graham's Y Combinator Possible

#51

Post by ry0ohki » Tue, Nov 13, 2012, 12:30 PM UTC

snprbob86 wrote: post #32

ry0ohki wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never had an article written about me or my products that didn't have some mistakes, I'm not sure why it's not standard practice to send a draft to the subject for fact checking...

I've had a few reporters send me quotes and excerpts for fact checking. They then proceeded to ignore my corrections, since their fabrications better matched the target narrative. Once you're on the other side of the news, even a little bit, you begin to understand just how broken it really is.

Sometimes quotes are sent yes, but not the rest of the article. Usually the quotes are not off but the facts of the actual story.

Re: The Aha Moments That Made Paul Graham's Y Combinator Possible

#52

Post by pg » Wed, Nov 14, 2012, 5:36 PM UTC

technotony wrote: post #43

pg wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, actually. I feel like one of our advantages is to understand how lame founders can seem initially and yet ultimately succeed, from having been there ourselves. Or more precisely, which dimensions it's ok to be lame on, and which it isn't.

Could you fill that out a bit more? What dimensions do you think are critical to have right, and which can you fix later (ie be lame at initially)?

You can be clueless about business and uncertain whether you want to start a company. You can't be lazy or stupid.

Re: The Aha Moments That Made Paul Graham's Y Combinator Possible

#53

Post by YuriNiyazov » Wed, Nov 14, 2012, 9:57 PM UTC

rdl wrote: post #50

hiddenstage wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$500 million valuation? YC could probably sell their stake in Dropbox alone for more than that.

YC's stake is common stock. It was presumably somewhere between 2-7%, like is advertised for current YC companies, back then. I assume it got diluted a lot since then, as Dropbox has had multiple rounds of financing. Dropbox is worth maybe $5b. I think YC's stake comes out to 1-2% after the rounds. So, off by an order of magnitude or so. Just based on published info about the distribution of YC companies and their va…

They might have actually done that anyway. Like PG said, YC itself is worth ~ $500m when marked to market, and I imagine they get acquisition offers.