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Y Combinator's Graham Says Startups Must Improve Lives
61–70 of 92 posts
Re: Y Combinator's Graham Says Startups Must Improve Lives
#62I'd really like to hear about pg's gripes with TechStars.
Backstory as I understand it: David Cohen asked PG's permission to start a YC franchise of some sort in Boulder. He said no. David Cohen cloned YC in virtually every respect (down to copying the application form). Basically what Wimdu is doing to AirBnb. Still, it has been 5 years and YC has certainly not suffered. I'm surprised PG isn't a bit more magnanimous towards them.
Not really. TechStars is a franchise model, Cohen built a replicable model for seed accelerators while YC is largely driven by Paul Graham personally. You could remove Cohen from TechStars and TechStars would be the same, you couldn't remove PG from YC without changing it's nature substantially.
TechStars was obviously derived from YC, but it's no more a clone than McDonalds was a clone of existing Burger bars.
Re: Y Combinator's Graham Says Startups Must Improve Lives
#63PG, your enthusiasm is crazy infectious. Loved the clip.
Re: Y Combinator's Graham Says Startups Must Improve Lives
#64The question I wanted them to ask is "How do you identify great founders?". Every question they asked led to "YC picks founders, not the business". If it's all about the people, I want to hear more about how he evaluates them.
I felt he deliberately did not go into this topic. He was asked "How do you pick ~60 out of ~2000 applications?", and his entire response could be paraphrased as "We have practice". It made me wonder if it was because he thought it was too complex a topic for a quick TV show.
Re: Y Combinator's Graham Says Startups Must Improve Lives
#65I'm reminded every time I watch Bloomberg I'm reminded just how high quality they are, and how intelligent their anchors are relative to any other large media corp. Additionally, Paul, thanks for being frank and great. It makes me so happy to see you as the face of not only YC, but increasingly of tech startups in general. When I get around to implementing a good idea, I've got you to look to not only for interesting…
I've been driving 1-2h/day recently, and Bloomberg on satellite radio is one of the better parts of that. (BBC is nice too, and sometimes CNBC, but CNBC's quality varies greatly).
I listen to Bloomberg radio[1] most days at work. Lots of insightful interviews and analysis of business, economics, politics, and current events.
Re: Y Combinator's Graham Says Startups Must Improve Lives
#66Never seen PG talk before, figured he'd be another west-coast asshole, but he seems super down to earth!! Think I might apply to YC now..
PG is an east-coast transplant.
Re: Y Combinator's Graham Says Startups Must Improve Lives
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think betting on the founder breaks down as a company grows to a certain point. Steering a small startup is one thing. Steering a 10k person public company is entirely different. I doubt Steve Jobs at age 26 could have saved Apple from impending doom in 1996. Even at age 41, with all his additional skill/experience, it was far from easy for him.
Maybe, maybe not. I honestly don't have enough info to feel I can make an assertion either way. My gut does say, however, that many of the same traits are required of both startup CEOs and 10k employee public company CEOs. The challenges are indisputably different, but a CEO who's tenacious, intelligent, creative and driven will find ways to surmount any challenge whether it's hiring the first employee or executing a…
> Fair questions: would Apple be facing impending doom in 1996 if Jobs hadn't been ousted and instead been allowed to lead his company?
Jobs didn't want to run Apple - that's why he brought in Scully. Then he got confused.
It was arguably better for Apple and Jobs that they were separate while Jobs re-found his clue.
> Would that Apple be as successful today?
I'd argue that it would have crashed and burned if Jobs had ousted Scully and would have faded if he hadn't brought Scully in.
Re: Y Combinator's Graham Says Startups Must Improve Lives
#68The question I wanted them to ask is "How do you identify great founders?". Every question they asked led to "YC picks founders, not the business". If it's all about the people, I want to hear more about how he evaluates them.
I felt he deliberately did not go into this topic. He was asked "How do you pick ~60 out of ~2000 applications?", and his entire response could be paraphrased as "We have practice". It made me wonder if it was because he thought it was too complex a topic for a quick TV show.
I wrote about how I read applications here:
Re: Y Combinator's Graham Says Startups Must Improve Lives
#69 What I like best about what Graham says is the idea that good people will persevere and do good things to make peoples lives better and that he's willing to bet on these good people. That's something universal, not just in the startup world that I wish more people believed in.
Re: Y Combinator's Graham Says Startups Must Improve Lives
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually, that's fairly consistent for pg. As he notes later in the interview, he believes that a startup's founders matter more than the idea as good founders will improve upon or drop a bad idea. I think that was exactly the heuristic pg used in this case. He may not think GroupOn is best company in its current form, but he believes that Andrew Mason's smart and driven and is thus capable of evolving GroupOn into a…
I think betting on the founder breaks down as a company grows to a certain point. Steering a small startup is one thing. Steering a 10k person public company is entirely different. I doubt Steve Jobs at age 26 could have saved Apple from impending doom in 1996. Even at age 41, with all his additional skill/experience, it was far from easy for him.
> I think betting on the founder breaks down as a company grows to a certain point.
And even if it doesn't, having a good intuition about people and particular acquaintance with the founder in question are prerequisites to using the technique. A lot of experience with startup founders in particular is also really important.