Ask PG: Did the "apply to YC without an idea" experiment work? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask PG: Did the "apply to YC without an idea" experiment work?

#61

Post by badgar » Tue, Apr 02, 2013, 1:33 AM UTC

tempestn wrote: post #47

badgar wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quality of software is pretty much irrelevant for startups. The code is usually crap and gets thrown away over and over anyway. The real focus is on people.

If the code is crap, that might explain why it gets thrown away over and over. In my experience, if code is well-written, it should pretty much always be possible to update, revamp, pivot, etc. Rewriting from scratch (especially repeatedly!) is a waste of time that a startup can't afford. Reminds me of this Joel Spolsky essay: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html The focus being on people does no…

Engineers for startups are paid poorly and almost always work on technically uninteresting problems. Where are you going to get people who can write good code? And again, why would you bother if the hard part of startups is everything except getting the code to work?

Re: Ask PG: Did the "apply to YC without an idea" experiment work?

#62

Post by argumentum » Wed, Apr 03, 2013, 11:45 AM UTC

mkeblx wrote: post #51

argumentum wrote: post #49

Being one of the no idea / barely an idea teams in s12, one of the teams that acrimoniously blew apart and probably one of the teams that led to the changes that YC made for w13, I am glad that "no idea" is no longer an option. I still view YC's willingness to experiment in an extremely positive light. It's why YC is the innovator, and everyone else (500, techstars etc) are just imitators. That being said, I think "n…

This kind of hits the nail on the head. An idea is in many ways the context by which you judge a startup team in terms of a core commitment to a common goal, as shown by working on it together for a period of time (more than a week, etc.). It defines what 'team' means. Without that, what do you have? Credentials. Of course by disaster I meant just relative to other classes, with a much higher amount of team splits/zo…

I don't know if it was predictable. It was a thesis that turned out to be incorrect, but on what basis could it have been discounted until tried?

Wrt to my own team, we would not have done great in w13 .. it turned out that we were not a "team", we didn't work well together and had vastly, irreconcilably, different views. Some people just aren't meant to work together, and I'm glad to have learned this sooner rather than later. I now know what to look for in co-founders, and that's not a meager knowledge.

Re: Ask PG: Did the "apply to YC without an idea" experiment work?

#63

Post by 001sky » Sun, Apr 07, 2013, 9:45 PM UTC

pseut wrote: post #46

001sky wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you wouldn't know how long it takes to make a basic CRUD app -- Not to nitpick, but you are implying the technical team is untrustworthy or incompetent, unless they are co-founders. While I (would like to) think all founders are trustworthy and competent, being a non-founder should not be a contra-indication.

You're implying that someone who can't program is as capable of hiring trustworthy and skilled programmers as a programmer.

Two intersecting sets: (a) trustworthy people; and (b) skilled programmers. Both difficult to observe. Having good information on at least one set is a definite advantage, both for screening and for avoidance of sub-optimal candidates. One would need to make assumptions about the relative trustworthiness of the candidate pools to decide which is more beneficial. It may be that in certain areas, at certain times, its rarer and more difficult to assess character than competence (the latter even at high levels).