I think he would get rejected.
Would Steve Jobs have applied to Y Combinator?
71–75 of 75 posts
Re: Would Steve Jobs have applied to Y Combinator?
#72>I think the problem is rooted in the business model that seems to be preached by Y Combinator: build a great product, choose investment over income, and exit as quickly as possible. YCombinator never tells founders to "exit as quickly as possible". In fact, they and most other technology investors get 90+% of their returns from the home runs and encourage founders to go big if things are working. You can do the math…
Their application used to ask the lowest price you'd be willing to sell for. Seemed really focused on quick flips. If one wanted to buy you three months in (August 2007), what's the lowest offer you'd take? http://dl.dropbox.com/u/27532820/app.html
What makes you think that a low answer is what they're looking for?
Re: Would Steve Jobs have applied to Y Combinator?
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Their application used to ask the lowest price you'd be willing to sell for. Seemed really focused on quick flips. If one wanted to buy you three months in (August 2007), what's the lowest offer you'd take? http://dl.dropbox.com/u/27532820/app.html
What makes you think that a low answer is what they're looking for?
exactly. seems to me they want to understand how much you value your idea. you know what's cool? a billion dollars
Re: Would Steve Jobs have applied to Y Combinator?
#74I admit that I'm not intimately familiar with YC's and pg's preaching but my impression of what I've read and seen from pg is that he is very insistent on startups having a solid business model and on them focusing on customer acquisition. And I don't remember having ever heard pg advocate quick exits. This is at odds with the assumptions you've based your post on. I might be wrong though - happy to get corrected by…
This topic is so difficult to analize that I just follow one rule: do what you love and fuck the rest.
If you're doing what you love, you'd feel right. Passions take play here, but there is a catch here: everyone have passion, or have discovered them. So, if you are from the part who have, just follow them.
Re: Would Steve Jobs have applied to Y Combinator?
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do we have empirical data that YC doesn't get most of its returns from incremental exits? I thought that the hallmark of the YC model was its diversification along the long tail of founders, freeing it from the 10-bagger trap of traditional VC.
Yes - http://www.quora.com/Y-Combinator/Which-are-the-most-success... (cliff notes: airbnb / dropbox are the bulk of returns)
given neither dropbox nor airbnb was sold yet, would they classify as "returns" yet? It seems more like unrealized profit to me...