Dustin Moskovitz: Y Combinator’s “No Idea” Round Bad for Silicon Valley

http://pandodaily.com/2012/05/03/dustin-moskvitz-y-combinators-no-idea-round-bad-for-silicon-valley/

by dwynings • 14 years ago

144 99 14 years ago

I think it really depends. If YC makes it a point to select only ex-entrepreneurs who have proven themselves, it could be a good thing. But if they start letting anyone who has good background into this, Dustin is absolutely right.

fredsters_s• 14 years ago

Why? Because Moskovitz's aims would have been better served if they had gone to work for Facebook instead? Seems like a pretty shaky argument to me.

byoung2• 14 years ago

People who decide first that they want to be an entrepreneur and then go looking for an idea are getting it the wrong way around

I disagree. These kinds of "hey, let's start a business" conversations happen all the time among would-be entrepreneurs long before they've come up with an idea. YC's "no idea" round is simply taking what would have been a discussion over drinks with friends, or in a dorm room full of CS majors before applying and moving it later, so it happens under supervision.

skrish• 14 years ago

Absolutely. My friend and I wanted to quit & run a business. We kept discussing about different ideas over a period of time and then just decided to quit & get started.

Looking back, it was so naive to have written a few business plans, waiting for that 'unique' idea to come up.

I would say, talk to 50 folks (potential customers) about a problem. See if they acknowledge the pain and if they would pay for it to be solved. Try to put a number to solve that problem - how much would it cost (direct or indirect) them without that solution and just build it.

Does not matter whether competitors out there are already building it. Every business would take its own course based on customer feedback and no two businesses' vision will be the same over the years.

tomwalsham• 14 years ago

The representation of this move as a gateway for 'glory hunters' or wantrepreneurs is surely at odds with the intentions or the likely implementation (not that many of the applications no doubt fit this).

I don't imagine the interviews to be along the lines of "Do you really want this? Do you reckon you can make something awesome? Great, you're in", rather that this is more for successful teams 'in between ideas' or great combinations of proven individuals. Otherwise I find it hard to see what the selection criteria could be.

Different people have different aspirations, and not all them involve Sr. Moskovitz' opinions of 'success' or 'impact'.

shantanubala3• 14 years ago

Or maybe the reason we don't have enough entrepreneurs is that we've convinced everyone that they need to have some type of eureka moment where they come up with the next greatest idea.

I think YC is making a statement here: talk is cheap and ideas are cheap, but people are really expensive. If you want a solid company, the people matter more than the idea, because the idea will change over time anyway.

I know a lot of people who think that they have to have a "stroke of genius" where they think of something innovative before they can be a successful entrepreneur, when a lot of the most successful companies really did reinvent the wheel (they just did it better!).

The idea for a company is an artificial barrier to becoming an entrepreneur, because the idea isn't nearly as relevant as the execution (It's simple: what makes Apple or Google special, or more specifically, what made them special when they were starting out?). It almost always boils down to their approach to a problem instead of just the problem they were trying to solve.

rguzman• 14 years ago

> talk is cheap and ideas are cheap, but people are really expensive [...] because the idea will change over time anyway.

I largely agree with this sentiment in general. However, all ideas are not created equal. Most successful companies seem to make 2nd order corrections and refinements to their ideas, but not change them all that much. Case in point, facebook hasn't changed that much in terms of vision and what it provides for its users since it started. Same for google, apple, airbnb, heroku, dropbox, reddit, mint, basecamp, ...

[i don't mean to say that those are the same type of success, just illustrating that what i said applies to a lot of very different types of successes]

rhizome• 14 years ago

I think the utility of this approach is unproven, so we'll see how successful it is. I view it completely as an code-factory type experiment.

drumdance• 14 years ago

Those examples are huge, beyond-your-wildest-dream successes, For every one of these there are a tons of made-me-rich pivots.

grey-area2• 14 years ago

Facebook started as hot or not for college students

Google started as a search company (now an advertising company, which offers search, phones etc)

Apple started as a computer company (now a consumer electronics company)

Airnb started as air beds on occupied flat floors, not renting empty flats

Of course some companies have a great idea, execute, and stay true to it (perhaps like some of the others on your list like dropbox for example), and for those above you can trace their origins in the preoccupations of many of these companies today (Apple still tries to bring computing to the masses, Google still has search as its focus, and arguably makes advertising money because of good search), but often they have moved quite far from their original inspiration, and they have often made their money in unrelated areas (e.g. Apple is now making far far more from iPhones than it ever did from computers).

I do think ideas and plans matter less than execution, because ideas tend to change so much when they come into contact with the real world and real users, and you can come across plenty of great ideas (or even get them for free from your users) as you create solutions and learn about a particular area.

waterlesscloud• 14 years ago

"The idea for a company is an artificial barrier to becoming an entrepreneur"

This is when I decided this must be a parody.

shantanubala3• 14 years ago

Quick question: if I want to start a company, why do I necessarily need an idea first? There are tons of real-world problems that can be solved through startups, and I'm very sure that just because the founder of a company doesn't come up with the idea by his or her self, the company can still be very successful if they execute well.

Why does the idea for my company have to be my own idea? We could potentially have really talented founders who simply haven't had enough exposure in the right ecosystem (let's face it: not every place in the world is like the Bay Area) to have an idea for a startup yet.

jsprinkles5• 14 years ago

> (It's simple: what makes Apple or Google special, or more specifically, what made them special when they were starting out?).

A couple guys had an idea for a cheap computer and a great search engine, respectively. And they executed it well. You're kidding yourself if you think the Steves sat around and said, "what is it we should do with our lives? We need an idea." They knew what they wanted to do, and did it, and continued to believe in it (in Steve Jobs's case, for his entire life).

It was their passion for the ideas that determined how successful their respective companies were, perhaps combined with traits about themselves. Do you think Apple will ever be as successful without Jobs's dedication? Maybe successful, but not innovative, and doomed to eventually run out of steam. Google is already failing because they are losing focus on the idea that made them great.

I don't think a company can be truly successful unless the people founding it truly believe that the idea will change the world (and how can you truly believe in an idea that you haven't discovered yet, and that you have to go to an incubator to work on?). Of course, this is meaningless in today's perceived-value bubble, which might be why Y Combinator is trying it.

In the end, and I hope I'm wrong, I suspect this will draw out people who are just looking for a cash-out vehicle. "I heard there was money to be made in Silicon Valley, but I don't know what company to start. Help me find an idea!"

nostromo• 14 years ago

Jeff Bezos is a counter example to your representation of Steve Jobs. Bezos knew that the internet was going to be big and knew he wanted to be an entrepreneur -- and that was about it!

From the way he tells it, there was no "Aha! I must sell books on the internet because books are my passion!" moment. Instead, he went methodologically looking for something to sell online, and books had widespread appeal, were easy to ship, and lent themselves to being searched on a website.

guynamedloren2• 14 years ago

> The idea for a company is an artificial barrier to becoming an entrepreneur

Oh really? How many successful entrepreneurs have you heard of without ideas, just totally empty heads and whole bunch of hustle? Do they just hack away at nothing? Do they hustle without any purpose at all? And how many companies have you heard of without any ideas behind them? Don't be silly.. of course ideas matter. YC recognizes that individuals that work hard can come up with great ideas. Of course an entrepreneur must have an idea before they start working on something. Can that idea fail miserably? Sure, but great entrepreneurs will keep going. The failed idea/company will be ripped into bits, and the good parts will be funneled into a new idea. Over and over and over again. YC is banking on their ability to identify people who can come up with ideas and execute them.

> It's simple: what makes Apple or Google special, or more specifically, what made them special when they were starting out? It almost always boils down to their approach to a problem instead of just the problem they were trying to solve.

An "approach to a problem"? Oh, you mean an... idea for a solution to a problem? Yeah. Ideas matter.

nhebb3• 14 years ago

> How many successful entrepreneurs have you heard of without ideas, just totally empty heads and whole bunch of hustle?

We'll find out after this next YC round. Besides, I think the point is that pg is looking for people that are the antithesis of empty heads. Startup ideas mutate, and if you can find driven people with fertile minds and place them in a setting where product ideas can be brainstormed and hashed out with the guidance of the YC team, then they stand a much better chance of success then the typical entrepreneur who might try this on their own.

greggman• 14 years ago

I guess it depends on what we mean by success, idea and entrepreneurs. Do they have to be successful on their first product? If their first product morphs into something completely different from their original idea does that mean the idea was pointless? If they're not successful until their 2nd, 3rd, 4th or 60th product what's the difference between starting with no idea and starting with an idea that gets abandoned?

Some examples:

Id, shipped 3 games before Wolfenstein Flickr started as an MMO company Rovio shipped 60+ games before Angry Birds Twitter's first project was a podcast directory

I'm sure there's hundreds of other examples.

philwelch3• 14 years ago

Microsoft. They've never had an overarching product idea that defines their business, they just created software trying to see what would stick.

abhaga• 14 years ago

> Oh really? How many successful entrepreneurs have you heard of without ideas, just totally empty heads and whole bunch of hustle?

This is because we are going about it backwards. A successful entrepreneur obviously became successful by executing on some idea. That says little about what came first: the desire to strike out on their own or the flash of an idea. My guess is that there is a fair percentage of both these cases plus the third case where someone was forced into being an entrepreneur (I put Google in that category).

So yes, ideas matter but when used as a criteria to decide whether to startup or not, they are an artificial barrier.

efsavage• 14 years ago

Y combinator seems to have focused on people that have hustle and a decent idea. I don't think they're lowering the requirement, a 22 year old with hustle and no experience and no idea isn't a great investment. Instead I suspect they're changing the requirement to get a different batch of people in the door, as evidenced by the "as shown by what they've done in the past". Someone with more experience or a more proven record could certainly have "no idea" and be the type of person where if you stick them in a room with other skilled/experienced people, things will happen.

I know more than a few people where we could sit in a room and brainstorm some decent business ideas. Maybe not even ones we want to work on, but a building full of these people, with ideas coming out of one room, being refined in another, maybe being executed in yet another? I think that could lead to something.

brudgers• 14 years ago

>"How many successful entrepreneurs have you heard of without ideas, just totally empty heads and whole bunch of hustle?"

Other than the empty heads part, it's pretty common. That's why we will probably see millions of smartphone apps within a few years.

IMO, YC focuses on a particular type of entrepreneur. One of their features is that they don't place a high value on bootstrapping and place more value on working within a collaborative ecosystem. Those traits indicate flexibility.

Most of the ideas that YC companies pursue are not visionary in a way that correlates to the type of passion underlying an Apple or Oracle. They're usually more practical, limited and don't require a Jobs or Ellison.

tlb2• 14 years ago

This misleading idea is perpetuated by PR departments, who like to make up bogus creation myths. Example:

  *A former bakery owner and professional bicyclist, he was choking down PowerBars
  for energy in the middle of a daylong 175-mile ride. "I couldn't make the last
  one go down, and that's when I had an epiphany -- make a product that actually
  tasted good."*

  -- Gary Erickson, founder and CEO of Clif Bar.
  Quoted in Fortune Small Business, October 2003.

wensing• 14 years ago

I've read (at least) that section of Raising the Bar -- which part of that story is false? That he wasn't actually a bakery owner and professional bicyclist but just an amateur baker and bicycle junkie?

atirip• 14 years ago

"If you want a solid company, the people matter more than the idea, because the idea will change over time anyway."

So how exactly does that idea change? In itself? Like magically? Or is it perhaps so that somebody needs to come up with that idea? So if there's nobody in your company who can come up with an idea then what? Because in the beginning Uncle Paul gave to you an idea. Because you where so dumb brick that you couldn't come up with anything while applying to the YC. So now you are implementing it at it does not work out, ideas change, you know. So you pick up the phone and call Uncle Paul in need of a new idea? To pivot in the billion dollar business. Really? But hey, first, to come up with and idea to call Uncle Paul for a new bllion dollar idea you need an idea that the current idea does not work and you need an idea to call Uncle Paul. Now what?

skerrit_bwoy• 14 years ago

lol "we don't have enough entreprenuers?" What does "enough" mean? Looks to me like we've got thousands of kids trying to make the FaceTube.ly+ 3.0, which is more than enough for me, personally.

Meanwhile, cancer is uncured, the moon is lonely, etc.

TDL• 14 years ago

Cancer & populating the moon are monumentally difficult problems. Comparing curing cancer w/ 'kids' trying to build 'FaceTube.ly+ 3.0' is beyond silly.

By the bye, there are thousands of researchers & doctors around the world trying to cure cancer. As for the moon, it's not exactly the most compelling place to live.

_pius• 14 years ago

Or maybe the reason we don't have enough entrepreneurs ...

We don't have enough entrepreneurs?

shantanubala3• 14 years ago

Of course we don't have enough entrepreneurs.

People talk about the "tech bubble" all the time, and that's a debate you can have, but that's always related to social web sites.

We really don't have enough entrepreneurs, because entire industries (healthcare and education are two good examples) are lagging and not taking full advantage of today's technology. So yes, perhaps Instagram could have been overvalued (or any other big acquisition for that matter), but that only emphasizes how much progress we need to make in other industries.

jsprinkles5• 14 years ago

If you Google that misspelling ("Dustin Moskvitz"), it's a repetitive mistake that only pandodaily seems to make. How on earth can a publication spell his name incorrectly that many times, in multiple stories?

Edit: They fixed it. It lives on in the URL, and a comment below.

hristov• 14 years ago

Furthermore, the word "Moskvitz" sounds like one of the shittier brands of Russian cars. Probably not a flattering mistake to make.

ryanwhitney• 14 years ago

Finally, a semi-relevent excuse to post the titles of Pando's last 7 articles, their misspellings included.

"Dustin Moskovitz Doesn’t Plan to Leave His Wealth to the Next Generation"

"Dustin Moskovitz: Asana Could “Certainly” Be a $100 Billion Business"

"Dustin Moskvitz: Y Combinator’s “No Idea” Round Bad for Silicon Valley"

"Dustin Moskvitz: Leaving Facebook One of the Hardest Things I’ve Ever Done"

"Key To Facebook’s Early Success? Slow Growth, Moskovitz Says"

"Dustin Moskovitz’s Worst Grade at Harvard Was a B+ in Intro to Computer Science"

"Live From PandoMonthly: Sarah Lacy’s Fireside Chat"

robryan• 14 years ago

There is something about this that I really don't like. Usually we would reasonably expect one interview to be one article, it feels like they are trying to extract every possible page view and search engine ranking. Completely contrary to Sarahs started aims when it started.

DanBC• 14 years ago

People put misspellings into their dictionaries. They don't know how to remove the misspelling. Thus, there's no red[1] squiggly line telling them there's an error.

[1] Who chose red / green? I'm not colour blind, but I think these are not a good choice. Especially since the squiggles are the same - at least make the shapes different.

jsprinkles5• 14 years ago

> Who chose red / green?

I want to say Microsoft, in Word, and green did not originally exist until later versions (if my memory serves). Not sure that they put spell check in a word processor for the first time (Wordstar?), but I think red underlining was originally a Word thing. I could be wrong.

Anybody know for sure? Now I'm curious, and it's tough to Google.

raldi• 14 years ago

What are the green ones used for?

pinchyfingers2• 14 years ago

When speaking at Y Combinator's Startup School, Mark Zuckerberg made it clear that some people can do a great service for the world, even if their only motive is to "be an entrepreneur".

Zuckerberg said that he created Facebook because he felt like it needed to exist, but that he had immense respect for Jeff Bezos, even though Bezos' motivation for being in business was of a different nature than his own.

capred• 14 years ago

This is a classic case of someone who doesn't realize that their own situation is not everyone's situation. Not everyone comes to the valley as a cofounder of a company that becomes a $100B+ phenomena. Here's a clue: they didn't invest in Asan because of you - but because of Facebook.

I wonder what Dustin would have to say in an alternate universe where he was just another Harvard CS grad.

What YC is doing is opening up entrepreneurship to a whole new group of people - who might be just as competent as you - but don't want to work for you.

Also, I think what type of 'impact' I make is something I'll decide for myself. Working for your companies is not what I think is the best thing to do with my 1 and only life.

steve8918• 14 years ago

Even PG said that they have no idea whether or not this is going to work, or if it's a good idea. But they were willing to give it a shot, which is the most interesting part of this whole thing, since they have the guts to try.

If it doesn't work out, then no harm, no foul.

sixQuarks• 14 years ago

I agree. They're just testing an idea out, let's see what the results will be.

hessenwolf• 14 years ago

Erm, money to try, rather than guts to try, and we can all benefit from sitting back and watching to see if it works. It looks likes an interesting experiment.

evoxed• 14 years ago

I think "no idea" is a poor choice of language for the YCombinator application in my opinion. The first bit of the introduction was much better: > We're going to have a separate application track for groups that don't have AN idea yet.

If this was all they said it wouldn't take much clarification to show another (more likely) meaning... you [your team] does in fact have ideas, but none of them are the one. You have a demonstrated ability to see problems and invent creative solutions, but in this case you're looking to find the problem that can best use your talents– YC being one of the best places to do that.

EricDeb• 14 years ago

I think it's a fine idea. In my experience the start up mindset is something some people have and is not necessarily tied to a particular idea. Also, programmers aren't usually the best at networking. So why not let YC do it for them and tack them on as a founder to a company with massive potential?

dkrich• 14 years ago

I think there are two competing schools of thought and neither is completely right or wrong.

One believes that an entrepreneur needs to serve a cause and do something to better the world and success will come proportionally to how much they have enriched others' lives.

The other believes that an entrepreneur just needs to make a boatload of cash.

There are countless examples of successful entrepreneurs that pursued both routes, but I do believe that those in one camp probably wouldn't do well if they tried the other. Some people are just very smart, and sometimes smarts, hard work, and some luck is all you need.

areyoukiddingme2• 14 years ago

Is this guy for real? "More impact"? Did he really say that?

Facebook has to be the creepiest company in the history of business. It really shouldn't even be a company.

It's just a website that an enormous number of people have decided to simultaneous use, thereby creating connections. (Which is a great thing, but I would not give Mark Zuckerberg or this guy any more credit than any other web developer. They were lucky, not brilliant.) People could choose any website to make such connections. And there are hundreds of thousands of kids who could create such a site. Zuckerberg himself had to take the FB idea from someone else- his HotOrNOt clone (FaceMash) or filesharing application (WireHog) would never have made it- he did not even have a solid idea. If this kid had his way, he'd ensure they were all his under his employ. And all their ideas would be property of FB. Nice try.

rdl• 14 years ago

I think the question is how many people actually got in from no-idea.

If a bunch of people submitted apps, thought about entrepreneurship, and 5-10 groups or individuals got interviews, thought more about entrepreneurship, and some (or none) got into YC, I don't see how this really changes things.

In fact, I think we'd all win from 10-18 year olds learning more about entrepreneurship (at least as an option), so they could steer their careers toward it -- by working on independent projects, by working for great companies (like facebook) where they can learn and meet cofounders, etc.

I agree that working for a company like Facebook is probably a better purely-financial decision than starting a startup, for a lot of of people, but I'd rather do a startup anyway.

DodgyEggplant• 14 years ago

"no idea" means "no idea at the time we apply"

prostoalex• 14 years ago

It doesn't seem that a "no idea" entrepreneur at YCombinator is that much different than "entrepreneur-in-residence" position at other venture funds.

brainless• 14 years ago

A largely unsuccessful entrepreneur's 2 cents: The idea is what you fight for. Even if you run out of money, you still believe in the idea to keep moving and eventually (maybe) succeed. The idea is your child, she may grow and become a musician instead of doctor that you wanted, but she is still your child. I am not sure how that applies when "no idea" teams just take duty of someone else's child.

tlb2• 14 years ago

The world needs both kinds of companies: ones that express an original idea of the founders, and ones that respond to a discovered customer need.

areyoukiddingme2• 14 years ago

Bad for SV? Or just bad for FB? And Asan.

What he's really saying is he knows others can do what FB does and do it better. But he'd like them to just concede the social networking space to FB. "Don't bother trying to compete. You won't have an impact."

ericflo• 14 years ago

A good chunk of the companies in YC have "pivoted" to the point of working on completely new ideas. Some of those pivots are very successful. So, it didn't really matter which idea they applied with, did it?

ajju• 14 years ago

The original idea is probably the least important thing about most startups. There are cases where the founders have been working in a domain for many years and start a company with a very specific pain point in mind. Those are the exceptions.

Most successful founders have an initial idea, talk to potential customers, and find a related and sometimes completely unrelated thing that people want more and/or that excites them more.

It may yet turn out that having an idea is an indicator of something that is currently unknown but important, and that cannot be filtered for otherwise. If this happens, it will be apparent to YC soon. Meanwhile they are innovating, taking risks, and trying new things - which is exactly what I would expect from a group of people teaching others how to build better startups.

paulsutter2• 14 years ago

Some people become entrepreneurs because they don't really have a choice. I'm just not suited to general employment, so I started a search engine company (sold to Altavista), a high performance networking company (sold to Citrix), and Quantcast.

In each case, I sat down and said "I wonder what kind of company I should start", and followed a methodical process.

I didnt really have a choice. I would have been miserable if I'd stayed as an engineer at Apple.

vincentchan2• 14 years ago

Just curious, what methodical process did you follow? Did you first test the market using tactics similar to the lean startup approach? Thanks for your advice.

pinchyfingers2• 14 years ago

I am also curious and would love some more info.

paulsutter2• 14 years ago

Basically, make a list of known problems that you're well suited to solving, rank them by criteria, fail a lot, bang your head against the wall, and eventually things start to stick.

For example, Quantcast. Konrad had done an applied stats company and I had a big data background. So we think about insurance fraud (sales cycle too long, concentrated customers), starting a quant fund (which is more fickle, the market or investors?), etc, or ad targeting.

Ad targeting. Big, fast growing market, and it's all script kiddies except for google (this was 2006). But where do you get the data? I knew that publishers hated comscore and Nielsen with a passion. So, free measurement service and provide targeting along with. Then, how to promote it? Using SEO. Create a web page for every site so that it shows up when a webmaster searches for his site name. Once you have have petabytes of data, hire PhDs and give them powerful tools. And voila, powerful as targeting with a unique data advantage and publisher relationships.

You want big market, fast sales cycles (aka easy customer decisions), fast growth, slow witted competitors, and most of all don't even start unless you know how you will promote and sell it. I'm partial to b2b because consumer is so random, it's a tipping point thing and there's almost never any technology involved.

Cool problems are cool problems. Find them, choose the one you can solve.

rythie2• 14 years ago

Please write a blog post about how you picked which idea to work on

debacle• 14 years ago

Do you have more information? This statement:

> I'm just not suited to general employment

Defines me incredibly well. I either rise to a critical position within an organization within ~18 months or I wind up leaving ~24 months because I feel like I've added all the value I can.

gfodor• 14 years ago

To me, the "no idea" idea is easy to laugh at. That means it's either absurd, or brilliant. Anyone who tells you they know which of the two is guessing. In fact, I'd say anyone who makes bold claims about the result of YC's experiment is being very "un-entrepreneur"-like since an entrepreneur knows better than to write off ideas that seem ridiculous.

Ironically enough, this meta-idea might be so revolutionary that the ideas that come out of it from the entrepreneurs (since they will be forming in a different environment) could turn out to be dramatically more impactful than if left to come up with their idea on their own.

coopdog• 14 years ago

Agree

At it's best there's a brilliance to it. What's your idea?

"Does it really matter? Throw me something horrible and I'll still execute flawlessly"

At it's worst: I can't think of anything... tell me what to do. Obviously these people get filtered out

giftedbygod• 14 years ago

A company without an idea sounds as bad as mortgage without a downpayment.

I think that this will be quoted in the future to indicate when bubble became obvious. I mean, come on, how much money must be flying around there for free, if they are willing to fund a band of 18 year olds who don't even know what they want.

forgottenpaswrd• 14 years ago

I am totally shocked!

One cofounder of a big company believes that if the good workers try to compete with his company instead of working for the big company is outright bad.

drsim• 14 years ago

Isn't Dustin contradicting himself?

“The only reason you should be an entrepreneur is because that’s the only way the idea will come into the world,”

"A lot of great people are wasting their time and talent by pursuing 'something that doesn’t exist yet,' instead of joining bigger projects that already have proven ideas."

So, isn't YC trying to achieve precisely the latter: getting talented people into a proven entrepreneur's business?

neya• 14 years ago

Makes perfect sense. IMO, a true entrepreneur devotes himself to an Idea he loves, an Idea he will want to spend the rest of his life with, working on. Thats the case with Bill Gates, Steve jobs and other successful entrepreneurs. Now if they say you don't need an idea to become an entrepreneur, then wtf will that guy work on? Come on, this is irony at its best.

netmau5• 14 years ago

Well we just started up without an idea. So my life is literally 100% about proving this guy wrong - or I starve.

There are more paths than your path Mr. Moskovitz.

rythie2• 14 years ago

No idea, should really mean, lots of ideas but not tied to a particular one yet. It would be bit worrying if someone couldn't think of a single idea before applying.

deepGem• 14 years ago

If I understand properly, pg is looking for great people who may not have the 'greatest billion dollar idea'. This individual he is looking for, has creativity, has built products and is a passionate technologist, not an empty-head. I think what he's doing is great. This proces brings a new breed of people into the YC engine. People who couldn't find co-founders, who couldn't launch startups in their college, who don't have access to a great technological community.

jeffpersonified• 14 years ago

To say that the "No Idea" round is bad for Silicon Valley is to give an overly simplistic view of the "entrepreneur."

However, the interesting thing here may not be one of whether an idea is necessary to initially catalyze a great company... or not. That seems like a chicken or the egg kind of question. (Do great companies breed great ideas or do great ideas breed great companies?)

Instead, I think the focus on the individual may be the most pertinent from this article. For some, those who are great at building within a company, being engineer #100 at Facebook is perhaps the greatest place of impact that person could have. Of course the converse can be true as well, which is the story we're all too used to. The underlying assumption is that a person's greatest placement is proportional to her natural inclination and disposition, and I'm inclined to agree.

dgregd• 14 years ago

"No idea" is just an idea how to create successful company. Actually a new one. Time will tell if this is good or bad.

Anyway having more engineers with that kind of experience, creating a business from scratch, is great for the ecosystem.

revorad• 14 years ago

It's funny to see when people seem to get personally offended any time someone tries a crazy new idea.

To anyone having even a fleeting interest in "entrepreneurship": you don't need any special reason to do it. You don't need to justify it to anyone.

Leave the Grand Unified Theory of Startups to VCs and tech pundits. Do it just because you want to.

You don't ask permission to write code, do you?

kul• 14 years ago

Max Levchin and Evan Williams are good counterexamples. Both decided to be entrepreneurs first. Ideas followed.

moubarak• 14 years ago

Guys, they mention its an experiment and will continue only if it works. It's always good to experiment.

"We're not sure this will work, but if it does we'll do it from now on"

bootload2• 14 years ago

"The 100th engineer at Facebook did way better than the vast majority of entrepreneurs in the Valley, had more impact".

...building on an existing idea. This reads like a pitch to hire talent in a tight technical market from a platform company. All those little startups wasting their time again.

michaelochurch• 14 years ago

The "no idea" round is an interesting experiment, but I think the crop of startups it generates is going to be weaker than those that emerge in other seasons.

The danger's not that the ideas will be mediocre, because ideas change so frequently at the seed stage as to be dispensable. I think the real problem is more subtle, and it's the fact that this kind of presentation will attract the wrong sorts of people: narcissists who are attracted to the "we don't invest in ideas, we invest in people" rhetoric that VCs often use. That line is practically designed to appeal to narcissists, because a pathological, arrogant narcissist is going to hear those words and think, "well, I'm already a shoe-in then, because I'm better than all those other idiots who are applying". People will apply just for the personal validation of getting in, and in a "no idea" round, there's no way to filter them out.

There's a flip side of this as well: if you're rejecting or accepting a business strategy or technology concept, people who get rejected will be able to walk away with their dignity intact, because you're turning down a strategy or a plan rather than that individual as a person. So it's entirely impersonal, and they'll apply again in a year or two with a better idea. The "no idea" round is going to leave a sour taste in the mouth of everyone who gets rejected, even though simple mathematics tells us that the vast majority of applicants will be.

By the way, although I don't think PG's motives are such, here's what most venture capitalists actually mean when they say, "oh, we invest in people, not ideas". It means that they invest in stories, and that their decisions are going to be swung by unusual personal stories and heroic narratives, so you can expect a lot of Aleksey Vayner types to get in.

lolcraft2• 14 years ago

Narcissists with skill sometimes seem to be good founders. Look at Howard Hughes, Steve Jobs, Julian Assange...

neutronicus• 14 years ago

It's interesting that you presume that narcissists motivated by personal validation are a bad bet.

RyanMcGreal• 14 years ago

Do you decide to become an entrepreneur and then set about finding a business idea to exploit, or do you find a business idea to exploit and then set about becoming an entrepreneur?

This question assumes only one of these is a viable path to a successful business, when it's clear that the path into entrepreneurship, like the path into a good idea itself, is anything but linear. It's easy to insist on a priori grounds that someone is doing it wrong, but the only proof that matters is whether a viable business emerges from the end of the process.

chmike• 14 years ago

What is unclear to me is what YC will do with these "no idea people" ? Does YC intend to throw ideas at them and see what happens ? Will these people be invited to join YC funded startups ?

Without this information it is difficult to check if Dustin's critic make any sense.

clarebear• 14 years ago

It is amusing that some people have so much trouble differentiating between "not firmly committed to one idea" and not able to generate ideas."

zbruhnke• 14 years ago

I think DM kind of missed the point of what YC is doing here.

Their argument is not that smart people can just make anything work, but that smart people who have the desire to change things in the world for the better almost always have an idea lingering in their head.

They just need help finding out what that idea is and YC finds they are good at helping people do that.

Think about how many people left good companies for bad ideas and pivoted to something else.

With Dustin's point of view they would have been stupid for leaving said big company in the first place, but alot of times the struggles after leaving the security blanket are what make the greatest ideas come to life.

I hope YC continues to be transparent with the results of this experiment, I think it could prove to be even better for the valley as it gives people who are truly qualified the confidence to do something without feeling like they are going at it alone.

In my experience some of the most risk-averse people who think the least of themselves are some of the smartest people I know.

I'd be willing to bet I'm not the only one who sees that pattern.

Dustin Moskovitz: Y Combinator’s “No Idea” Round Bad for Silicon Valley

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