Why Combinator? Should You Join Paul Graham's Gang For The Gifted?

http://onstartups.com/home/tabid/3339/bid/1319/Why-Combinator-Should-You-Join-Paul-Graham-s-Gang-For-The-Gifted.aspx

by carefreeliving • 19 years ago

16 31 19 years ago

herdrick• 19 years ago

"7. Projects vs. Businesses: Personally, I think YC is... not really concerned with selecting what may... become "real" companies... I think YC leans a bit too heavily towards the "build it and they will come" model..."

I'm not sure he understands the YCs' insight that startups with lots of happy users almost always succeed financially, one way or the other - the only things that kills them are founder fights, and major blunders, etc.

dshah5• 19 years ago

Well, I could argue (and will) that the two are not mutually exclusive. Startups that think at least a wee bit about how to build a business may earn themselves more runway and hence have higher chances of ultimately building something users will love.

paul• 19 years ago

I have never met a YC company that wasn't thinking about how to build a business.

The key thing to understand is that if problem A is 100 times harder than problem B, and problem A is critical to success, then you should spend a lot of time worrying about problem A. In this case, problem A is building something that people will want to use. If you fail at that, then none of the other problems matter, because you have failed.

Alex39173• 19 years ago

"I think YC leans a bit too heavily towards the 'build it and they will come' model and for inexperienced entrepreneurs (just about all of the YC founders), this can distort reality."

MSPW != field of dreams.

What YC actually says is that MSPW is more important than monetization.

pg3• 19 years ago

or more precisely, harder

Alex39173• 19 years ago

oops. yay for clear thinking :-)

akkartik• 19 years ago

mspw?

bootload2• 19 years ago

It could mean 'Midwestern States Pro Wrestling' but I think they mean 'Make Something People Want'

e1ven• 19 years ago

I do agree that one of the great things that YC brings to the table are early users, who are willing to try thing sout and point out the problems.

The people who are spending time following YC companies are the ones who are more likely to give the site a shot- They're also often people who CARE about UI, Ease of use, and the other features that teams often Need reminding about.

Having 10 e-mails in the morning yelling that the new change makes things tougher, or that the background color causes eye-bleeding helps to avoid a Myspace-like situation.

Having the "Right" first users is crucial, and YC helps bring them (As does Reddit, if you're up to making it there, but that's a tough crowd at times.)

volida4• 19 years ago

"Teams vs. Individuals: YC leans strongly towards selecting startups that two or more founders. I'm a strong advocate of this myself as I believe that having two or more founders in an early-stage startup significantly improves the chances of success. By explicitly stating this requirement, YC forces early-stage entrepreneurs to find co-founders. This is a good thing as if there's a problem with finding a co-founder, that's an early signal of a problem (either with the founder or the idea or both), and everyone's better off knowing that sooner rather than later."

I am trying to understand why he is trying to discourage single founders in contrast with YC that is not doing that. If someone is determined to commit to his ideas, then not founding a co-founder will not discourage him. And its better than leaving your ideas completely.

We know it's hard more than anyone who hasn't experienced it. I just don't understand the absolute attack towards single founder from his side. He should know that if someone decided to take the single founder route he is absolute aware of the effects of the choice.

And if it's hard to be single founder, its better than finding someone who you are not aware of his real character and passions.

I dont like it that in order to differentiate themselves or not, from the fear of copying themseleves (some "journalists") and from saying the exact word of someone, they use some point of reference to later exagerate it. And I am reffering to the phrase "explicitly..." who is contrary to what YC sais i think..

I don't really like the writer's attitude attacking his readers -- am I the only one here?

dshah5• 19 years ago

As the writer, I'll take full responsibility. Apologies if my attitude seems overly harsh (not intended to be).

Also, here's a direct quote from Paul Graham:

"This is one reason Y Combinator has a rule against investing in startups with only one founder. Practically every successful company has at least two. And because startup founders work under great pressure, it's critical they be friends."

staunch2• 19 years ago

"I don't really like the writer's attitude attacking his readers -- am I the only one here?"

Surely you're being a bit sensitive because this topic hits so close to home. Try not being so defensive, sometimes the last thing you want to hear is just what you need.

You may be discouraged, but I don't think he's trying to do that. He just happens to agree with almost everyone I've heard from on this issue. Feel free to prove yourself as an exception, no one has said it's impossible.

Maybe collecting a list of single-founder companies would be inspirational for you? Here's some off the top of my head: Brad Fitzpatrick/LiveJournal, Markus Frind/PlentyOfFish, Mark Fletcher/ONElist.

volida4• 19 years ago

I was honest responding to an honest attack.

I can't believe he wasn't aware and expecting single founders would read the article. I accept opinions. I don't accept misrepresentations of opinions.

I prefer sounding hard than being silent.

circa 2007 "The ideal company would have two or three founders. We'll consider those with four or five. We're very reluctant to accept one-person companies, though we have accepted a couple." http://ycombinator.com/s2007.html

zach• 19 years ago

Gang for the gifted? I kinda thought of Y Combinator as a School of Rock for web entrepreneurs. ("One great website can change the world!")

bootload2• 19 years ago

' School of Rock for web entrepreneurs.'

I cracked up reading this (after having seen a repeat of it) & also because pg's post really does puts the 'gifted' quote from the original post into perspective. You've got to have the 'determination' to build the best damn product (performance) you can.

staunch2• 19 years ago

"I think there's some value to actually thinking about business models earlier in the process. Simply identifying market opportunity (i.e. how do you make money)"

I think at least it's a valuable exercise to imagine that you're not going to have a free version of your product. Imagine that you're actually selling it to a real customer. Would you be embarrassed to say it costs money? How would support work differently? How about uptime? Who would actually pay?

I'm not sure that's necessary in all cases, but it does seem to raise a lot of interesting questions useful for self-examination.

pg3• 19 years ago

The "gifted" is a little misleading. We're pretty explicit that we think succeeding in a startup depends more on determination than intelligence. Oddly enough, though, "gang" is on the mark. One of the unexpected consequences of funding large batches of startups is that they form a fairly tough peer-to-peer mesh to help one another.

danielha2• 19 years ago

This is a huge advantage for small startups that I hope others are realizing. As programmers or hardware hackers, we can make something of value to other people but there might be difficulties in selling it to them (not even in the monetary sense, just adoption). The YC funded teams have become a network in itself to help you get some momentum and spread word of your new creation. And everyone uses everyone else's stuff. It's just cool.

I was visiting Crystal Towers yesterday and, well, YC really needs to just buy that whole complex.

Alex39173• 19 years ago

So, does the gang have a hand signal?

pg3• 19 years ago

Probably the finger-wag:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/socialmoth/405509951

(Rtm started it.)

danielha2• 19 years ago

Dharmesh is a smart guy and I enjoy his blog entries, but I just don't see eye-to-eye with him on #7 (Projects vs. Businesses).

We're not business people (most of us); we're just trying to create cool things and subsequently be freed from the shackles of the nine-to-five life. The great thing about Internet entrepreneurship is that it's relatively easy to get off the ground, and subsequently we can create products that are solutions and not immediately worry about the business model. It doesn't hurt to keep it in mind, but we don't have to let it weigh us down. I mean, search wasn't the best business to begin with.

dshah5• 19 years ago

Thanks for the compliment. I've struggled with articulating my position on this issue, and still haven't nailed it yet. Here's another pass:

I completely get the fact that projects are not a bad thing. Most of the best businesses actually started out as projects.

It makes total sense for me that startups should pursue building something people want (and make that the focus). However, a subset of these are projects that seek to build something people want AND that they will pay for. I'd further argue that within this particular subset of ideas, the optimal choice might be to build something people will pay for from the get go. In these cases, it would be sub-optimal to simply strive to build something people want.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that in some situations, trying to find the problem that people want solved AND will pay for ends up putting the startup on the right idea wheresa if they simply tried to build something people want, they may wind up in the wrong place.

Not all software is best served by creating something that will be subsidized by another activity (like advertising). I think it's jumping too quickly to that assumption that I think has the chance of being misguided. Sometimes the right answer is building something that people will part with money for and you have to start with that end in mind to really get there.

daliso• 19 years ago

I think with Internet based companies, it is kind of counterproductive to focus on monetization at an early stage. This is because many innovative web companies tend to change the economics of how people make money in an industry. The best example of this is Google, that is shaking up the software industry by practically giving software away but earning revenue through advertising.

Changing industries requires a lot of industry clout, which I think YC gives its budding companies, freeing them to concentrate on designing good products that create value. If the product is really good and creates real value, the industry will reshape itself somehow to reward the entrepreneurs.

ced• 19 years ago

I'd like to hear from those who "consciously chose not to apply at all". So far it seems that if you're going to build a typical web startup, then being funded by pg is always a net positive... I'm more interested in learning about the other ways of doing it.

extantproject2• 19 years ago

I like the play on words, anyway.

Why Combinator? Should You Join Paul Graham's Gang For The Gifted?

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