SandersAK

I love the posts about how YC was better back in the day. It was the same, it's the same. It's just bigger and there's more timeline now to reflect.

If you think the partners (the core of which have been there since day 1) have really changed their outlook that much then you've not been paying attention.

YC has always been a smorgasbord of status seekers, dreamers, ruthless pragmatists, creators and artists. It's a big community that keeps growing, the good parts and the bad parts.

There were scandals then, there are scandals now. They pick some teams perfectly and others totally wrong. The most important thing is that they keep doing it every year and more people get access and a shot at doing their thing.

FWIW I was YC W14 and yes it was totally better back then and we were all geniuses and pure lovers of startups only with no ego...

If you are the majority owner, or stand to profit vastly more than your team from an endeavor, then you are never a servant.

Using terms like "servant" to appear humble, when the equity split is massively lopsided is patronizing at best, and manipulative at worst.

The reason there is not a lot of dialogue around this is because the numbers don't work for all parties at the right time.

When you have a small founder team, you need capital for essentially nothing to show. You can't raise that capital selling the $170M exit dream to angels or a fund.

Conversely, VCs are assuming a 10% or less success rate across their portfolio. And of that, maybe 2-3% of portcos really returning everything.

So they don't have the luxury of shepherding 100 portcos to $170M exits, since in reality, a $1b exit has a similar chance of happening as a $170M exit. Which is to say very very low.

There's no magic sauce, no prime formula, no wizened or sageinvestor. It's a shit show from start to finish. You're best off finding investors who are on the same wavelength as you, and focusing less on whether you hit a home run or a grand slam.

When you get to a place where you're printing cash or whatever, then sure, make sure the math works out for you. But for 99% of all founders, this question never comes, and they spend too much time thinking about it.

I guess it's better than the 7% you gotta pay to get an Orange username on HN.

About 2/3rds of truck owners don't use the bed much at all.

https://www.thedrive.com/news/26907/you-dont-need-a-full-siz...

kinda buried the lede, didn't they?

"However, according to the EMA, the benefits of both mRNA shots in preventing COVID-19 continue to outweigh the risks, the regulator said, echoing similar views expressed by U.S. regulators and the World Health Organization."

it's very possible for you to have the experience you're describing from a system, and for the system to be predatory and extractive.

Just as many people live in nice suburbs and work in cities where there's extreme poverty. They get a good life, don't often have to contend with the pain and suffering of others, and can dismiss those claims as exaggeration.

Where do I sign up to LP for the AKH firehose fund?

Talking "Why does capitalism work so well?" during a pandemic caused in large part by crony capitalism is the sort of bravado energy I need right now.

Many of the comments in this thread do not understand the concept of free speech from a legal perspective.

Free speech does not mean that you have the right to say or distribute whatever you want on whatever platform, owned by a private corporation you want.

on a side note - these are super dog whistle comments, and I'm surprised the mods are ok with them.

I agree that the vast majority of VC is just a shitty index fund and crapshoot.

I do think that YC, from a Performance perspective is light years ahead of all the others that launched just after it did.

For me, the skill of PG was being relentlessly focused on the core of what made startups in that era super leveraged. That insight is obvious now but it wasn’t at the time. The essays did synthesize explicitly how and why startups work. No one else was taking such an extreme position: that you just needed to make Stuff people wanted and the rest would be viable.

Lots of VCs to this day still think there’s all this other shit you need. And if I’m being honest, some YC leaders have bought into that too.

I agree, like all white male founders and rich before and after PG, that 90% of it is extreme privilege and chance but that’s literally all of tech Wealth at the moment

I agree that this article is a fluff piece but, unless you worked with him at YC or seen how he worked there, the idea that he wasn’t doing a lot to make YC successful is wrong. It’s not an exaggeration to say that PG’s work and insights changed venture funding and startups significantly. For better or worse!

Generally agree that a lot of tech luminaries are overrated and often not qualified to speak on topics out of their field though.

Her work has had profound impact and I’m excited to read her book.

It’s amazing to still see the ramifications of her work today.

For example, in this very thread it shows just how latent misogyny is in the majority of the community. It’s a special sort of myopia dressed up as factual rational discussion but her work exposes that sentiment for what it is: fear of change, fear of women, fear of losing power over women, and the insecurity of emasculated men who work in power systems that encourage them to kick down.

"Now, persuasion is a generic skill—it’s probably not enough to build a career on. You need to combine it in a skill stack, as Scott Adams writes."

Naval quotes Scott Adams, dilbert creator who has on the record said things like this:

"But in general, society is organized as a virtual prison for men's natural desires. I don't have a solution in mind. It's a zero sum game. If men get everything they want, women lose, and vice versa. And there's no real middle ground because that would look like tweeting a picture of your junk with your underpants still on. Some things just don't have a compromise solution."

"Naval: Tony Soprano was a businessman who had to enforce his own contracts. That’s a very complicated business."

Just for others' edification, I'd like to point out that Tony Soprano is not a real person.

source: https://jezebel.com/dilbert-creator-scott-adams-weighs-in-on...

It's hard to edify and spend that time when you routinely flag and kill my comments.

You claim that HN is "better than this" but Naval's post is totally devoid of insight. It is hackneyed and the commentary responding to it is a reflection of that. If you want better commentary on the front page, then do a better job of making the front page articles worth talking about.

As to me claiming to know how Naval got rich - that's easy - he's a person who cashed in on a golden era of startups when it was easy to sell off bad properties for big money. Instead of realizing that he was extremely lucky to be at the right place and right time, with the privilege of having enough personal wealth to take those risks, he instead spends the rest of his career trying to justify his wealth and position. That's why all his advice and "insight" are the sort of trite self-help aphorisms that anyone can say and make it sound true.

You always ask others to be better on HN, but maybe take a step back and ask yourself if maybe the state of HN is a reflection not of the community but of the guidelines and leadership that drives it today.

as for me? I gotta get back to my day job ;)

This isn’t a shallow dismissal. I’m literally quoting a part of the piece that is absurdly bad.

Would it be edifying for you and others if I explained why I think suggesting that a smart startup employee should not be doing the CEO’s laundry?

“In many cases, the person is way overqualified. Someone with multiple graduate degrees might be running the CEO’s laundry because that’s the most important thing at the moment.“

These sort of ideas telegraph that the author knows they got rich but don’t actually understand how they got there.

"Our goal, as Cthulhu, is to support initiatives designed to rise from the dark depths of R’lyeh (metaphorically speaking!) and end up destroying or at least disrupting, some market paradigm."

Happy to maintain social paradigms though - only one woman on then entire team...

You should do more digging into how "doing business in China" works before you make this statement.

Personally I was really disappointed when YC opened up shop in China - to me it really revealed a Profits over People approach and was pretty brazen at the time.

Happy to see (for whatever reason) that they're recommitting to communities that (at least on the surface) don't support fascist overtures.

healthcare?

It's not the funding that is the problem. It's a cultural issue inside of OakDOT and the city gov't. Oakland has $600m ready for transport projects: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Oakland-s-plan-t...

They say they can't hire people, even with those budgets and with residents wanting to help / collaborate.

Does this mean you'll now have zero time for tennis?

yes

Chargehound (YC W14) | Account Manager | Oakland, CA | Full Time

https://www.chargehound.com/jobs/account-manager

somewhat unrelated:

This is YC's mission statement: "Y Combinator provides seed funding for startups. Seed funding is the earliest stage of venture funding. It pays your expenses while you’re getting started."

awesome, thanks sama!

I'm glad that you noted this in the comments, but I think it'd be helpful to see it in the blog post.

Any chance for an edit?

How you measure success is how many people you bless - rick ross

no they are massive. the new tacomas are huge. i miss my 99 ranger :(