Welcome Anne, Ben, and Joe
blog.ycombinator.com
blog.ycombinator.com
YC has innovated in a lot of really promising ways, expanding the partnership, expanding access, scaling successfully, and doing some new things.
Succession is one of the biggest challenges in organizations, and navigating it successfully is a big win.
Yeah, I can't think of a leadership handoff that's gone this smoothly - no loss in continuity, while at the same time launching new ventures[0], partnerships, and programs as well.
[0] pun intended :)
Now their valuations are sky-high, and they've raised an incredible amount of money, but it seems like a big chunk of YC people (people working for YC, not in the program) haven't really successfully led a company to a big exit (IPO or $100m+ cash buyout).
PG: Sold Viaweb for ~$50m
Sam Altman: Sold Loopt for ~$43.4m after raising ~$30m
Anne Wojcicki: Raised $191m, no exit
Ben Silbermann: Raised $1.3bn, no exit
Joe Gebbia: Raised $2.3bn, no exit
I'm sure they're all very bright people, but at the end of the day, these aren't companies that have been profitable or really been sustainable. They're great resources for how to raise lots of money, sure, but are they people who can speak at any great lengths about building a long-standing business?
I don't mean to sound incredibly negative about YC; I want to keep a level head when looking at them and what they offer.
I'm talking about YC, not the companies of these specific YC partners. YC has done well through the transition. The best measurement for that is not "have YC partners exited their own firms at huge profits", but "do they provide meaningful help to people joining YC, do they bring great companies into YC, and do they make the tech industry overall better". I think the answer to that is pretty clearly yes.
YC open office hours, the YC fellowship (which hugely benefits remote people), expanding the partnership, expanding YC into new areas (hardware, bio, real science), etc. are more relevant than that Loopt was 3 years too early :)
Obviously it's still a work in progress. Would be interesting to look back in 10y.
For building a long-standing product or business, I would argue that Pinterest, AirBnB, 23andMe, GMail, and Yahoo Mail all qualify, as does YC itself. That's why they haven't exited: Ben/Joe/Anne are all still building their businesses.
For exiting: PG/TLB/RTM (Viaweb), Kevin Hale (Wufoo), Justin Kan (Twitch), Michael Siebel (SocialCam), Paul Buchheit (FriendFeed) and Alexis Ohanian (Reddit) all exited for F-U amounts of money. Sam Altman (Loopt), Dalton Caldwell (iMeem), Garry Tan (Posterous), Qasar Younis (Talkbin), and Geoff Ralston (Lala) may have, but it's unclear from public documents whether the acquisitions of their companies resulted in a significant payoff to them after the liquidation preferences of their investors are taken into account.
If you want to affect the world through business, the type of business you'll start is a startup. Counter-intuitively, it may be true that sustainability doesn't necessarily matter for a startup. If so, then sustainability in business doesn't matter for affecting the world.
That seems like dangerous thinking, and I've been trying to escape the conclusion. But since the home runs are how VCs make their returns, why is it a bad thing if 9 out of 10 startups eventually fail? And if it's not a bad thing, then why decry companies for being unsustainable, or the valley for funding them?
Maybe those people are just so stealthy that I don't notice that you're staffing up in that area as well. Just a thought!
What will rise up and be the new YC for unconnected 18 year olds? YC probably wouldn't even talk to Steve and Alexis under the current expanded growth model. pg grew their idea and seeded their initial user base from his personal website readership.
I think Sergey once mentioned (jokingly) he's not smart enough to be hired at Google anymore. That's kinda the YC situation, isn't it? The original people of YC created something bigger than themselves, and maintaining+growing the behemoth machine is the focus now. The people who "grew up" inside YC run it now because they helped create it. But, as an outsider, you can't just be hired into the machine. You can't grow the same way the originators did—you have to prove your worth elsewhere (this parking spot is already taken).
There's always space for new scrappy teams to out maneuver established organizations. What would a new "the next YC" look like? You probably can't start it as a tech industry outsider. You'll need to have had your VC connections and an exit or two already under your belt. The easiest route would probably be to round up a team of traitorous YC partners who say "this has grown too big and crazy, we need to reset our roots back to the original problem space again."
What will rise up and be the new YC for unconnected 18 year olds?
But as long as the startups get good advice I'm happy.
???
Chief People Officer, an executive who oversees human resource management and industrial relations operations for an organization
Chief Privacy Officer, an executive responsible for managing issues of privacy laws and policies
Chief Process Officer, an executive responsible for defining processes rules and guidelines for an organization to follow
Chief Procurement Officer, an executive responsible for supply management
Chief Product Officer, an executive responsible for product management and development
Can someone shine a light on what these three people (and the other partners) will do in a practical sense?
I was under the impression that even once YC technically ends, founders are still allowed to schedule office hours if it suites them. If so, what does that person receive from returning to YC?
I presume (1) the opportunity to have the advice geared towards a new company, not the old one (2) access to the dinners for that session, and (3) the ability to bring in new partners to YC.
Roughly accurate?
Shouldn't it read instead "[...] and a two-time YC alumnus"? Just saying!