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Comment by shamino | Hacker News Reader

For people just coming out of college, the advice given by YC might seem very "groundbreaking". But honestly, these are not new ideas. I listened to Sam's lectures at Stanford, and listened to Brian Tracy's business books, and they are the same advice. Not to hate on YC, but I just wanted to keep it 100.

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Let’s be clear the goal wasn’t to break new ground in fact it’s the opposite. To condense all the accumulated pieces of advice that we give in one place and provide links to dive deeper if needed.

I agree you are trying to do that with this post. But YC startup information sometimes markets itself as knowing what others don't know when it comes to growing a business, and say they know best since they've seen so many startups in their cohorts. It comes across as revolutionary ideas, even if those words aren't exactly used.

For instance, all your reference links are to yourselves. Are there no data points outside your own findings that could be useful ?

Even if it is not groundbreaking, people need to learn it somewhere. I've learned a ton from YC posts. Maybe they are things that people running businesses already know, but that is not me. I may look at an application and say it is not innovative technology, but if they are solving someone's problem and making money it is hard to argue with it. YC is definitely educating people who don't know these things and in that sense, the information is very insightful.

The guys at Basecamp have preaching this stuff for years.

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