The Dropbox IPO is a transformative moment for Y Combinator

As the founder of a YC company, I don’t really care that much how Dropbox’s IPO goes. I mean, I wish them all the best, but if something goes wrong that doesn’t make me say, “Oh maybe YC isn’t as good as I thought.”

Dropbox is already successful by any reasonable measure, and YC has some billion dollar exits (Twitch, Cruise) plus Stripe, Reddit, Airbnb etc. It’s cool to see a YC company IPO, but whether Dropbox is worth $4B or $10B doesn’t really move the needle, and doesn’t reflect on YC much at all.

This makes some interesting points, but it seems ridiculous to say that Dropbox's IPO is "make-or-break" for Y Combinator. Make or break in what sense? That Dropbox's IPO will influence the opinions of retail investors about other YC companies? That seems very unlikely; retail investors are unlikely even to know Airbnb and Dropbox share that in common. Or does she mean make or break in the sense that if Dropbox does badly, it will affect the opinions of potential YC applicants? Even if it did, which seems unlikely, it wouldn't "break" YC, because as she herself points out in the article, there is already a big pipeline of successful alumni. Nowadays the path to IPO is on the order of a decade (11 years in Dropbox's case), and while that means a long wait till liquidity, it also makes the ecosystem pretty robust.

Bombastic headline, but no meat here. Y Combinator is a fantastic place for founders/startups, especially for those that work hard at leveraging the available mentorship during that fleeting three months.

The article's comparison of YC to Ivy League schools is hackneyed, but relevant. YC's reputation, much like Harvard's, was built before most competitors were ever around; that kind of esteem is hard to build and doesn't disintegrate in a year or two. Paul Graham has said this.

YC's place in the tech world will hardly be subverted by a 'bad' IPO result for Dropbox. Zenefits' issues, it should be noted, didn't slow down YC, either—nor should they have.

Ah, QZ: one of the only sites that on principle I won't click on anything that links there. Terrible click bait headlines, poorly constructed arguments, scroll hijacking. Nothing to see here, move along.

I agree with all the other criticisms of the article in the comments, but I think there's an important point that the article failed to make.

From what I can tell, YCs seed model has proved hugely lucrative to partners and investors. It is currently seeking to massively expand the capital it deploys. The difficulty of getting good returns on a venture fund increases dramatically once fund sizes go from ~$300-400 to $1B, and above that there are just a handful of funds with enough data to know how they performed

If Dropbox / Airbnb / stripe can support $10-20B+ valuations in the public markets, that makes the returns math for the new, bigger YC a lot easier. If not, then maybe there's a ceiling to how big YC can get under its current model

Yes, as a YC founder, I can confirm that if the Dropbox IPO does not go perfectly, my awesome yc experience so far will become immediately useless ..../s

I think the IPO is coming in late, Dropbox had its prime time a few years back. I loved it back then, but now not so much and never use anymore.

i think the article is missing the point. public markets are dead, and that's not the metric of a successful venture capitalist.

Title aside, this article is nothing short of glowing PR for Y Combinator. I’d say it’s well deserved, but in this form it reeks of an uncritical submarine style of “journalism.” It reminds me of those ‘50’s interviews with politicians on the BBC: “So minister, and please forgive me if this is too harsh, but are you going to do as marvelous a job going forward as you have in the past?”