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Comment by sharkweek | Hacker News Reader

First, congrats to everyone launching.

Second, existential crisis time.

I clicked the link and saw "Here are the 85+ startups that launched at YC’s W19 Demo Day 1" and closed the tab.

These used to be some of my favorite articles every six months, kind of a view into what's coming next. But they felt digestible, with a few dozen startups featured each time.

Now it feels like a fire hose.

I'm not convinced there's going to be a YC circa 2007-2012 ever again, but I miss that. Probably not how the ecosystem works anymore.

As a disclaimer, I do take full responsibility for my turning 30 a few years ago and going through a darker, cynical period of burnout that has likely permanently affected my outlook on startups.

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I haven't gone through anything that has resembled dark burnout, but I also share a similar sentiment.

Years ago, I would be amazed at all the cool startups and tools people were building. Now, my reaction is more.. "OK, so what? You build AirBnb for X... so what?"

Off the record, your comment reminded me of this Douglas Adams quote:

1) everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal;

2) anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it;

3) anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilization as we know it until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.

>You build AirBnb for X... so what?

I can't stand this template anymore. There's probably a natural cycle/rise-and-fall for these things.

1) Problem identified, "how do i quickly and efficiently describe the purpose of what we're doing"

2) "[existing popular company everyone knows] for [different market that it can be applied to]" is passed on to others to solve that problem. Phrase becomes popular, more people start using it.

3) Everyone starts using it, phrase becomes overused.

4) People begin questioning whether it still has the same meaning or if it's changed contexts since it was originally suggested.

5) People despise hearing it.

I'm right around step 4 there at the moment, heading towards 5. All I keep thinking is "so you're using the same phrase everyone uses, yet you're telling me you're revolutionary, and groundbreaking."

I get that it's just one phrase, and I'm starting to make assumptions here, but I think at some point it becomes more formulaic. And it's hard for me to believe you're hacking, innovating, and revolutionizing when you're following a formula. It's just more "I'm in-the-club" language now.

The good startups use this formula as a shorthand to communicate an idea quickly, but don't religiously pin their real strategy on this. Once you dive in one layer deep, these analogies break down pretty quickly.

For what it's worth, there shouldn't be any less signal in these batches than earlier ones. The acceptance rate this batch was the lowest ever. It's just that startups are now global and in every industry.

This is more like your favorite author writing books on a lot more subjects, than just putting out a longer more rambling book.

I don’t think the issue here is “signal”, so much as it is that the arbitrage is gone.

For a brief, golden period, startups were new and innovative. You could stand out from the crowd by taking some risk and working hard. Early YC reflected this ethos.

Now, “startups” are so common as to trigger cynicism, and merely starting a company no longer offers differentiation. Every angle that can be explored is being explored, usually by multiple scrappy, identically hustling teams of millenials, and to differentiate, you need to take risks that feel increasingly long-shot to stand out (e.g. nuclear fusion! electric planes! revolutionizing drug discovery!) Even the seed-stage “accelerators” are systematized, large-scale success-mining machines for fairly well-developed companies.

Which is not to say that there won’t be successes; there will almost certainly be “unicorns” from 2019, as there have been in just about every year. But the frontier is closed, the game is clear, and it’s the same as it ever was.

I think it's fair to say that Silicon Valley is dead. Cheap venture capital, minimal startup cost, access to university researchers, and good inter business communications fueled an engine which turned ideas into products. You can now find venture capital elsewhere, with the discount rate being what it is. The cost of housing and office space has spiraled out of control, thanks to the environmentalists and Prop 13. The trade secrets and intellectual property mania have pretty much destroyed open cooperation. The universities remain, but aren't the driving force they used to be.

The place has a much different, more ossified feel to it than it did seven years ago.

[Note: The words above aren't mine; they were written in 1993 by the co-founder of AltaVista.]

People like to claim that arguments like mine are cynical, but what’s actually cynical is reaching far into the past for a quote, snipping it out of context, and then extrapolating to pretend that the quote is just as relevant today.

Or said more simply: past results do not imply future performance.

Is it possible that we’re about to turn a technological corner and it’ll be like the rise of the web - a revolutionary new media platform - all over again? Sure. Maybe I’m wrong. But I’m pretty informed, and I don’t see a web-like technology where everything is done and working, and just needs to be explored. There’s no green-field tech on the horizon where simple refinement is going to open up new industries. We’re back to waiting.

Today we’re increasingly focused on stuff that might not even work at all (e.g. fusion), or that has huge technological or societal barriers that are unsolved (e.g. robots, electric cars) It’s a different world, and even if something revolutionary comes around the corner next week, right now the playing field is fairly competitive.

perhaps you may look into cryptocurrencies and virtual reality as two places where simple refinement will open up new industries.

And AI.

>Every angle that can be explored is being explored, usually by multiple scrappy, identically hustling teams

a) I'm not sure that's true - things like "Keynua you record a short video to verbally agree" for Latin America for example - are there lots of people doing that?

b) AirBnb say wasn't that novel - holiday lettings site existed. They just did it better. There's probably other stuff like that.

The only reason they had 12k applications this time was because they incentivized every Startup School company to apply in order to potentially get $10k. I would be pretty shocked if there won't be significantly less applications for S19.

Not sure why they did that to be honest, giving someone $10k to apply is probably the best way to decrease application quality and have more work to sort through. Maybe for more data?

What did folks have to do to get the $10k?

I didn't participate at Startup School this time, so not sure. But I think they said they give out $10k each to the top 10 participants IF they applied to YC.

I think this is more of a failure of the initial reporting than an existential crisis for YC.

Imagine if the article broke things down by industry and/or tech category and you could expend just the ones you're most interested in and see 3-5 companies in each group.

Sorry, I don't think I mean to imply YC is having an existential crisis, but rather that I am having the existential crisis.

I worded my original comment poorly.

It might be true that productivity is not booming these days, but it may also mean fulltime jobs are declining.

could you elaborate on your outlook on startups? specifically "darker and more cynical"?

What are you saying? YC should fund fewer companies so that the TechCrunch summary of demo day is shorter?

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I think parent is commenting at the fact that everybody is just doing a startup just because they can. I somewhat agree, because I don’t see as many startups launching that provide a societal and economical utility like those in 2007-2012.

Like the u/giarc commented. What makes bento so different than all the food delivery services that came before it? There’s nothing unique about it.

Nope, not in the least! YC should do whatever is best for them.

I'm saying (poorly) that I miss getting excited about new startups launching. This is probably more of a reflection of my own shift in perception than it is a statement on YC or incubators as a whole.

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