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Comment by kick | Hacker News Reader

I've been thinking on this for a few minutes, and I'm realizing I have no idea on what criteria YCombinator funds anymore. This seems like something the Pinboard Investment Co-Prosperity Cloud might have funded.

The extension looks cool (outside of it being proprietary) and it looks like you did a good job on it! I'm just trying to think of reasons as to why YC is trying to mimic Softbank. The only reason I can think of is that extensions occasionally get sold for thousands to malware vendors and the like, but that doesn't seem like something that would bring that much of a return, and seems too user-hostile to be something YC would bank on.

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YC has always funded startups where the initial idea seems small but the founders seem effective and it's possible to imagine a path from the small thing to a big thing. That's one of YC's favorite kinds of startup to invest in. The fact that they seem odd and not worth funding is an advantage!

Actually, if you read http://www.paulgraham.com/startupideas.html and http://www.paulgraham.com/altair.html, this startup is the sort that pg was writing about. That's why I told these guys to include the bit about solving a problem they themselves had; it's a classic marker. See also http://www.paulgraham.com/organic.html: "Don't be discouraged if what you produce initially is something other people dismiss as a toy. In fact, that's a good sign."

It's a fun exercise to imagine a path from the small thing to a big thing. Can we do it in this case? I'd say so. Online distractions, addictions, and the exploitation of human attention by big-tech companies are a big deal. Reclaiming control over time and attention could be something that a lot of people care about.

I wasn't implying that YC had changed, just that I can't tell what the reasoning is anymore. The second link is an interesting thing to link, because the reason I included the last line (along the lines of "I guess it could be sold to a malware vendor or something") was more or less because I was thinking on that; I took my time to think, and couldn't find many optimistic things.

My only other guess outside of the one listed is that it could be sold to Facebook or twitter after getting a large audience, because it aligns with historical acquisitions somewhat.

I'd be happy to be shown wrong in a year (I'd literally take anything over what I imagine is going to happen to it), but presently I'm mostly just confused.

Responding to the edits I only noticed after responding:

"Don't be discouraged if what you produce initially is something other people dismiss as a toy. In fact, that's a good sign."

I wasn't trying to discourage the people making the extension! I was mostly seeing if I could get any spare guesses as to what YC's mindset was when thinking about this.

Regarding whether what it's combating is a big deal:

Certainly, but I'm not sure if the solution to all of those is...a new big tech company, to put questions of profitability aside. It seems partially like bait to be acquired by a social media company, or Nielsen (which is a literal malware company at this point, they pay users to MITM their connections; a way to get the same data without paying seems like something they'd love).

I'm no expert in YC's business, but I think the confusion might be coming from thinking about this too similarly to how later-stage investment works, where there are fewer investments to place and more information available, and therefore more up-front analysis. It's not feasible to do that in YC's case, where they fund hundreds of startups a year. Nor can such analysis apply anyhow—there's too much uncertainty at the earliest stage.

The way YC looks for signal is different: simple and rooted in a few fundamentals. Do the founders seem effective? are they talking to users? and so on. The funny thing is, even though the fundamentals are simple and have been laid out in pg essays for a decade or more, it's surprisingly hard to reason with them. The mind doesn't like to stop with so little. I think that's why YC funding something like this feels paradoxical. (In the present case, it wasn't what they applied with but something they came up with later; but that helps make the point.)

"Bait to get acquired" would be considered a negative, since that's not how a business like YC ends up with the few big successes that make or break it. It's more like this: is there some plausible random world in which this thing ends up becoming a major breakthrough? It doesn't have to be probable, just fairly imaginable. And the founders have to seem like the kind of people who might, with luck, pull it off.

(Sorry for editing the carpet from under you! What I just wrote here was in response to your pre-edited comment too, but hopefully is still relevant.)

(It's no problem! I edit after posting about as much as anyone, so I definitely understand it! I appreciate the depth of response; I just made sure to wait a bit before forming a response to this one; it's fun to watch the stages a comment goes through, sort of like watching thought in process but more refined. Thanks for putting so much thought into your responses!)

That last line in the second paragraph made it click for me, thank you! At first I was under the impression they were funded after the 6 MVPs, but it makes sense that they were funded before/during that! With that bit of context, "betting on the founders" in this case makes much more sense to me.

I think yc would consider all those acquisitions you mentioned to be failures. One of the best things about yc is they are happy to get behind interesting projects built by interesting people and see what happens.

_I_ would consider all of those acquisitions to be failures, but YC has funded advertising companies and other "What if we sell user data?"-style companies in the past, so I'm not entirely sure. (Kuhcoon comes to mind, which was a notable backfire.)

Exactly that! You can start from simple extension and in few years have full fledged solution for internet addiction worth millions. For this to happen you have to find great founders, that keep on going no matter what. :)

This is a serious problem we experience personally, and we know it’s a painful one for millions of others. We have the opportunity to help people claim back a significant amount of their time each day. The initial product is simple, but there are many other ways to expand and tackle this problem. Safe to say selling data or being acquired by malicious vendors is off the table.

Was about to post something similar. They might start with only a chrome extension though, while the big vision is much broader?

The vision is definitely much broader :) The immediate steps are desktop and mobile.

Yeah I’m wondering what was written on the “how does this become a $100m business” field on the YC application form.

There's nothing like that in YC application form.

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