Comment by ankeshk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ankeshk | Hacker News Reader

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The market is not limited to India. The market is global. There is no reason why Indian startups cannot have global clients and be acquired by a non-Indian company. Sure the legal costs will be slightly higher during the exit, but thats not a deterrent.

The problem of why ycombinator model has not worked in India is the same as why other ycombinator copycats in other parts of the world have failed too. (Besides TechStars, I can't think of very many successful ycombinators in other parts of the world - including Canada and Europe and Australia.)

The reason is: these copy cats have not cracked the code of attracting and accepting awesome startups. The success of ycombinator is mainly based on the success of its startup selection.

You need someone like Paul Graham to attract a lot of startups. You then need to be good at filtering out and select only the startups that show promise. And you then need to help these startups with huge demo days.

Who else has managed to crack this? No one. If you see the Indian and other ycombinator copy cats, you will still see such a high degree of crappy startup acceptance rate. Fix that, and you will have a successful ycombinator copy cat.

Because the market is global.

The market is global

Excellent point, and the one I came here to make. I think you're off, though, on the reason YC companies are so successful.

It's not the quality of the startups or the quality of the talent. It's the connections and exposure that YC comes with that gives them such a huge advantage.

Imagine if your little one-man company could land itself on TechCrunch whenever you wanted. If you had reporters at Inc. magazine using you as examples in articles related to your industry (or writing articles about your industry specifically so they could drop your name). If you could call in favors from pretty much anybody in the tech world.

That would be pretty cool. Way cooler than $30k (plus 150k), and certainly worth 6% of your thing. At this point, YC companies are successful because YC companies are successful. It's so self-reinforcing it's essentially a tautology.

PG has repeatedly said that connections and exposure are NOT the biggest advantage. It is the talent that matters, AND the fact that YC can provide extremely relevant and detailed guidance on all aspects of startupping.

http://ycombinator.com/atyc.html

Do you believe that though?

Talent happens everywhere, and the knowledge and advice that they give is freely available to anybody with access to Google. So why, given two teams with equal talent and equal guidance, would the YC company do so much better in the general case?

If you look at the link you referenced, you'll notice that every single one of them is about connecting YC startups with important people (including VCs, the YC team, other YC companies, angels, tech press, and Silicon Valley as a whole).

It's a good thing, by the way.

I definitely believe it.

The knowledge and advice that they give is freely available to anybody with access to Google

Definitely not. They're not giving general advice -- that's already been given in the form of PG's essays, etc.

They give detailed, specific information for each company. From what I understand, it includes everything from tactical information on exactly when to launch or what features to cut, to longer term product and UI design to long-term strategic advice for the company. Also, they have expertise in everything from team dynamics to product development to knowledge of the press and funding, etc. With hundreds of companies as YC alums, the YC folks have an unrivaled amount of experience -- whatever your situation, they've probably seen something like it and can give you great advice.

I think there are very few other advisors who could give really good advice on all these fronts.

If you look at the link you referenced, you'll notice that every single one of them is about connecting YC startups with important people

What? Maybe half of it is, but did you miss the whole "office hours" section?

I don't believe it. For e.g. Banks in India gave 84% of loans to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_caste community

Totally agree. The point is that you can have the talent in India and service the US or any market.

However you can hire an Indian team from the US in any case. I personally have 45 staff in 9 different countries. Thinking about your business in terms of "I'm in country X and I hire from country X" is a 20th century outdated way of thinking.

Agreed that the market is global and that PG, the team and the philosophy is a major factor.

I'm trying to point out the underlying fundamentals, other than the above factors: Supply of quality stat-ups, the size of the investments and market sizing.

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