Something tells me this information isn’t so scientifically based and cited as it could be. I wonder just how much of this contributes to the business monoculture we see today.
That doesn't mean their advice is always right, but it does mean they have both the capability to quickly discover when they're wrong, and a powerful motivation to quickly correct their mistakes. So at any given time, we should expect the advice YC gives its portfolio companies to be pretty good.
Given that, it's worth considering whether what's perceived as "business monoculture" might actually be better described as "set of business practices that have been shown to actually work pretty well in the real world".
That might be what's best for a given founder or company, but it may very well might not be. You will have to be proactive and assertive in what works for you to avoid being bullied into the standard YC/Silicon Valley gamblers' playground point of view.
You're right that YC's business depends on high-growth wins. But YC knows that only a few of the startups it funds will reach that state. Where the two outcomes—high-growth win vs. what the founders want—end up conflicting, YC has always advised the latter.
If you think about it, there isn't a conflict anyhow, because no startup is going to become a high-growth win if the founders feel it doesn't work for them. What works for founders is what's best for YC, generally speaking, and the company has been organized around that principle from the beginning. Founders that want to be a high-growth win, and show progress, get a lot of help with that, but people aren't pushed to do that if they don't want to. The optimization is global, not local.
(Btw, although I work for YC, I refer to it in the third person when describing the investment business because I'm not really part of the investment business and have mostly just observed it as an outsider - albeit inside the wall, if that makes sense.)
There's a whole world of PE that will acquire business for 5-15x EBITDA, but you won't hear anyone at YC talking about that even though those sort of outcomes are life changing for first-time founders.
Curious about your thoughts there.
My understanding of the world was bootstrap - bought by mom and pop outfit or slightly larger competitor vs VC - series A-Z or burn out
I agree that this is indeed YC's bias, but it's incorrect that they will always advise founders in this direction. That claim is inconsistent both with my direct personal experience as a YC founder, and also with the experiences of other YC founders who I know intimately and have spoken to about these sorts of questions.
The fundamental reason claims of "being bullied" and similar are incorrect is that there's another major component to YC's incentives. Namely, YC loses out on an enormous number of great startups if there's even the slightest justified perception that they do anything close to bullying their founders.
YC's time horizon is naturally long: their biggest investments pay off over a 7-12 year time scale and almost all of their portfolio is extremely illiquid at any given time. That means they're especially culturally sensitive to actions that carry the risk of long-term negative effects, even if those actions also have positive short-term effects. Bullying founders into risking it all is just such an action, so they'd default to avoiding it even if it worked (which, by and large, it does not).
Are there instances where it makes sense to step on the gas? Of course. Are YC valuations high, leading to large rounds and plenty of liquidity? Yes. And yet, nobody at YC will tell you to scale before you find your PMF.
I furthermore admit that my opinion is heavily influenced particularly by that last component; I find pg's seemingly rational exhortations of "how to be successful" to be slanted and self-serving. They are excellent logical argumentative essays that assume a limited definition of success and guide the reader inexorably to the best way to achieve that particular flavor of success while ignoring (and subtly implying the nonexistence of) others. I may be inferring too much about YC's actual behavior from what I glean from those (otherwise excellent) essays.
That's the worst criteria that I've ever seen for science. Placebos work, but aren't science. And even if you do science perfectly, you aren't guaranteed of success. And most advice that you encounter will work for some people but not others. Does that make whether or not it is science depend on the audience?
No, science is a particular process and methodology supported by a set of norms that enable us to continue building a fact based picture of reality. Doing science gets good results. But science is not defined by the quality of its results.
> And most advice that you encounter will work for some people but not others. Does that make whether or not it is science depend on the audience?
The question is whether or not it works in aggregate, i.e. for most people to whom the advice could apply. If it doesn't, then we would say it's not scientifically sound advice.
> science is a particular process and methodology supported by a set of norms that enable us to continue building a fact based picture of reality.
Science is not one process or methodology; there is the scientific method, but not all science uses it. For example, paleontologists cannot form an experiment to test a hypothesis of what killed the dinosaurs. But science can still give us a fairly accurate picture of what probably killed them.
Sort of like this comic:
I would suggest that "science" is loosely based around the idea that objective truth can be derived through collection of empirical evidence by attempting to reject null hypotheses.
Of course it is incredibly limited and we ascribe credit to "science" for a lot of things which are not "science".
Business is an inherently social phenomenon. Going to people who know something about business because they have firsthand experience with business seems to be an industry gold standard for how you pass on useful knowledge.
What really is important is connection to other people, when you are starting a B2B saas companies for example the people you are talking with on BookFace, are all potential customers, and can make your first customers easier to find.
I think the use-case is more based on company X struggling with a particular problem (e.g. how do you please the mass market) and finding someone who has faced the same problem and learned some stuff along the way.