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Comment by chailatte | Hacker News Reader

Careful, you might make new YC companies' head explode.

(YC S11) Interviewstreet is disrupting the recruitment space and create a place where the best hackers get the best jobs

(YC S11) Splitterbug private beta: track expenses with friends from your phone

Munch On Me (YC S11) Helps You Discover Tasty Dishes

Stypi (YC S11) Is Etherpad Reborn

Parse (YC S11): A Heroku For Mobile Apps

Envolve (YC S11) Launches An API For Real-Time Chat

Kicksend (YC S11) Launches To Make Sharing Big Files A Breeze

Snapjoy (YC S11) Will Organize Your Photos For You

Leaky (YC S11) is Hipmunk for Car Insurance

Picplum (YC S11) is automatic photo printing service created to help you easily share your best memories with friends and family

Plus about 10-15 (YC S11) Advertising companies (a guess)

And.....drumroll........

ZeroCater (YC W11) Raises $1.5 Million For No-Hassle Office Lunches

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And.....drumroll........ ZeroCater (YC W11) Raises $1.5 Million For No-Hassle Office Lunches

Thanks. My head has not exploded. Here's why:

- Employees love us. Often they go from getting no free lunch, to getting daily hassle-free meals without having to lift a finger, just because we make it so much easier for the companies we serve.

- Companies love us. See above. Often we enable free food as a completely new employee benefit. Other times we free up an hour or so of an admin's time every day.

- Restaurants love us. We give them a large predictable stream of food orders, and work closely with them to improve their service. We pass on the feedback we get from employees (comments and ratings on each meal), so suddenly our vendors are getting a very strong direct signal telling them what people like and dislike.

We're not curing cancer, but I'm happy.

"I couldn't believe some of the responses. There were tons of people saying that their iPhone apps were because they made it easier to find restaurants.. or that their B2B social media marketing startup was because it was improving productivity for marketers. I'm paraphrasing but that was the gist of many of the responses. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing but respect for people who have successful typical startups. But that said, I think people sometimes are extremely sheltered if they think that those sorts of problems are really impacting lives."

Numerous of your comments have a very mean tone, can you remember that the companies you list each have numerous people all of whom have spent many years of brutally hard work to get to where they are today, in fact, can you just be much nicer?

Parent could have just quoted the slogans without further comment and it would have implied the same. Let us not be nice simply because folks work hard, a certain Adolf had very good work ethics. Even though I think parent has a point, I do not think said YC start-ups are obliged to give a fuck about what I, or parent think. I hope they succeed.

Criticism and even a spoonful of cynicism does not kill dreams. If they do, it was a lousy dream.

Godwin's law!

Umm...while I don't necessarily agree with the original comment, just because a company has 'numerous people' who have worked really hard does not mean you should be sympathetic to those companies or people. Hell, Enron, Lehman Brothers, and numerous others had hard-working people...doesn't make their cause noble nor does it mean they should receive sympathy for their hard work.

The different seems obvious to me, we are a community.

They were communities too.

I agree overall though. Some of the criticisms here have just been needlessly venomous. If I was in YC I would definitely appreciate feedback that was more professional.

I don't get why internet start ups should be expected to change the world. The vast majority of businesses ever created don't really do anything most would consider truly meaningful or world changing.

I suppose they are not, but we expect more of YC because it is supposed to be funding the best of the best, and people are noticing a decrease in quality over the years. But maybe they are not sharing their big visions with us as much, so we can't appreciate the latest YC batches as much. Nonetheless, I can see some grand visions in the list provided above without much scrutiny. Take car insurance for example, it may not sound like a worthy cause, but the economic efficiency gains would be huge if someone disrupts the car insurance industry! Maybe people can't appreciate the domains as much as before.

And maybe a better way to judge the market is to look at what Sequoia is funding over the years.

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