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Comment by 1cvmask | Hacker News Reader

This is Paul Graham tweet in full:

Someone asked what the total value of YC companies was, so I tried calculating it. The current value of the top 30 is about $575 billion. When we started YC, I would have been astounded if you'd told me it would one day be $5.75 billion.

The remarkable thing about YC is that they truly innovated on the schooling aspect of venture and transformed the meaning of accelerator to business flywheel.

For high school students with aspirations in the tech field it is like the MIT, Caltech and Stanford all rolled into one.

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> The remarkable thing about YC is that they truly innovated on the schooling aspect of venture and transformed the meaning of accelerator to business flywheel.

What exactly is the innovation? Don't get me wrong, YC as an investor is truly compelling but I don't see anything uniquely innovative about their "schooling aspect". They are commercially successful because they have the largest and greatest deal flow engine in tech venture.

> For high school students with aspirations in the tech field it is like the MIT, Caltech and Stanford all rolled into one.

Precisely - it carries a level of prestige that those schools also have - a signaling towards bigger investors if you will. Some of Silicon Valley's most successful engineers went to U of I, which also has an incredible comp sci degree, yet MIT/CalTech/Stanford aren't innovating their curriculums any better, they just have a more prestigious name.

> What exactly is the innovation? Don't get me wrong, YC as an investor is truly compelling but I don't see anything uniquely innovative about their "schooling aspect". They are commercially successful because they have the largest and greatest deal flow engine in tech venture.

I think it's in the "here's how to do it" aspect that's innovative, if you can call it that. Before YC you easily ran into the myths like "you have to have a great idea" or "keep everything secret or you'll get scooped". There was no player that was clearly and loudly saying "It won't work every time, but here are some learnings about capital structure, marketing, hiring, etc, and here are some people you can talk to, now go and give it a try."

Was YC the first? Probably not. Was the message new? Probably not. But it was out there being very open about it, and I think that helped a lot of people.

>For high school students with aspirations in the tech field it is like the MIT, Caltech and Stanford all rolled into one.

not anymore. the bar for the batches in the last few years has dropped substantially. even former YC founders have shared this observation. that’s likely inevitable through scale and the investors getting rich and … busy with being rich.

don’t compare YC to a 100+ year old university. the incentives and timelines are wildly different. there will always be a segment of ambitious people who chase a brand no matter the field. there are many who covet YC like a McKinsey or Goldman or Supreme Court clerkship, but YC isn’t like any of those either.

>For high school students with aspirations in the tech field it is like the MIT, Caltech and Stanford all rolled into one.

What does it mean?

does PG teach maths and stuff? (/s)

I think it's meant as a comment on how much opportunity in the startup/VC world being a part of YC brings to one's life/career. You get access to great mentors/ex-founders with their strong networks of influence, you work alongside other above-average entrepreneurs, you present in front of a huge and reputable audience of VCs, wearing YC's stamp of approval, and on and on... It's like winning the opportunity lotto, much the same as with those top-tier universities, where the brand and the network is more than half the value, not the lectures themselves.

>It's like winning the opportunity lotto, much the same as with those top-tier universities,

is it actually this good?

That depends on your life goals.

Like the other commenter said, I guess it really depends on who you are and what type of business you're building. Personally, with the benefit of hindsight, I'm almost certain if my startup made it to YC (we failed at the interview stage many years ago), it would have ruined both the startup (at least the product at the time) and our personal lives. We were too "green", too different culturally, in an industry that moves too slow. Going the "European" VC speed really helped us get to a healthier business and product foundation, but it took many years. To paraphrase my original statement, it's like winning the opportunity lotto, but opportunity isn't success. You get a lot of great opportunities handed to you, but you still have to know how to take advantage of them, and they might not be the type of opportunities you want.

For high school students with aspirations in the tech field it is like the MIT, Caltech and Stanford all rolled into one.

It may be sort of comparable to that in terms of fostering startup-oriented skills and business connections.

If that's your only measuring stick, that is.

But in terms of developing a solid intellectual foundation for dealing with the world (which just so happens to involve other aspects than the skills necessary to create a hot tech startup) -- just on first principles - there's no way the educational benefit of an accelerator program can compare with the core foundational training of top-tier 4 year STEM program. You know, in things like math, science, and yes, liberal arts and overall personal development.

> transformed the meaning of accelerator to business flywheel.

Something that accepts energy and returns it later with some losses?

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