How Y Combinator Changed the World | Hacker News Reader

How Y Combinator Changed the World

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153 pointsphilonoist92 comments

I’ve applied not less than 7 times to YC. Rejected every time.

Some of our customers are multi billion dollar companies.

We are profitable, growing and got accepted by their direct competitor.

I still believe YC influence is amazing and I have nothing but respect for all the people involved in the program but I like to remind fellows entrepreneurs that any accelerator is just a tool.

If you want to build something, no amount of rejection will stop you.

Happy 2022!!

Getting backing can be hard, even if your idea is amazing. Often amazing ideas just seem to slip through the cracks. There are plenty of stories of startups that felt like giving up after 99 VC meetings, only to get funding at the 100th one and go on to success.

It's a tough slog, and it takes the founders away from doing the actual work they love, but don't give up. If your idea is good, keep ploughing onwards. I've given up way too easily in the past. It was only once I saw other companies recreate the same idea many years later and then be valued at billions of dollars that I really realized the value of the original idea and the opportunities I'd missed by not dragging myself out of bed to another fundraising meeting.

> If you want to build something, no amount of rejection will stop you.

And if it does, you wouldn’t have built it anyway

their direct competitor

For those of us unfamiliar with the startup world, could you share the name of their direct competitor?

There are a few. Techstars and 500 Global both come to mind but OP may have been referring to another program.

It is one of those.

Also potentially interesting is how YC changed the VC market. [0] is an essay from PG that talks about how VC funding used to work. [1] is a short essay that starts to get at why YC is different. (These should be read with a grain of salt, since PG is the founder of YC)

TLDR is that YC was the first firm to fund a lot of small companies, as opposed to a medium amount of medium sized companies. Similar to what Square did for payments by offering credit card readers to individuals, YC offered funding to super small companies where previously it was not available.

The impact of this on the world is up for interpretation, but at least one positive result is a lower barrier of entry for entrepreneurship.

I am far from an expert so if this is inaccurate feel free to correct me.

[0]http://www.paulgraham.com/venturecapital.html [1]http://www.paulgraham.com/whyyc.html

I was under the impression that the small amount offered was the realization that it didn't take a lot of money to get a startup off the ground. So I thought Paul was one of the first to capitalize on it. This would seem to let him go for both quality and volume.

It's news to me that Livingston retired. Wikipedia doesn't seem to have gotten the memo which makes me feel better about not knowing.

I no longer try to follow what she's up to but I used to be intensely curious about her career.

I was fortunate enough to be a fly on the wall the first couple of years of YC. A handful of incredible people, but honestly JL seemed to me to be the glue that held it all together.

Ya. I would have loved being on that wall with you.

The psychological aspects of young YC are the parts I want to hear more about.

IIRC, I read that Jessica is an excellent judge of character, and Paul has some kind of spidey sense about technical founders.

In addition to everything else, of course.

As far as spidey sense about technical founders, I would also give a lot of credit to Trevor Blackwell, another one of the four founders.

Disclaimer: Trevor was my boss at a robotics company he founded.

It’s worth noting that YC grew out of discussions between her and PG when she was applying for a job in VC. YC would not exist without her.

Yeah, they are the two original founders and then he snagged his two cofounders from Viaweb who, I think, only worked part-time on YC.

He retired some years before her, which suggests to me this business is probably more "her baby" than his in some sense.

This thread is somewhat depressing. Depressing because the very nature of YC and HN at its best is optimism. A belief in the ability to build and not just a respect for those who do but a genuine desire to support those trying. Maybe not succeeding, but trying to create something in a world so set on making that difficult. It that always morally perfect: no. Does that always work: no. But, at its best, YC operates more like a university than a venture fund.

Jessica, PG, Geoff, PB, Michael, Jared, Sama and all the other partners have all done very very well by creating/working on YC, but there is a particular underlying ethos of support. Of just a human connection with founders who build. HN in its earliest days had that too, but I don't see any of that on this thread.

The article has a certain ambivalence about the nature of startups themselves (and perhaps, under that, capitalism itself), but Y Combinator has had a profoundly positive effect on my life personally, the lives of hundreds of people I know, the startup and venture ecosystem, and -- whether or not this is "changing the world" -- the economy more broadly.

There are people here who are shitting on the companies YC has helped, in their earliest stages, push forward. Would some of them have succeeded without YC, absolutely. But that doesn't change the fundamental fact that no other small collection of people in history has been instrumental to creating so much enterprise value from scratch -- and thus economic wellbeing more broadly (with, maybe, the exception of Sequoia) other than a few founders of the very biggest tech companies (which YC companies will eventually join the ranks of).

Maybe, you say, that's all just signaling or selection effects. Perhaps you don't learn anything at Harvard or YC; it's just about getting in. Maybe. But when that list includes Airbnb, Doordash, Coinbase, Gitlab, Dropbox, PagerDuty, Stripe, Instacart, Brex, Cruise, Faire, Reddit, Zapier, Gusto, Rippling, Flexport, Segment, Checkr, Webflow, Lob, Opeansea, Sift, Astranis, Twitch, Ironclad, just to mention the ones I can pull off the top of my head, I think it says something about the method, the process, and the support mattering.

And look I'm a founder who didn't succeed with the company I built during YC but that has more to do with my NOT listening to and focusing on the lessons that the partners were trying to impart than any failure on their part.

Now, I'm not without criticisms and suggestions but damn if I'm not rooting for YC and every company in every batch at Alumni Demo Day.

The thing is that people didn't lose interest in startups. Startups lost interest in people. I am still interested startups that do things differently, accelerators that enables startup that otherwise wouldn't happen or other things that are, well, interesting. But those are few and far between these days.

I also fundamentally disagree with the idea that you have to like something because of its process even if you dislike the outcome. Ironically I think that was what put YC apart in the first place. Every other incubator would talk about their fancy offices, lawyers and contacts but then wouldn't produce many notable startups. And by that measure YC probably never would have happened, or at least didn't deserve support.

It's something I think about whenever there is a development with some really popular company. That if the company had adopted the mindset of those rooting for it it probably wouldn't have been successful in the first place.

On the first line what do you mean by "The thing is that people didn't lose interest in startups. Startups lost interest in people." Or what, differently, do you want startups to do? (I"m genuinely asking, I'm curious!). I'm all for things like longer exercise windows, insourcing, etc, but I also think that startups, generally, have a much more inclusive brand of capitalism than most normal companies.

As for the rest, I'm not sure I follow the argument. I do not agree with the notion that every company that succeeds but has gone through YC would have succeeded without YC. I also don't agree with the notion that only companies that are going to succeed either way go through YC either. Empirically the latter is more easily falsifiable but I think both are false.

> Their ideas reflected YC’s implicit view that for every problem in the world, there is a startup solution

I dream of a world where we try to solve problems first and monetize them second, and I don't mean growth hacking.

> It’s Y Combinator’s world, and we’re all invested in it.

There are many people who resent this world. I'd like to live in a world where success isn't measured by money.

We don’t live in a world where success is measured by money. No decent people think that way, and even most Silicon Valley people you’d consider “indecent” don’t think that way. Most people look at money-obsession and conspicuous displays of wealth as crass and lame, which is entirely appropriate.

That said, money is a focus for companies as it is a measure of resources and scale. Without money, a company can’t survive or grow, and with it, it can do more of its “solving problems” work for more people.

I really don’t see any truly successful people or companies focusing on money beyond that.

From what I've read, founders need to be intensely interested in solving a problem to have any real hope of success.

> I dream of a world where we try to solve problems first and monetize them second

I dream of a world where we don’t create solutions, such as blockchain, and then try to find the problem.

the blockchain is a solution to the Byzantine generals problem.

No, it is not.

We have no way to know if the other general recieved the message, we can only know that the block chain has committed it.

This is the same as a forum or a blog post. We can make a post, but we don't know if the our other party read it.

If the "enemy" army cut off internet access to one general after it responds to attack, even if a message is committed into a block chain, only one general is attacking at first light.

Sincere question: what would one use to measure success in such a world?

Each individual is currently free to measure success any way they so desire.

I certainly do use other metrics, though dollar value of some things remains a handy means to nutshell quantify some things.

Such a world exists. It's called "academia". Our measured units of success are publications, and citations.

It still has the same problem, unfortunately. Citations and publications come first, actual science second.

Perhaps any effort to quantify success/status is destined to be gamed.

Aggregate human suffering.

Note: I don’t particularly agree with GP.

Money combines many metrics into a single, very abstract number.

Maybe a multi-goal optimization, and using more concrete goals is better?

And goals should be directly related to fullfilment of human needs over both the short and long terms.

So let's say measure something like home ownership rate, good jobs, good healthcare accessibility, etc.

In the delta between those that have it the best and those that have it the worst.

Measuring simply by how well those who have it worst is a much better metric. A world where all people have it terrible is a bad world. A world where everyone has it at least okay is a much better world.

There are downsides to inequality, but a metric that counts "everyone is miserable" as a success is an awful metric.

No, because 'well' is then relative to what the 'haves' think it should be for those who have it worst. Which will result in a very large underclass who are deemed to have it 'well' and a small upperclass who have it 'amazing'.

The alternative is not a world where people have it terrible, it could also be a world where everybody has it good and to strive every day to make it better still.

Note that you are likely in the top 10% of wealth on this planet at the moment and we're talking about those 90% further down, a very large fraction of which doesn't even qualify for 'sufficient' under the current system.

So, your alternative would be better than what we have today, but your reading of my comment is incomplete.

> No, because 'well' is then relative to what the 'haves' think it should be for those who have it worst.

No, my metric is chosen over yours because mine is not relative. I don't care how well the worst off had it compared to other people. I care how well off they are. This means that in order to make the world better, the only option is to improve the lives of the worst off.

> Note that you are likely in the top 10% of wealth on this planet at the moment and we're talking about those 90% further down, a very large fraction of which doesn't even qualify for 'sufficient' under the current system.

Hence the focus solely on making them better off. Doesn't matter how well off Elon Musk is if it doesn't improve the lives of those in need.

> but your reading of my comment is incomplete.

Your comment was one sentence. I read the whole thing. If you meant something else, you gotta say it.

That's a hugely flawed north star. We've had inequality as long as we have had surplus. The more surplus, the more inequality.

But I'd rather live today than in hunter gatherer times, even though they were materially more equal.

"Why not modern life with less inequality?" Well because growing the pie and splitting the pie are competing drivers. If Elon musk weren't already obscenely wealthy, he wouldn't have been able to execute against space x. I'd rather live in a world where Musk is worth a quarter of a trillion dollars than in one where we didn't have Space X.

At a guess: you're not at the bottom of the pile.

Also, there are multiple solutions to the equation I posted and you chose to pick the worst.

Jesus said we'll always have poor people. So you're not wrong.

It doesn't have to be a solvable problem to be the best way to measure success.

Your working definitions of "best" and "worst" still seem to be about net worth. If money isn't the measure of success, the delta probably wouldn't be net worth delta.

I hardly prefer a world replete with identical spiritual or moral misery, even though it totally zeroes out this delta.

Call me a socialist but we had scientific and engineering breakthroughs without hyper capitalism.

If NASA had the budget of the 1960s today we would be way ahead of what Space X is doing now.

And yeah, even without that I’d trade Space X for more global equality in a second.

NASA probably was perceived to show the superiority of the capitalist system over socialism in the 60ies though.

That's exactly why it got its budget in the first place: to show up the Russians (who had shown up the Americans by launching first 'Sputnik' and then Gagarin), not necessarily to do something useful in space. But no matter how they got their budget, I'm happy they did.

Space X is a bad, fan boy example. my life is greatly improved by the internet, by ubiquitous electricity, satellite communications, etc. the current form of many of these things was driven by a type of capitalism that is inseparable from inequality

The internet, the electric grid and satellite communications are all great examples for state sponsored endeavors…

so one way to achieve the best possible society is by implementing Harrison bergeron?

It clearly is the most negative reading possible of my comment that prompted you to write this. Do you believe it is the only interpretation possible?

amazing. gotta marvel at this one

I mean I would also like to live in a world where everyone gave it their 100% for the betterment of all humanity. The reality though is that if we set those incentives naively, nearly all past examples have led to way less output then using monetary (capitalistic) incentives.

what's the best way for the world to be more selfless and productive without that being a pipe dream?

Why do we need to be more productive? I’d take a less productive, more sustainable and relaxed society over what we have now.

The cynicism in this thread is simply astounding. The people of HN has had a negative impact on my view of the world and my own internal optimism. It’s hard to find even the smallest light of hope here. “Can do” attitude is outdated and is replaced by “Pull everyone else down”.

You're as much HN as anyone else here. Don't fall prey to the notice-dislike bias! It leads to an exceedingly negative false feeling of generality, in which the world seems dominated by whatever counts as the worst to you. In reality, it's a statistical distribution and you choose what to focus on.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

I agree. Trash takes.

I once tried to argue that most YC founders don't spend their time on HN. It got a surprising amount of blowback. With people like this here, it seemed entirely obvious that no founder would want to.

But now I think founders just roll their eyes and move on.

Many YC founders I know read HN, but far fewer comment. On this article, for example, two other founders have commented. YC founders on any given thread are (generally) few.

> But now I think founders just roll their eyes and move on.

yes.

My personal attitude is that unless it’s grossly unfair _and_ largely upvoted, there’s not much need to jump to YC’s defense. Those two conditions are rarely met in one comment.

I wonder sometimes why they keep paying for the site. This can't be what they want it to be. Inertia, I suppose.

The site actually serves myriad business purposes and plenty of good comments/discussion happens here, though you do need to try harder to ignore the noise than was once true.

[flagged]

"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."

"Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I mean just because you don't see it as having changed the world doesn't mean it hasn't. I've worked at companies that couldn't use stripe / existed before it was a thing and accepting payments was/is a difficult problem subject to all the regulation from multiple countries and building and maintaining it yourself is a total crapshoot.

Starting a business and accepting money with stripe is super simple comparatively.

A lot of world changing happens behind the scenes and isn't necessarily super flashy. They lowered the barrier to entry making it much easier for anyone building new things to get their customers paying which is world changing for people involved in doing business and business has always been a huge part of humanity whether you like it or not.

I wonder how many things exist because one person somewhere was able to integrate stripe over a few hours and start making money versus needing a team to maintain a payments system.

How have dropbox and stripe not changed the world?

I remember paper filing cabinets, PCI compliance, jump drives, etc.

I think just modern computing in general replaced those not dropbox or stripe in particular

Interface design absolutely matters.

The iPod wasn't the first handheld digital media player, but they changed the world with interface design.

I agree that it matters, but google drive/ ms word are both significantly more important than dropbox in terms of moving paperwork to computers

If those founders hadn't changed the world, they wouldn't be rich.

Sure, Dropbox and Stripe aren't dismantling apartheid or eradicating polio, but these products do solve real problems and make life a little bit more bearable for millions of people.

We should give credit where credit's due and acknowledge this impact.

> If those founders hadn't changed the world, they wouldn't be rich

Good to know I'm changing the world with my CRUD apps - more than all the volunteers in the world since I'm (slowly) getting rich, and they aren't.

I know you're just trying to make a point, but in all seriousness what you're saying could be true.

If your CRUD apps are used by tens of thousands of people to make life slightly better - or even if the money you make from your CRUD apps allows your wife and kids to live a free life and not have to worry about making ends meet - you could potentially be making a far greater impact than even someone who devotes their life to volunteering.

I'd call it "changed the world relevantly" and "changed the world irrelevantly"

Y Combinator managed to convince startups that would have been founded anyway to give up expensive equity to them. I'm not sure they would have failed without YC.

Put another way, if you take a piece of every startup on the planet, can you claim influence if some of those startups eventually succeed?

Airbnb was basically dead before they got into YC. They very likely would have quit, as they were heavily in personal debt and couldn’t find anyone to invest in them.

Reddit was pretty much PG’s idea, or at least an idea he helped Steve and Alexis come up with.

Stripe is hard to imagine getting started if PC hadn’t already had an exit with an earlier YC-funded startup.

I could go on and on, but the point is clearly false.

This is similar to the idea that it doesn't matter where you go to college - because the things that get you into top X schools are the same traits that correlate with success afterward. This paper is a study that makes that argument: https://www.nber.org/papers/w7322 (disclaimer - I only read the abstract)

Also - in fairness to YC - there are a staggering number of companies that are started every year. I don't have the stats but I would guess that YC outperforms the totality of the startup market.

Wait... how was the username "ford" never used on HN until now?

HN is a pretty small community. There are ample dictionary word usernames left.

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=generalmotors

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=usually

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=fucking

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=sucks

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=although

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=their

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=hummers

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=appear

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=rugged

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=tough

None of these are registered yet.

Is it remarkable because it's a name? I bet we can find lots of those, too.

I was surprised at ford in particular because it's the name one of the main characters of a book that's very popular in this community.

This character?

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=fordprefect

HN has polls? Is that an old feature that got removed or something noone uses anymore?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll

Go nuts

Surprised more of these haven't been snatched up yet, some of them are really pretty. Although tough has been registered for five years.

Usually, you'd be right, but actually, no it wasn't tough it seems that way now ;-)

So you learn the same thing at every college?

It is more like investing a bit in good college students in exchange for the lifetime share of their earnings.

Whole article about Y Combinator and not a peep about us. I think the first two rules of YC are "you do not talk about HN."

There is a multi-thousand word article about HN in the New Yorker...so seems like covered territory: https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/th...

That was a surprisingly enjoyable read, thank you.

This is like the 18th time this came through

5th. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

5 is like 18

Indeed.

Yeah, neither goes twice into seven.

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