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Comment by abstractbill | Hacker News Reader

We want to fund founders that are going to be successful.

I love Y Combinator, and I'm proud to be a part of it, but I've been thinking a lot about this recently...

Many many organizations exist, whose purpose is to filter people who want to do something down to the few percent who are most likely to succeed at that thing, and then to help those people get even more likely to succeed at it.

But that seems like it's actually a kind of operating on diminishing returns. If I take someone who is 90% likely to succeed at something, and help them to become 95%, is that really a better use of my time than if I take someone who is at 50%, and bump them up to 80%?

From an investment point of view of course I can see why people would do the former. But I wonder if the world might be a better place if we could figure out how to do the latter?

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It depends how hard the problem is. In an introductory writing class, you get maximum utility by letting anyone in. Whereas a graduate math class will usually have pretty stiff prerequisites; the median undergraduate would get zero benefit from such a class.

Startups are more like a graduate math class. Most people aren't suited to it.

Also, I think your numbers are off. We're not funding people whose chance of succeeding is 90%. I doubt anyone starting a startup has a 90% chance of succeeding. We'd be delighted if our success rate was as high as 50%. Maybe we're bumping people's chances up from 30% to 40%.

Startups are more like a graduate math class. Most people aren't suited to it.

That's a good point. It makes me think I would have to start younger (and with more basics), if I wanted to help a lot more people figure out how to do startups. A little bit about my background might help explain why I'm thinking about these things the way I am:

Until I was 16 year old, my maths teachers told me and my parents that I just wasn't suited to the subject. I agreed with them! It seemed impenetrable and boring. Then a kind physics teacher finally explained what maths is really about, and taught me a few of the things I had missed in the last few years. Within a few months I went from nearly bottom of my year to easily top, and eventually got a PhD in pure mathematics.

This experience often makes me suspect there are large numbers of people who could be great in some field, if only someone would help them with the first few steps. Of course I have nothing to back up this suspicion with, and perhaps people have less latent talent than I like to believe. But then again, maybe not.

Also, I think your numbers are off.

Definitely. I chose them more to make my point intuitive than to reflect the reality of startups.

> Then a kind physics teacher finally explained what maths is really about, and taught me a few of the things I had missed in the last few years.

Sounds like you are hoping to follow in your teacher's footsteps and help others via education.

Have you considered writing about your experience? I would love to read about the math truths your teacher imparted.

Also maybe a program like Big Brothers Big Sisters would interest you? http://www.bbbs.org

if only someone would help them with the first few steps

FWIW, I completely agree and am also hoping to help people take the right first steps.

In an introductory writing class, you get maximum utility by letting anyone in.

Even then—at least at the college level—a lot of universities have tracks of various kinds; at the University of Arizona, there's a normal 101 / 102 class sequence (where most students land), a 109 class (where students with AP or other credentials land), and a development class the name of which escapes me (where students who basically can't write land). From what I can tell, a lot of high schools do something similar.

Even then, I've seen students in 101 who really can't write, and students in 109 who clearly can't take the pace.

Maybe we're bumping people's chances up from 30% to 40%.

This reminds me of MFA programs, which are basically trying to do the same thing: most people in MFA programs never publish anything substantial. But the goal of the program is to give the kind of boost you're describing.

Well, the real goal might actually be to provide employment for the profs, but at the very least the subsidiary goal of helping 10% go to 20%, or being a catalyst for many people, persists.

Success isn't binary. YCombinator is more like a multiplier on your success than anything else. It's like if you were going to be a 50 million dollar company, YCombinator can make you a 100 or 200 million dollar company. If you weren't going to succeed in the first place, YCombinator isn't likely to make a difference.

Sure, if you take 100 people at 90% and get them up to 95%, you have five fewer failures whereas 100 people from 50% to 80% means 30 fewer failures.

However, the 90% are mostly under their own power and need small amounts of guidance and money. The 50% would need a lot more equity and time to learn everything the 90% know. So, the number of people who could participate would be a lot smaller.

Fortunately, there is a very scalable thing that gets people from 50% to 80% and it's answers.onstartups, PG essays, Art of the Start, etc. When people graduate from all that, advanced programs are ready for them.

That's actually a great question. I've thought of YC as more of the Ivy League experience. Exclusive. Great brand. (No disrespect intended). And, I think that (unintentionally?) pg and the YC partners have modeled a lot of YC around an Ivy League model.

The question that I'm interested in with Hackers & Founders, is how do we teach thousands of engineers how to build great products, and once doing that, how to you help them build great startups, and then how to you help those founders turn around and be serial entrepreneurs.

Tons of VC's that I talk to tend to turn up their nose at our community, and proceed to tell me, "Send me your Rock Stars".

My question to them, is... "Where do rock star entrepreneurs come from? Do they descend from heaven on a cloud like Mark Zuckerberg? Or, do they try a bunch of things, fail a lot, and then slowly become rock stars?"

I've had beer with 5 out of BusinessWeek's "Top 20 entrepreneurs under 30" two or three years ago. Did I know they were rock stars then? Nope. No clue.

I'm really interested in having H&F, and all the grass roots startup communities that we partner with around the globe be a support system to failing entrepreneurs. If entrepreneurs fail enough for long enough, they generally improve their entrepreneurial skills with each startup they create. Eventually, they become rock stars. YMMV

It depends on your view of what makes the world a better place.

For tech startups, the distribution of world-changing impact probably closely follows the distribution of investment returns. If it's extremely bimodal, then it makes sense to concentrate on generating big wins.

Accept that it's more like taking someone that has a 10% chance of success and moving them to 20%.

Most of the applicants to YC have a near zero percent chance of success. With or without help.

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