Comment by dtagames | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dtagames | Hacker News Reader

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Interesting quote:

  Even when it came to fundraising, all the YC’s advice came down not to how to raise smarter and more, but to the fact that everyone needs to follow their simple framework, not try to shine too much, not try to choose the right words, wash off all the makeup, put on a gray uniform, and present dry facts—how much money customers already paid you, what the size of the market, if you count all the units you can sell, what you have actually built and what is working today. And this will always sound bad for anyone, it just can't sound good in the early days. And what actually works is storytelling, confident vision, committed revenue, and all these subtle things. It looks as if they are trying to make the selection process among 400 companies easier for the investors, and cover their own reputational risks, instead of trying to wrap each company in a beautiful wrapper and help it to raise easier.

Just for ref, I did SUS and applied to YC three times unsuccessfully.

I guess both perspectives seem completely rational to me. Why shouldn’t Ycombinator care most about viability and why shouldn’t startups care most about vision?

Each side needs to cater to the other a bit but ultimately this is just the difference between funders and builders.

I think the complaint here is that the current "mass market" version that treats all founders the same isn't really able to deliver on the promise of helping most of them achieve their vision. If YC makes all its money from tentpoles, the fund doesn't care. But founders probably care.

When a woman is pregnant, the fetus tries to grow as large as possible, while to womb/woman works to restrict growth.

Too much of either is not good, so perhaps the same is true here.

I think you need to brush up on your reproductive knowledge.

I think the foetus has a vested interest in not growing too large!

Cannot even remotely understand the logic in this getting flagged.

People are upset with the idea, that the mother and the fetus form a feedback loop, to ensure the baby is as large as possible, while still being able to exit the womb??

Yeah, horrible, flaggable idea. Even if one disagrees, what is the logic in flagging? "Ew, ick! Birth!"?!?

Bizarre.

> the mother and the fetus form a feedback loop, to ensure the baby is as large as possible, while still being able to exit the womb

That's quite different from what you said in the GP comment. This is a more neutral way to put it.

I've turned off the flags on the GP comment now, but I'm leaving the subthread collapsed because it's off topic.

Or maybe they have learnt that investors due-diligence is about the hard facts and not sentiment?

Not everyone is a good story-teller either so to avoid the confounding charm factor, just be as boring and straight to the point as possible?

Which should also keep every startup of their batches on equal footing and hopefully mitigate the hype factor?

Not defending them, just me brainstorming about what could be plausible explanations for this.

It's the opposite! Only the good hype-makers and storytellers get early access to investors before demo day. If you're a good huckster, no one finds out about your stats. Even though... YC tells people to be dry and boring and focus on stats.

That's his complaint.

YC suggests people tell a story: https://www.ycombinator.com/library/49-a-guide-to-yc-demo-da...

Exactly, a rational facts-driven investor is a myth

I think the rationale here is "be so good they can't ignore you". While advanced fundraising skills could potentially help someone to raise without first making a great product that people demonstrably want, nailing product and early growth sufficiently well makes fundraising achievable even for founders who are notably lacking in the charm and storytelling departments.

Here again, I think the complaint is the opposite. He's saying that if you have traction already, you don't need YC. You're further along than what they offer. They are there to help people who have no traction and no metrics and no money.

The sad thing is that the hype cycle is more important than the product delivery. Many huge investments are made on products that have nothing delivered. It's more BS than we'd like to admit. My own product failed in the market because I focused on the MVP and making it real and not on getting hype out and using that to get money.

'Traction' is a pretty wide spectrum. Having some early traction with a small number of users who love your product is a sweet spot for YC imho, especially if you don't have connections or a 'pedigree' in the startup world. At that stage, VCs typically aren't interested unless you have something else going for you. YC helps you take the few sparks you've got smoldering in some twigs and turn it into a little fire that is potentially interesting to angel and seed investors without too much embellishment.

You can call it reputation management. They can provide access to good investors, because investor know they are not selling lemons.

For example, if YC has a strict rule about inflating the startup users only up to 20%, and then everyone will inflate them 20%-25% and investors will pay only the the 50% because they never know how much the number are inflated.

A “beautiful wrapper” of bs. I think the makeup would smell fishy to investors, and that they would appreciate clear hard facts PLUS the vision.

I guess it comes down to who is the product and who is the customer.

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