Reasons for not joining Y Combinator

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19 points·satvikpendem··4 comments

Bit of a confused rant, but there are a few good insights buried in there, and it’s nice to hear an alternative viewpoint to the “raising VC money is the holy grail” approach.

Would tend to agree. There is sometimes another view of a successful business: find an opportunity, execute well, maybe generate $10-30m ARR with a small team over a 5 year horizon.

For a lot of folks, that might look like 'success'.

From a VC/YC/SV perspective, that might not be a satisfactory outcome. In fact, they're likely to push you to get bigger even though there may not be a viable path to doing so.

So I get it, there are reasons not to join them. But then, some people want to build billion dollar businesses - risks be damned. Being in YC seems to definitely increase your odds vs going another way.

I feel like at a 7% stake, all of these are wholly unreasonable complaints. 7% of nothing is nothing, and 7% of Google is massive but relatively speaking unimportant. If you get to become a successful business via YC you will be making more than enough money that 7% shouldn't matter. OP uses the analogy that small companies getting wildly successful is the best for the 1%, and that is true, and that YCs rates are great but still very small, which is also true. Then simultaneously implies that even though YC may be your best bet at getting huge, it is still a bad investment.

If you want to get to the 1% you need to take all the help you can get

Previously discussed 2 days ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37869760 (304 comments)

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