"This year, we’ll fund more than 500 companies out of 50,000 applications, and almost all of them are related to AI in some way."
So, what this means: that in 2024, if you want to get VC capital, your startup must be related to AI.
So, what this means: that in 2024, if you want to get VC capital, your startup must be related to AI.
2020 was remote work, 2021 was web3, now we have the big LLM boom.
Honestly it seems there’s a lot of advantages to “riding a wave” and a lot of advantages to being contrarian. But if raising money is your priority I do think you should ride the wave. Being contrarian sounds romantic, but don’t expect funding from people who disagree with you.
The most charitable thing I’d say about YCs AI focus is it’s hard to think of a startup idea that couldn’t benefit from AI in some way.
Let’s find those people and put their names into a non-permutable distributed blockchain database in the cloud with public access!
Basically starting with the technology and then finding problems.
The very opposite of what YC has been promoting all these years.
AI though, will be very useful, at least a good one. Theoretically, AI can swim in a good ocean of company documentations and save time searching. They can help doctors diagnose a ct scan faster (if not already).
unfortunately Michael is no longer running things and it shows in the lack of long-term vision vs. hypecasting
Garry has had this rep for a long time-disappointing to see this changing of guard
If anything, the enormous amount of social media attention on AI has made it easier to raise VC in other trending areas because all of the low-quality "me too" startups have gotten pulled into the fashionable AI orbit. This has significantly improved the signal-to-noise ratio in these non-AI areas because the legions of trend-jumping founders are all doing AI, the startups that remain tend to be founded by people with substantial investment and expertise in their domain without regard for fashion. This is good for VCs and for founders.
You are trying to say "adding IA to the pitch won't improve a founder's chances", but what you are saying is "granting money to founders that didn't add AI to their pitch improves a smart VC's chances".
The collective man hours wasted on appe every year for what is essentially a lottery is insane.
Rejection isn't hard either. If you're a founder, you'll be rejected by VCs all the time, and many early stage investors offer far lower amounts and far worse advice. You'll be rejected by your product - MVPs often have to be reworked and pivoted. And then you'll face some more rejection when doing sales and product interviews.
I think it's important to be transparent about the rate though, but also important to make it clear that the low rate doesn't mean they're trying to push people away.
It's not really a lottery, more like a messy matching algorithm for supply and demand. They give everyone a shot since they look at everything, but getting in is not evenly distributed :)
My guess would be: 90% of applicants are foreigners, maybe a fair bit of spam.
The rest 10% are domestic, and of those that were chosen, there's a lot of Stanford alma mater.
I've seen this mindset among people promoting open positions at desirable companies that don't hire often. In most cases, applying is a waste of time because the company already made its decision to fill the position with an internal candidate.
My only complaint is that keeping everyone hanging on until May 29, ready to clear our plates in June, and then giving absolutely zero feedback for the rejection, was the sort of blatantly self-interested and founder-unfriendly move that, I suppose, it’s good to remember happens a lot in VC Land.
e.g. Entrepreneur First ( especially their EU and UK offering), Founders Factory, Haatch, Seqouia Surge, ...
AI Grant investment is probably going to give you way better access and actual tangible assistance:
There are others but these are the things that really stood out. We will go directly to investors too, hopefully someone in our network sees the potential and is willing to throw us some pre-seed to get it started.
I don't think the YC Standard Deal is bad, and I might try again next time, but there are things about the program that I think are not worth the time/money, and I'm not at all sure "access to their network" is any better than (even as good as) the same access from a different set of VCs.
I was looking for a job in the summer of 2018 and that's what all the ads were for. Ended up working for an ISP though, which was nice.
[0] https://www.ycombinator.com/companies?tags=Crypto%20%2F%20We...
[1] https://x.com/ycombinator/status/1517556338750074881?lang=en
AI will.
But machine learning has been used for years behind the scenes in things like recommendations and clarification. And LLMs specifically, even in their current infancy, have shown immediate value in some cases (e.g. coding assistants) and obvious potential across a vast number of domains.
I agree that every company becoming an "AI company" is not in the cards. However, I think there is going to be a slow ramp where every startup just throws a few annoying problems at a LLM instead of hiring ML people.
And kinda like the internet it's just a tool that you use when appropriate, but the things where it's appropriate will continue to expand.
Yes, but...
"Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs, who got a sneak preview, said Kamen's creation was as big a deal as the PC, and that it would change the ways cities were designed. Renowned Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr said it might be "bigger than the Internet" and invested millions in it."I mean, small LiPo vehicles did take over the world, it’s just that they’re flying cameras instead. They even have some that can carry humans, so the jury’s still out on this one being false I think.
Now most VCs are actually somewhat cautious about AI largely because they over-invested in companies at ridiculous high valuations and aren't seeing the ROI. Especially with many companies simply not seeing the promised benefits from deploying AI.
YC is actually the one that is out of touch with reality.