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Comment by humansareok1 | Hacker News Reader

They seemed to trade quality as well. Its now a net negative signal for a company's success if they are accepted into YC.

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You’ll have to expand on this for us plebs. To whom is it a net negative signal?

I mean I can't speak for that commenter, but I hold any VC backed startup in suspicion for a good amount of time because if they can't reach the size demanded by their investors, which runs the gamut from ambitious-but-achievable all the way to not-in-my-or-your-lifetime, a perfectly profitable modestly sized business is almost bound to be shut down and it's services terminated with little drama, leaving behind potentially useless products, or yet another fucking ZIP file to add to the pile of the things I have yet to open up and sort into other mediums.

> if they can't reach the size demanded by their investors

In this sense, how is YC any different from any other VC firm?

It's not, which is probably why I said VC not YC.

To anyone with eyes? Job seekers looking for startups to join, investors looking for places to put money, etc.

I'm sorry if your company got accepted into YC, better luck next time. At least you can hang out with the founders of... 100 AI-assisted Code Editors, 'The first Travel Credit Card for Gen Z', 'Starbucks memberships for restaurants', 'a video first food delivery app, tiktok meets doordash', and 'the operating system for vacation rentals'. Truly a staggering group of talent.

Those are all real companies in W24 btw...

have a look at this, it's hilarious

https://www.ycombinator.com/companies?batch=F24&batch=S24&ba...

I expect "AI Nip Alert" to show up any day now

Many of these are "Use AI For Something" startups. A few seemed meaningful but most seem destined to fail.

Not going to name names, but so far my favorite has been “AI for [somewhat arcane process]”.

I had no idea how “AI” could possibly be of use, so clicked through out of curiosity. Hilariously, it boiled down to “we occasionally use an LLM to email people for you.”

hahahaha, wow! I really thought this was a joke list. That’s stunning.

Yeah not a joke. Straight from the W24 batch page... I'm sure these weren't even the most absurd.

"100 AI assisted code editors" is not even an exaggeration.

I checked, and over 300 (of ~500) 2024 YC startups have some sort of AI tag. I'm quite curious how the current AI hype is gonna end...

I was laughing thinking how you made up a list of the most stupid ideas. Just to be baffled they are really fucking there.

> The first Travel Credit Card for Gen Z

Huh. Is this just that Fyre Festival guy’s thing, only increment the generation by one?

More generally, most of these read as parody.

A) Security is always an afterthought at YC companies - I know from firsthand experience.

B) YC companies are risky to use, obviously we meme about people using IBM for "saftey", but there is an opposite side of that which is going with a seed stage company - it's very risky.

C) Even if you are a happy customer, if you are too niche they will typically abandon you. I've been on the decision making side for this, sometimes your early customers don't fit your new market, so you have to let them down slowly.

I'm bearish on the giant YC classes but (C) is an entirely necessary evil at any successful startup anywhere.

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