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Comment by adambenayoun | Hacker News Reader

What's interesting is that if 2-3 years ago, ycombinator had the ability to identify and pick winners. I have the impression that in the past year it became the other way around.

Y combinator by picking companies are in fact the kingmakers and are creating the winners.

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I wish. That would be very convenient. But in startups everything depends on the founders. All we can hope to do is smooth the way for them.

In 1999 I sold a domain name to a KPCB company. I remember very distinctively the team members throwing in my face how they were a KCPB company and that they could just buy my entire company if they wanted the domain name. It was one of Vinod Khoslas hand picks apparently. Founder was a Stanford Grad [1] This was probably at the top of the KCPB hype I haven't seen it like that since back in that time period. Anyway, they bought the domain and folded within a few years failing spectacularly.

[1] Out of curiosity I just checked and the founder is a VP at Vmware.

Last I checked you still have to get users/customers to be a winner in business. YC has clout with investors, so their companies are more likely to get investment, but that's not the right measure of who is a winner.

The millions of consumers you need as customers (or, if B-to-B, say fortune 500 companies) don't give a damn about the YC stamp of approval.

Increased investment only turns into increased "wins" if you use that money to get more users/customers, i.e. with a better sales team, more marketing dollars. Is this happening? I don't know, it sure seems like a lot of software companies are eschewing traditional marketing and sales and counting on viral growth to be a success, but you can't just hire more engineers and increase a product's viral-ness. I don't think anyone truly understands what makes a software product catch on.

But if the end result is an acquisition, the YC brand may actually matter much more.

Not too clear about what your last sentence means. Could you please clarify?

He means that in the past, they made good guesses about which companies would be winners. Now, they have so much clout that merely by picking a company they can make it a winner.

Of course, they're still making smart picks. It's just easier for those picks to succeed.

Thanks for translating it!

Sorry about that - what I meant is that an investor role is to identify likely winners and support them until they get acquired or IPO. But ycombinator have more than the ability of identifying winners, I think they have achieved the status of turning people into winner just by picking them. Their true value is not by giving out money or knowing who are the winners, but by adding value to teams to a point where everything they touch turn into gold. People will want to get associated with anything ycombinator invests in, you can see that with the fact that the startfund is now offering $150k convertible note to any company getting accepted into YC. That is amazing.

_disclaimer:_ I tried getting into YC once but got rejected - but I still think of myself as a winner!

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