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Comment by untog | Hacker News Reader

How is Product Hunt even a business? It's a fine site, but this feels like a development similar to VC firms investing in PandoDaily - control the overall message, ensure Silicon Valley becomes more and more of an insider's club.

Another disappointing move - I want the YCombinator that requested startups working in energy, robotics, healthcare and internet infrastructure back:

http://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/

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Having been a fairly active member of HN, I've noticed the following trends about companies they choose to invest. Companies generally get bucketed into the following:

1. Company did something relatively novel with regards to growth hacking and/or digital hustling ("these guys got 10,000 users in a day")

2. Company/founder built an MVP with little technology experience, but got massive demand by using something off the shelf and wants to scale it with technology ("this girl sold these items using wufoo as an e-commerce and wants to scale now")

3. Company/founder did something important in tech before (sold a company) or had a role in a company people from YC alumni generally have an affinity for ("this guy was the head of marketing for X company, it grew to 100 million users and sold to Google for X million")

4. Founders are from MIT/Stanford/etc and did something cool while they were there ("AngelList says 'TEAM = STANFORD' and one of the founders built a robot")

5. Founders have some sort of extensive domain knowledge in a market that can be a billion dollar business (platform/data play) ("No one is building farm tech ($XXbil industry), but these 6 guys from Iowa are")

6. Company/founders don't fully meet 1-5, but have inklings of one or more and have the potential for a billion dollar business ("Smart scrappy guys who are building the next big messaging app")

There are of course exceptions to all of this, but the general theme is that (1) the business model doesn't necessarily matter (they'll figure it out, all 6 situations make these individuals smart) and (2) the makeup of the team matters more than anything else.

I'd put PH in bucket number 1.

I'd put PH into a 7th bucket: This will never be a big business, but it's a useful tool for other YC companies and we just made a deal to get preferential treatment.

Ironically YC (or at least PG) emphasizes how they want to back companies with a chance of becoming >$1B businesses. It's somewhat sad to see this violated in such obvious ways. Ryan is a talented guy and I've been reading his stuff way before he started working on PH. I'm sure he'll find a way to turn this into a nice business, maybe even pivot to something that has a much larger market size.

However, I agree with the overall sentiment of this thread. PH is a tool from SV insiders to SV insiders, sending exactly the wrong message of what types of products people applying to YC should be working on.

There's a big opportunity far beyond the relatively niche startup community we've gained traction in. I respect your skepticism and frankly I'm encouraged by these doubts. Product Hunt is early and will change.

WRT to preferential treatment, YC doesn't get special benefits and looking back on the past several months, you'll find products from other accelerators like 500 Startups, TechStars, etc. as well side projects from non-SV folks reaching the top of the board.

No doubt there are opportunities beyond the niche startup community. Some opportunities I see are in B2B sales lead generation, M&A deal sourcing, etc. However, all of the more obvious "big" opportunities require significant changes and the result would no longer resemble the current ProductHunt in any way. Arguing that these are a natural extensions of the current product is quite far fetched.

I won't comment on YC companies not getting any benefits out of PH. Your argument that "there are also other products" isn't a real argument.

Again, I have nothing against PH. It looks great, I'm checking it regularly and I enjoy using it. Like others I just don't quite see how it fits into the investment thesis of backing potential billion dollar companies.

TBH I don't see the point of PH when there are sites like AlternativeTo to name one of many that do the same thing and not just with web and mobile apps.

The way I see it PH is just a trendier (and barebones) version of these other comparison sites that happens to be in the same room with the guys making the products that are going to be compared.

That's a conflict of interest, there's no other way to say it, and I wouldn't take the opinions on PH as seriously as those from a 3rd party, same way I don't get a loan from a bank because of the ads they run but because of the rating unbiased consumer watchgroups give them.

Per Sam's recent blog post, there are two nuclear energy companies in this batch. They stand alongside biotech, on demand security, traditional saas companies and media enterprises like Product Hunt, to name a few.

Contrarily, YC investments appear to be more diverse than ever.

Companies evolve with time. Not every business has to look like a traditional revenue-generating machine out the gate. Great products and ideas can take time to be big.

Common people.

Ryan is a compelling founder. PH has traction. YC decided to back him. Period.

I'll just leave this here:

The next thing Silicon Valley needs to disrupt big time: its own culture http://qz.com/225782/the-next-thing-silicon-valley-needs-to-...

> How did Hacker News evolve from the discussion board for YC, to the discussion board where the first comment on any post involving a YC company is reliably someone crapping on it? What an amazing shift.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8024239

The idea that discussion of a company is mutually exclusive with criticism of a company is strange. The comment which prompted that reply by pmarca was

> Every time I read about this company I get a feeling everyone involved is completely insane

This is a bad comment in my opinion, but it's not a bad comment because it's particularly mean-spirited or because it's false. (I don't think that comment is either of those things.) It's a bad comment because it's not particularly germane to the discussion, any more so than the so common variation of "I knew [Employee related to YC Company] way back when [personal anecdote]! [Generic congratulation]!"

That's a roundabout way of saying the following: optimizing for signal vs. noise is not incompatible with optimizing for 'nice' vs. 'mean', but I'd prefer a forum filled with substantive criticism to one filled with hollow praise.

Online retail does an amazing job of selling things that people already know they want. It's terrible at helping people discover things they didn't know that wanted (look at AMZN's recommendation engine -- still very dumb.)

There's a possibility for something big here and makes sense for YC.

YC is all about investing in companies that solve a problem. Gaining early adopters is a problem that product builders have, and Product Hunt seems to be doing a good job of helping to solve that problem.

I agree. Many founders spend much of their time networking in order to gain early users. Not all of this time can/should be eliminated, but if founders can be more efficient in gaining initial users that is a good thing.

While it is a problem without any real stats on how many users ares converting and how many are actually becoming daily users, its nothing more than a reddit subreddit.

Early adopters aren't people that read TechCrunch or Product Hunt. Those are just geeks. Early adopters are a specific segment of a customer population that have the pain the most and are willing to try novel solutions.

Its a media play that backdoors its way into related things [e.g. job ads via jobs link, etc].

I doubt its going to scale to huge proportions but there is a place even for a business that employs 5 people.

Seems like YC is now more looking to build an ecosystem around them with the startups they invest in.

They are more than happy to fund those types of companies. There simply are not a lot of people who are both willing and capable enough to undertake such a challenge. I think you've made some faulty assumptions about supply and demand in the startup space.

One does not exclude the other.

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