2,459 karma · joined March 19, 2010
I met my cofounder at the TC Disrupt Hackathon in 2011, were selected as one of the winners, and have worked together ever since. We even did YC last batch.
He talked about Reading Rainbow with me for a good 15 minutes straight. He was unbelievably proud and passionate about the work he did on that show, and so I'm very pleased to see this video today.
There are various markets around the world that people trade in, and you are bound by the hours they are open -- unlike most coding activities. For example, someone where I worked had to stay up until 3am to participate in Japanese sovereign bond auctions.
I think New York is great, and I think Tumblr is great, but I think if Tumblr were perhaps in SV, things could have went differently.
For example there is nothing very early stage in New York that wields the respect and track record of YCombinator or SV Angel. Both of those have become institutions in SV and are very important as connectors and seed stage investors.
The Stanford ecosystem is another example that is well oiled. The Cornell Tech campus in NYC has tons of potential, but it's still quite new.
SV: Largest exit so far 2014: WhatsApp: 19B
NY: Top 5 exits since 2009: Tumblr: 1.1B Indeed: 1.0B Buddy Media: 745M Shutterstock: 570M Ascend Health: 500M
Not sure where the parody or detachment from reality factors in.
Also, pg has mentioned something similar in an essay before - not specifically re: NYC but with regards to bad location in general.
My co-founder Adrian asked the AirBnB founders that question believe it or not! They said they always planned on staying in SF and that's where the heart of the company was. New York was just where it took off first and they thought that if they could nail the model there, they could do it anywhere. Turns out they were right.
It felt far away from it when I was there, but I believe it could become more ingrained with time though. I think it's very clear that there are great investors (USV is world class) and companies/founders at various stages (eg. Kickstarter, RapGenius) in New York, but there's still a bunch of missing pieces in the ecosystem that SV has nailed down.
The difference between NYC and the Valley was unclear to me when I lived in New York, but after spending just a few months out west, it became very apparent to me that there is an order of magnitude difference between the two -- and I believe that will translate into an increased chance of success.
There are lots of reasons that New York just doesn't compete with SV, mostly to do with people and networking, but the difference that really struck me was the openness and positivity in the Valley. Yes there's an echo chamber, and yes you need to keep your BS detector on at all times, but when you are just 3 or 4 people trying to crack into a behemoth of an industry you need all the help you can get. I felt lots of people in New York were looking for weaknesses in what we were doing or trying to figure out who would acquire us, whereas people in the Valley were looking for ways to help us really succeed.
The combined operating experience is not only greater in the Valley, but much more accessible too. I felt like larger companies like Tumblr and Foursquare were silo'd off from everyone else, whereas you can barely shake a stick in Mountain View without hitting someone at Google.
Personally, I believe New York is the greatest city in the world and due to it's culture and array of experiences, a great place to start a company -- but if you want to build a big tech company, you should move out west. In fact, it's one of YC's indicators of success after going through the program.
As a side note, the closest thing I've seen on the east coast with a similar vibe to the valley is Waterloo, Ontario. Although very, very small, they've somehow captured that same feeling.
If you have no product and no track record, it's definitely worth it.
If you have something working, but growth isn't amazing, it's a risk because there's a chance you don't get the absolute most out of demo day due to timing -- so one might feel what you describe. That said if you blow up later, I'm sure they will do a fantastic job of getting you to the people you'd want to meet with - eg. Homejoy.
But if you come into YC with good growth (like doubling in size every month) it is without a doubt one of the smartest things you can do. You will probably never have as much leverage as you get while going through YC.
There's money-driven people everywhere, but if you want to get rich, your best bet isn't to start a company. Work at a hedge fund and work your way up. People makes millions a year. Way easier than starting something. That being said it's also soul sucking and absolutely mindless. Provides little value.
Perhaps there's more to starting company than ecosystem?
Starting company allows you to address a problem directly. Whether that addresses a real problem, or is a cash grab, depends on founders.
Most "good founders" do it because they want to make it real. That articles propagates some kind of wannabe culture as being the real value of starting a company. Which is so lame.
Life is short and starting your own company is way better than being an employee at a big company in my opinion. If you are young you are undervalued.
Obviously it's more nuanced then this comment and not everyone is in a position to start a company or work at a small company, and hell no is it a meritocracy, lots of problems, but damn, do your own thing.
It's important to have a clear pitch, and easy to follow dialogue, but that isn't going to help you make this goal.
Based on your goal, you will likely need to send out hundreds or potentially a thousand personal emails to your first degree connections.
Once you reach around 40% it makes sense to ask those backers to start to band around the project and share it with their friends. After which, 2nd degree and 3rd degree connections start to back the project as well.
A great Facebook hack is to make an event with the end of the campaign and invite all of your friends.
The reality is, you can still make it happen but it takes a lot of work and you need to really want it. That or find one really big backer.
From publicly available sources it's very clear that one of the two companies you listed has many more investors than a16z.
From the short conversations and limited interactions I've had with each of them plus Sam's actions since becoming president (eg http://blog.samaltman.com/what-ive-learned-from-female-found... and his recent RFS for breakthrough technologies) it seems to me that their leadership styles are very, very different.
If you're interested in the prison industrial complex, the very same Shane Bauer is using my site, Beacon, to crowdfund an entire year of in depth, independent, and ad-free reporting on the prison system in America.
http://www.beaconreader.com/projects/the-prison-problem
You'll directly impact his ability to produce original long form pieces.
In order to hire an immigrant, there's a lot of things you need to be able to prove, and being able to show similar job postings elsewhere is important. But basically, you want the job to look like it's very, very serious because otherwise, why would you hire an immigrant instead of an American?
In reality you don't need to have every single thing on the list, but there are some reasons they are actually written out like that.
Here's it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQnDDKDiSy8
It's 6 minutes in: "If you educated a girl in the developing world, you educate 5 people, because if you educate one girl, on average, she'll educate at least 4 other people through the course of her life."
I feel really bad for not linking it. Thank you so much for the reminder.
What was really special is that people there were actually giving useful, practical advice instead of just telling the story of their company. There was no bravado, no bullshit, and it sounded like the speakers actually wanted to help people in the audience and pass on advice instead of promoting their companies.
Oh and the segment on fundraising was probably the most useful and forward talk on fundraising I have ever listened to in terms of practical advice.
There's a statistic - Ben Horowitz used it in a talk once - that on average an educated woman will educate at least 4 other people in their lifetime, whereas you're lucky if a man educates one. I felt like this really rung through as I was watching this.
You should watch the stream of the conference if you haven't.
If you know anyone who would help kick this off/make it worth while, I would love to talk more.