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YC Updates and Additions
- jacquesm 11y agoYC is well into 'org chart' territory by now.
- sama 11y agoYeah clarifying responsibilities is just horrible. Jumped the shark!
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- mikeg8 11y agoHey Sam, I think it would be beneficial to explain these different areas of YC a bit clearer on the website as right now everything still seems very focused on core. Just a suggestion.
- sama 11y agoWe're working on a new web site!
- jacquesm 11y ago:) I used to be able to place most or even all of you on a mental map but I really lost track. Keep at it, you're doing great! How long until the 1,000th YC company? (silly base 10 sentiment, but still it would be quite a milestone)
- joshmlewis 11y agoI believe Sam tweeted they funded their 1,000th company during interviews in November.
- jacquesm 11y agoYou are correct: https://twitter.com/sama/status/664484490060795904 https://twitter.com/sama/status/664484490060795904 Wow. I remember the 500 mark and how long that took. I thought it would happen in 2016, very surprised the milestone is already passed.
- andygcook 11y agoDoes YC use Slack? If so, we just launched Tettra into beta this week. It's a company wiki built on top of Slack - http://tettra.co http://tettra.co Might help to clarify some of those "who owns what" questions by putting them into a wiki that everyone at YC has access to via Slack. We're working on a bot to automate the updating of content too. I'm sure you already have something internally for a wiki at YC but thought I'd post here just in case it helps.
- neurotech1 11y agoI remembered reading that Tesla CTO, JB Straubel commented that he understands 90% of the processes at Tesla. If an organization is so complex that the CTO & CEO are unable to effectively understand the business processes, then that would be a problem. I guess one measure for YC and the funded companies, is when major mistakes get repeated because the solution is not communicated to startups requesting advice.
- applecore 11y agoI'm coining a new term for this: Alphabetizing.
- sama 11y ago"Integers" is probably better. 26 might not be enough for us :)
- salimmadjd 11y ago"Characterizing", there are plenty of Chinese characters.
- SeoxyS 11y agoYou could always pull an Excel and roll over with AA AB, etc.
- nostrademons 11y agoStill integers, just in base-26.
- evanb 11y agoA very pythagorean stance. All is number, indeed.
- pcmaffey 11y agoLong way to go from 5 to 26. What else is in the works? ;)
- chimeracoder 11y ago> I'm coining a new term for this from now: Alphabetizing. Having conglomerate and/or parent corporations to organize the different goals of a company is nothing new, even in the world of startups. If anything, it's surprising that Google didn't make the change earlier, given how unrelated many of their projects are (self-driving cars, search, and mobile operating systems, just to name three).
- jayzalowitz 11y agoMinor nitpicky editorial: Perhaps put specifically what you manage as a parenthetical around "investment programs" as it may not be clear to a lot of people.
- sama 11y agoGood point, added clarification.
- jrometty 11y agoThis is awesome. Where can I learn more about YCR? That's the slice of YC I'm most excited about :)
- mattkrisiloff 11y agoOpenAI is our first supported work! openai.com
- jrometty 11y agothanks!
- yk 11y agoYCR sounds really intriguing, a bit more information would be very interesting indeed.
- kumarski 11y agoGrowing growing.... wow. Hoping some biochemists and petroleum engineers added to the team. Would make YC very all-encompassing. Physics+EECS seem plentiful. Biochem/pharma/subsea-hydrology seem to be only areas lacking in expertise.
- adenadel 11y agoHi Sam, this isn't really the place for this, but I was late to the party during your AMA a couple months ago and you weren't around when I asked my question. I'm reposting it here in hopes that you'll see it. A few weeks ago I submitted this article https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10213547 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10213547 about one of Peter Thiel's biotech investments and the top comment asked "How does someone very intelligent like Peter Thiel make investment decisions in an area where he lacks a huge amount of background knowledge?". I'm curious how you personally and YC as a whole goes about making investments in areas where you don't have great expertise. For example, how do you evaluate biotech markets and the YC biotech companies? How did you evaluate your energy investments?
- sama 11y ago1) Build a network of experts you can rely on for evaluation 2) A lot of what makes a startup good or bad translates across different domains, so even if you can't evaluate the technology yourself, you can still evaluate other things (e.g. how well the founders communicate, how quickly they get things done, etc.)
- pbreit 11y agoI'd like to see some energy spent on trying to get the hit rate higher. I'm sorry to see the 5% or 10% hit rate become conventional wisdom in venture land (outside of obvious moonshots). Companies going through YC have enormous resources and I think we should hope for a higher percentage of "hits". I know, easier said than done.
- sama 11y agoThere is real danger in aiming for that. The way to make the hit rate higher is to fund safer bets, which are usually not what generate the giant returns. I'd like to the "slugging percentage" be higher, but I think the hit rate is perhaps already too high.
- jonas21 11y agoThis thread sums up the inherent conflict between investors and founders.
- oldmanjay 11y agoIt seems more like the inherent conflict between ideas and good, executable ideas.
- paul 11y agoTaking fewer risks and only investing in "sure things" is in neither our interests nor the founders. The "safe" option is to not fund them at all, like a bank or other conservative organization would.
- danieltillett 11y agoPaul are you concerned that by only funding companies that can hit the ball out of the park that you are biasing the sort of businesses that the smart founders are creating? Assuming smart founders know what sort of businesses will get VC funded then only the second tier founders will build businesses that not going for a moonshot. This is obviously going to bias the final outcome. Do you think that if a business like YC were to commit to funding "safe" options that good founders would create safe businesses that could achieve returns in aggregate that would rival the high risk / high failure model?
- YogeeKnows 11y agoThis post could have been a nice visual before and after org chart.
- staunch 11y agoSilicon Valley is dominated by a few big tech companies that hire tens of thousands of employees they don't really need, in large part just to keep them out of the hands of a competitor. With Alphabet, Inc., Google is in the process of decentralizing itself into a version of YC. They're essentially VCs now. At some point someone (maybe Alphabet) is going copy the YC model effectively and scale it up to tens of thousands of startups. It's just too damn profitable and efficient to not become the standard way Silicon Valley works. It would be neat if in a few years all the big tech companies are basically YC alternatives and most people work for a small startup that actually makes something.
- mayank 11y agoAlphabet companies are more like business units, with all the associated bureaucracy and overhead, than startups. Think more GE than YC.
- staunch 11y agoIt's convenient if Wall Street views it that way because then it's not scary ("It's just like GE!"). But Calico was never related to Google, and it's the startup they mention as the model example. Larry Page's full-time job is investing in companies and managing his portfolio. He's a VC. The only real question is how far he goes, and he tends to go pretty far.
- tptacek 11y agoThis describes many more companies than Google. If Google really is alphabetizing because they want to be more like a VC, they have a long way to go before they get anywhere close to the level Cisco has been operating at for decades.
- staunch 11y agoIt's a safe bet that Larry Page can move a lot faster than anyone at Cisco.
- 11y ago
- danieltillett 11y agoHas there been anything publicly reported about what happened with the YC Fellowship program?
- kevin 11y agoWe'll be making an announcement very soon about the first batch and changes we'll be making for the future.
- danieltillett 11y agoThanks Kevin. This is a really interesting experiment and I have been very interested to learn what you guys have learned from it.
- rdl 11y agoIs "YC Core" the official name of the main YC program? I'd never heard of it before.
- katm 11y agoYes.
- evincarofautumn 11y agoWhen do you expect to have more information about YC Research? I am interested in applying.
- jaf12duke 11y agoI've been so impressed by the ambitions of YC since sama took over, as well the team that's been built to support it. pg's biggest contribution to YC may be finding sama and giving him the reins.
- auston 11y agoCongrats @paul - big fan of everything I've seen from you.
- fanf2 11y agoWhen I see "update" in a headline from a Silicon Valley business I wonder what or who they are getting rid of. Or is "An update on X" just a Googlism?