5 ms·

Is YC deliberately underfunded?

by xirium 19y ago

pg 19y ago
Yes, actually it extends even to that. Part of the reason we're not interested in taking outside investment is that we worry if we had a lot of money it might harm more than help us.
- ubudesign 19y ago
  it might be a good idea if you guys brought in more people on the business side? that's what developers realy need.
  - deleted 19y ago
    [deleted]
  - pg 19y ago
    Maybe one day. We've thought that one day, if we get big enough, we might get an in-house investment banker to beat on acquirers. Some acquirers' M&A groups are not very nice people. YC founders, who generally are nice people, are sometimes at a disadvantage. It would be handy to have a thug on call that they could send in against the acquirers' thugs.
- ubudesign 19y ago
  who is giving negative points without even adding their own comments? It was a question/comment and if you realy think about it developers do need people that understand business as well.
  - dcurtis 19y ago
    The awesomeness of YC comes from the fame/experience of the founders. Adding people will dilute the awesomeness, thus lowering the overall success of YC companies... presumably.
    - ubudesign 19y ago
      that doesn't even make any sense. if they are awesome then bring in more awesome people. or do you think that too many awesome people would make yc less awesome. "awesome" by the way your word not mine.
  - DaniFong 19y ago
    The prevailing wisdom around these parts is that, while hackers do need someone with business sense to build a business well, hackers are basically smart enough to acquire said experience. Having both the skill to build something and the wisdom to know what to build in the mind of a single person is much stronger than having 'business people' and 'developers'. Also, YC is less concerned with developers in general; they pretty much have the pick of a self selected lot that's already pretty entrepreneurial, so adding a business person to the mix doesn't really tend to help all that much.
    - ubudesign 19y ago
      "the wisdom to know what to build in the mind of a single person is much stronger than having 'business people" I completely agree. Infact I am a single person and can deal with both parts. But this idea is in conflict with what YC has said: "We're reluctant to accept one-person companies, though we have funded a couple." my comment was from my perspective not a vc. Of course when I put efforts on the business side of things I feel I am as effective as doing the development. But as someone looking at a VC as an option instead of self funding, I think that I could reduce my efforts on the business side and do more on development. The original comment was "we worry if we had a lot of money..." my question/comment was if more money is bad then offer more expertise.
      - DaniFong 19y ago
        PG explicitly gave justification for this: "Ideally you want between two and four founders. It would be hard to start with just one. One person would find the moral weight of starting a company hard to bear. Even Bill Gates, who seems to be able to bear a good deal of moral weight, had to have a co-founder." That does seem to be true. But I wouldn't think that implies a need for specialization, nor that it would help. For further comments on the subject, Philip Greenspun has written substantially about how small teams of two or three consultants handling everything associated with a project would outperform, in terms of time, money, quality, and customer and consultant satisfaction, more specialized, supported teams. That's contingent upon picking the right people, and training them the right way: communicating the right values, building up a well rounded skill set, getting people thinking about the customer and how to them to pay for stuff. When VC's took over and the structure was rearranged to encompass business specialists, and hr experts and so on, the company rapidly collapsed. There were other factors too: Joel Spolsky writes that the consulting market collapsed in general, but ArsDigita had big customers, which actually didn't go away, they just started doing things in house because ArsDigita got worse. He explains some of this in the following link: http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail94.html http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail94.html

Is YC deliberately underfunded?

by xirium 19y ago

Is YC deliberately underfunded?

pg 19y ago

Yes, actually it extends even to that. Part of the reason we're not interested in taking outside investment is that we worry if we had a lot of money it might harm more than help us.

ubudesign 19y ago
it might be a good idea if you guys brought in more people on the business side? that's what developers realy need.
- deleted 19y ago
  [deleted]
- pg 19y ago
  Maybe one day. We've thought that one day, if we get big enough, we might get an in-house investment banker to beat on acquirers. Some acquirers' M&A groups are not very nice people. YC founders, who generally are nice people, are sometimes at a disadvantage. It would be handy to have a thug on call that they could send in against the acquirers' thugs.
ubudesign 19y ago
who is giving negative points without even adding their own comments? It was a question/comment and if you realy think about it developers do need people that understand business as well.
- dcurtis 19y ago
  The awesomeness of YC comes from the fame/experience of the founders. Adding people will dilute the awesomeness, thus lowering the overall success of YC companies... presumably.
  - ubudesign 19y ago
    that doesn't even make any sense. if they are awesome then bring in more awesome people. or do you think that too many awesome people would make yc less awesome. "awesome" by the way your word not mine.
- DaniFong 19y ago
  The prevailing wisdom around these parts is that, while hackers do need someone with business sense to build a business well, hackers are basically smart enough to acquire said experience. Having both the skill to build something and the wisdom to know what to build in the mind of a single person is much stronger than having 'business people' and 'developers'. Also, YC is less concerned with developers in general; they pretty much have the pick of a self selected lot that's already pretty entrepreneurial, so adding a business person to the mix doesn't really tend to help all that much.
  - ubudesign 19y ago
    "the wisdom to know what to build in the mind of a single person is much stronger than having 'business people" I completely agree. Infact I am a single person and can deal with both parts. But this idea is in conflict with what YC has said: "We're reluctant to accept one-person companies, though we have funded a couple." my comment was from my perspective not a vc. Of course when I put efforts on the business side of things I feel I am as effective as doing the development. But as someone looking at a VC as an option instead of self funding, I think that I could reduce my efforts on the business side and do more on development. The original comment was "we worry if we had a lot of money..." my question/comment was if more money is bad then offer more expertise.
    - DaniFong 19y ago
      PG explicitly gave justification for this: "Ideally you want between two and four founders. It would be hard to start with just one. One person would find the moral weight of starting a company hard to bear. Even Bill Gates, who seems to be able to bear a good deal of moral weight, had to have a co-founder." That does seem to be true. But I wouldn't think that implies a need for specialization, nor that it would help. For further comments on the subject, Philip Greenspun has written substantially about how small teams of two or three consultants handling everything associated with a project would outperform, in terms of time, money, quality, and customer and consultant satisfaction, more specialized, supported teams. That's contingent upon picking the right people, and training them the right way: communicating the right values, building up a well rounded skill set, getting people thinking about the customer and how to them to pay for stuff. When VC's took over and the structure was rearranged to encompass business specialists, and hr experts and so on, the company rapidly collapsed. There were other factors too: Joel Spolsky writes that the consulting market collapsed in general, but ArsDigita had big customers, which actually didn't go away, they just started doing things in house because ArsDigita got worse. He explains some of this in the following link: http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail94.html http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail94.html