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It's only a matter of time before this kind of thinking results in founder suicide. I've read multiple cases where investors, including Y Combinator, forced fou

It's only a matter of time before this kind of thinking results in founder suicide. I've read multiple cases where investors, including Y Combinator, forced founders to pivot, which caused serious mental distress to the founders. If the idea won't work, drop it, and drop the founders too, until their next project can be properly assessed. Dropping a project doesn't mean the founders are bad founders or that they are great founders - it simply means that they realised the limitations of the project. Investors should keep the founders in mind for their next project, but giving them cash and forcing them to pivot is a sure way to disaster. Ideas need time to develop. Tim should be commended for realizing that his product would not work, and dropping it before it caused his team and the investors even more stress. I consider his post a sign of maturity and look forward to hearing about his next project.

dang 10y ago
> I've read multiple cases where investors, including Y Combinator, forced founders to pivot I don't think you should sling this kind of thing around so lightly. It's trivial to post charges like this on the internet and have many people just believe them. But this is a serious thing to say right after you've invoked the idea of suicide, and doesn't remotely resemble anything I've observed at YC. In my observation, YC partners don't "force founders" to do anything; they couldn't anyhow, and they don't think that way in the first place.
- sparkzilla 10y ago
  Here's one Y Combinator founder who spoke out about the continual push to pivot. https://backchannel.com/how-i-f-ed-up-in-ycombinator-35a19e7ace68?hn=1#.7yt9k559a https://backchannel.com/how-i-f-ed-up-in-ycombinator-35a19e7... >The last few weeks of the program are a bit of a blur. My morale plummeted, and my stress skyrocketed. I dreaded going to the weekly dinners, where I would have to talk to my cohort and confirm that no, we hadn’t found an idea yet and yes, we were still super excited about our “company.” I did little else but eat, code and sleep. I felt like everyone else was ready to raise millions, while we were desperately trying to find a product. >Postponing Demo Day was a no-brainer. We didn’t have an idea we believed in, and although we could have cobbled one together and raised some seed funding, we didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want to do that, in part because it seemed disingenuous. But primarily it was because taking half a million dollars of other people’s money would have moved my stress level from unhealthy to crippling. >But skipping Demo Day didn’t fix our lack of conviction. The rapid-fire pivoting continued. Around this time, I started coming to terms with the fact that I was seriously unhappy. For as long as I’ve been interested in startups, I have never wanted to start a company simply for the sake of starting a company. Yet doing things “for the sake of starting a company” was where I found myself, as I scrambled for a plausible idea.I don’t know if this is true for other people, but as a flailing founder I desperately wanted to believe in the startup myth—that success was just over the next ridge, that if we waited a bit longer, or had a slightly better idea, we would suddenly be riding a rocket ship. I hated doubting myself, but I’ve never been good at blind faith. So I decided to leave.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    I read that story and the author's own comments on HN, and they do not support the argument that YC "forced" them to pivot. If anything, they barely knew what they were in YC for in the first place.
    - sparkzilla 10y ago
      Actually, that's my point. They were accepted and told that their product was no good straight away, thus forcing them to pivot. So why were they accepted with a poor product, when other applicants who had stronger ideas were turned away? A selection process that supposedly values the skills of the people over the combination of skills and product will lead to people like this guy not knowing why they were selected, and not being able to handle pivoting. It's something YC should stop doing before it causes real damage.
      - tptacek 10y ago
        You keep saying they were forced to pivot as if you might convince by sheer repetition. They made the choice. They surely didn't have to. For that matter, if they wanted to drop out, they could have. Your argument seems tendentious.
        spearo77 10y ago
        tendentious |tɛnˈdɛnʃəs| adjective expressing or intending to promote a particular cause or point of view, especially a controversial one: a tendentious reading of history.
  - corry 10y ago
    Really hard to read the article and conclude that "YC forced them to pivot". Sounds like things weren't working and YC was honest with them. From the same article: > We went back to PG, and he told us to stop worrying about Demo Day. With the right idea, we’d be working on the company for the next five-plus years. It was foolish to sacrifice the quality of the company to optimize for the next five weeks." Seems like a good long-term view and very reasonable way to look at things... definitely not crazy "pivot-right-now-or-die" pressure.

dang 10y ago

> I've read multiple cases where investors, including Y Combinator, forced founders to pivot I don't think you should sling this kind of thing around so lightly. It's trivial to post charges like this on the internet and have many people just believe them. But this is a serious thing to say right after you've invoked the idea of suicide, and doesn't remotely resemble anything I've observed at YC. In my observation, YC partners don't "force founders" to do anything; they couldn't anyhow, and they don't think that way in the first place.

sparkzilla 10y ago
Here's one Y Combinator founder who spoke out about the continual push to pivot. https://backchannel.com/how-i-f-ed-up-in-ycombinator-35a19e7ace68?hn=1#.7yt9k559a https://backchannel.com/how-i-f-ed-up-in-ycombinator-35a19e7... >The last few weeks of the program are a bit of a blur. My morale plummeted, and my stress skyrocketed. I dreaded going to the weekly dinners, where I would have to talk to my cohort and confirm that no, we hadn’t found an idea yet and yes, we were still super excited about our “company.” I did little else but eat, code and sleep. I felt like everyone else was ready to raise millions, while we were desperately trying to find a product. >Postponing Demo Day was a no-brainer. We didn’t have an idea we believed in, and although we could have cobbled one together and raised some seed funding, we didn’t want to do that. I didn’t want to do that, in part because it seemed disingenuous. But primarily it was because taking half a million dollars of other people’s money would have moved my stress level from unhealthy to crippling. >But skipping Demo Day didn’t fix our lack of conviction. The rapid-fire pivoting continued. Around this time, I started coming to terms with the fact that I was seriously unhappy. For as long as I’ve been interested in startups, I have never wanted to start a company simply for the sake of starting a company. Yet doing things “for the sake of starting a company” was where I found myself, as I scrambled for a plausible idea.I don’t know if this is true for other people, but as a flailing founder I desperately wanted to believe in the startup myth—that success was just over the next ridge, that if we waited a bit longer, or had a slightly better idea, we would suddenly be riding a rocket ship. I hated doubting myself, but I’ve never been good at blind faith. So I decided to leave.
- tptacek 10y ago
  I read that story and the author's own comments on HN, and they do not support the argument that YC "forced" them to pivot. If anything, they barely knew what they were in YC for in the first place.
  - sparkzilla 10y ago
    Actually, that's my point. They were accepted and told that their product was no good straight away, thus forcing them to pivot. So why were they accepted with a poor product, when other applicants who had stronger ideas were turned away? A selection process that supposedly values the skills of the people over the combination of skills and product will lead to people like this guy not knowing why they were selected, and not being able to handle pivoting. It's something YC should stop doing before it causes real damage.
    - tptacek 10y ago
      You keep saying they were forced to pivot as if you might convince by sheer repetition. They made the choice. They surely didn't have to. For that matter, if they wanted to drop out, they could have. Your argument seems tendentious.
      - spearo77 10y ago
        tendentious |tɛnˈdɛnʃəs| adjective expressing or intending to promote a particular cause or point of view, especially a controversial one: a tendentious reading of history.
- corry 10y ago
  Really hard to read the article and conclude that "YC forced them to pivot". Sounds like things weren't working and YC was honest with them. From the same article: > We went back to PG, and he told us to stop worrying about Demo Day. With the right idea, we’d be working on the company for the next five-plus years. It was foolish to sacrifice the quality of the company to optimize for the next five weeks." Seems like a good long-term view and very reasonable way to look at things... definitely not crazy "pivot-right-now-or-die" pressure.