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Reid Hoffman makes clear like I suspected that SV power players are skeptical about Sam Altman. YC is becoming Jack of all trades master of none. Jury is still

Reid Hoffman makes clear like I suspected that SV power players are skeptical about Sam Altman. YC is becoming Jack of all trades master of none. Jury is still out on YC under Sam's leadership. By 2020 I think we'll start to see the wheels fall off.

n72 10y ago
It does seem there's a lot of flailing around. As someone mentioned, this http://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/ http://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/ went from 6 under Graham to 21 under Altman. Altman mentions laser like focus at time when referring to how startups should function. The same doesn't go for YC? It's really easy to get fame and plaudits by associating yourself with a cornucopia of big ideas, it's a lot harder to actually follow through.
- snarf 10y ago
  While I respect that they claim not to be about accumulating wealth (and it does feel as if this is genuinely true compared to more traditional VCs), this looks a bit like the Google X of VC. I suspect that they have generated enough returns from their seed investments that they no longer have outside LPs for a lot of the stuff they do, allowing them to freely pursue off the wall ideas (the exception here is probably their continuity fund). I'm not sure how sustainable this is in the long term. They would have to keep churning out Airbnbs, which is not guaranteed.
- anondon 10y ago
  > Altman mentions laser like focus at time when referring to how startups should function. The same doesn't go for YC? It does. Sam mentioned in an interview (can't remember which one) he sees YC as a meta company, like Alphabet. So it makes sense to broaden the type of companies YC is interested in. Note that YC itself is not directly working to solve the problems mentioned in the RFS. They are funding companies that solve them. So the laser like focus exists at the individual startup. TL;DR It makes sense to expand focus, being a meta company.
flylib 10y ago
the facts on the ground don't support your theory, Reid is one of the people helping fund OpenAI (Sam is one of the founders) more that he is pissed that the YC Continuity fund is starting to compete with him on deals at Greylock which the article alluded to that it's a threat to other VC's

n72 10y ago

It does seem there's a lot of flailing around. As someone mentioned, this http://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/ http://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/ went from 6 under Graham to 21 under Altman. Altman mentions laser like focus at time when referring to how startups should function. The same doesn't go for YC? It's really easy to get fame and plaudits by associating yourself with a cornucopia of big ideas, it's a lot harder to actually follow through.

snarf 10y ago
While I respect that they claim not to be about accumulating wealth (and it does feel as if this is genuinely true compared to more traditional VCs), this looks a bit like the Google X of VC. I suspect that they have generated enough returns from their seed investments that they no longer have outside LPs for a lot of the stuff they do, allowing them to freely pursue off the wall ideas (the exception here is probably their continuity fund). I'm not sure how sustainable this is in the long term. They would have to keep churning out Airbnbs, which is not guaranteed.
anondon 10y ago
> Altman mentions laser like focus at time when referring to how startups should function. The same doesn't go for YC? It does. Sam mentioned in an interview (can't remember which one) he sees YC as a meta company, like Alphabet. So it makes sense to broaden the type of companies YC is interested in. Note that YC itself is not directly working to solve the problems mentioned in the RFS. They are funding companies that solve them. So the laser like focus exists at the individual startup. TL;DR It makes sense to expand focus, being a meta company.

flylib 10y ago

the facts on the ground don't support your theory, Reid is one of the people helping fund OpenAI (Sam is one of the founders) more that he is pissed that the YC Continuity fund is starting to compete with him on deals at Greylock which the article alluded to that it's a threat to other VC's