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That vastly depends on the kind of company though. Most YC startups especially are about automating some sort of inefficency in the real world (see: paper based

That vastly depends on the kind of company though. Most YC startups especially are about automating some sort of inefficency in the real world (see: paper based workflows). I know YC is getting in to hardware and other areas, but most startups they are likely to fund are going to be an efficiency play. It's what they know best statistically. Moonshots seem like they would go through YC research. There are exceptions to this rule like Boom which was in my batch. By definition many startups aren't actually about "tech". Yes as companies grow they will have mild scaling problems, but what determines whether users stay or not ends up being design or a big focus on a problem being solved. The one caveat I would mention here would be infrastructure startups (disclaimer: I run one and am therefore highly biased) where you have things like databases,containers,AI platforms,.. where the technology vision matters in terms of appealing to a technical user base or where merits are based on the technology solving a real problem. That being said - even something as "hard" as an AI startup: The model building isn't even the bulk of the work, after you build that it's mainly about UX, which firmly puts them in the same bucket as most other kinds of companies, even to the point of these companies just "adding AI" so they can raise some money. That being said: Statistically startups are hard enough as it is, and the bulk of them to be efficient businesses are mostly going to fall in to the bucket I just described: using a bit of software to make a process in the real world more efficient.

tedmiston 10y ago
> The one caveat I would mention here would be infrastructure startups (disclaimer: I run one and am therefore highly biased) where you have things like databases,containers,AI platforms,.. where the technology vision matters in terms of appealing to a technical user base or where merits are based on the technology solving a real problem. Lately I've also heard these called tech-first startups (disclosure: I do contracted dev work for one). At first I thought it was a redundant, unnecessary label, but given your contrast to efficiency play style startups, it feels like a useful and concise descriptor.
- agibsonccc 10y ago
  I'm mainly aware of this distinction because of a unique problem with AI startups. Technically an AI platform and an AI product company (we call this vertical specific) are both "AI startups". There is a larger trend in the industry that typically these "platform" companies are a solution looking for a problem (this is often the case). These companies are typically SAAS and get acquired. What you see more of now a days are AI "product" companies focused on a particular problem like say: sales ops. The "platform" people seem to have moved on to "chat bots" now. It seems like the same trend will play out though: "chat bots" for specific verticals. That being said: As a founder of a startup that somewhat bucked this trend (focusing on an oracle type business model in various markets rather than SAAS and selling to developers) we focus mainly on a few key areas to make money. The way we do this is "core technology" bundled with some sort of an "app", in our case being fraud detection solutions with a "land and expand" type approach. The thesis is we can see some of the benefits of being a tech-first startup (lock in and broad usage) but keep focused like a product company would be.

tedmiston 10y ago

> The one caveat I would mention here would be infrastructure startups (disclaimer: I run one and am therefore highly biased) where you have things like databases,containers,AI platforms,.. where the technology vision matters in terms of appealing to a technical user base or where merits are based on the technology solving a real problem. Lately I've also heard these called tech-first startups (disclosure: I do contracted dev work for one). At first I thought it was a redundant, unnecessary label, but given your contrast to efficiency play style startups, it feels like a useful and concise descriptor.

agibsonccc 10y ago
I'm mainly aware of this distinction because of a unique problem with AI startups. Technically an AI platform and an AI product company (we call this vertical specific) are both "AI startups". There is a larger trend in the industry that typically these "platform" companies are a solution looking for a problem (this is often the case). These companies are typically SAAS and get acquired. What you see more of now a days are AI "product" companies focused on a particular problem like say: sales ops. The "platform" people seem to have moved on to "chat bots" now. It seems like the same trend will play out though: "chat bots" for specific verticals. That being said: As a founder of a startup that somewhat bucked this trend (focusing on an oracle type business model in various markets rather than SAAS and selling to developers) we focus mainly on a few key areas to make money. The way we do this is "core technology" bundled with some sort of an "app", in our case being fraud detection solutions with a "land and expand" type approach. The thesis is we can see some of the benefits of being a tech-first startup (lock in and broad usage) but keep focused like a product company would be.