4 ms·

"People" may pay lip service to remote work, but YC as far as I can tell were never ambiguous in their belief that being physically in SV is important for succe

"People" may pay lip service to remote work, but YC as far as I can tell were never ambiguous in their belief that being physically in SV is important for success.

aswanson 9y ago
I used to be skeptical of that idea, but the data seems incontrovertible, at least in terms of web startups.
- cookiecaper 9y ago
  I would suggest, just based on my intuition and no data (if you want to provide the data you're referencing, that'd be great), that this may be conflating correlation with causation. Successful web startups are based in SV because to be a successful web startup, you need LOTS of money to burn on marketing and promotion. To get lots of money to burn, you must get investors with the appetite for watching their money burn up. Those investors have built out SV as their nexus not due to any magical qualities of the place, but primarily for personal convenience (traveling sucks, etc.). The VCs in not-SV do not allow startups to run anywhere near the same way as the SV guys do, despite their attempts to imitate the YC model (most of which are, IMO, outright fleeces on naive locals). Non-SV VCs are just used to doing much more traditional deals, not seed-stage tech financing. The people who want to start VC-backed companies thus have to trek out to SV, and then once they're established, they stick around because that's convenient for them too. If you can decouple from the VC ecosystem, or if you can find good local VCs that know the field (and you probably can't), there is every reason to NOT start in SV.
cookiecaper 9y ago
YC has YC Fellowship, which doesn't require startups to be located in SV. YC also used to maintain an official program in Cambridge, but they shut it down after a few years IIRC. Everything YC does should be viewed through the reality that YC is an investor. Their interests are not necessarily aligned with the interests of founders, and as the party with the leverage, they can mandate that people move to SV solely based on their personal convenience. I personally see starting in SV as more of a detriment than a benefit, but then, I'm not trying to start a company that depends on venture capital. In non-SV locations where I know some startup people, VC-backed startups would routinely fly out to SV for pitches and the like, and many had an easy time finding investors after being roundly rejected by the VCs in their particular area. Investors really don't seem to realize the treasure trove that could be available to them if they broadened their horizons a little bit, but maybe that's because there's really no incentive for them to disrupt what they have going on now. Everything is quite convenient for them with SV as the nexus.
- tedmiston 9y ago
  They folded YC Fellowship last year. In some sense they replaced it with the MOOC but the programs look pretty different. Also, there are plenty of investors that realize this, you just have to look for them. For example, Drive Capital in Columbus, OH was founded by ex-Sequoia in 2013 and has raised over $500M since.

"People" may pay lip service to remote work, but YC as far as I can tell were never ambiguous in their belief that being physically in SV is important for success.

aswanson 9y ago

I used to be skeptical of that idea, but the data seems incontrovertible, at least in terms of web startups.

cookiecaper 9y ago
I would suggest, just based on my intuition and no data (if you want to provide the data you're referencing, that'd be great), that this may be conflating correlation with causation. Successful web startups are based in SV because to be a successful web startup, you need LOTS of money to burn on marketing and promotion. To get lots of money to burn, you must get investors with the appetite for watching their money burn up. Those investors have built out SV as their nexus not due to any magical qualities of the place, but primarily for personal convenience (traveling sucks, etc.). The VCs in not-SV do not allow startups to run anywhere near the same way as the SV guys do, despite their attempts to imitate the YC model (most of which are, IMO, outright fleeces on naive locals). Non-SV VCs are just used to doing much more traditional deals, not seed-stage tech financing. The people who want to start VC-backed companies thus have to trek out to SV, and then once they're established, they stick around because that's convenient for them too. If you can decouple from the VC ecosystem, or if you can find good local VCs that know the field (and you probably can't), there is every reason to NOT start in SV.

cookiecaper 9y ago

YC has YC Fellowship, which doesn't require startups to be located in SV. YC also used to maintain an official program in Cambridge, but they shut it down after a few years IIRC. Everything YC does should be viewed through the reality that YC is an investor. Their interests are not necessarily aligned with the interests of founders, and as the party with the leverage, they can mandate that people move to SV solely based on their personal convenience. I personally see starting in SV as more of a detriment than a benefit, but then, I'm not trying to start a company that depends on venture capital. In non-SV locations where I know some startup people, VC-backed startups would routinely fly out to SV for pitches and the like, and many had an easy time finding investors after being roundly rejected by the VCs in their particular area. Investors really don't seem to realize the treasure trove that could be available to them if they broadened their horizons a little bit, but maybe that's because there's really no incentive for them to disrupt what they have going on now. Everything is quite convenient for them with SV as the nexus.

tedmiston 9y ago
They folded YC Fellowship last year. In some sense they replaced it with the MOOC but the programs look pretty different. Also, there are plenty of investors that realize this, you just have to look for them. For example, Drive Capital in Columbus, OH was founded by ex-Sequoia in 2013 and has raised over $500M since.