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"... the top one I would have wanted to invest in had I been in a position to do so ..." hindsight is 20/20

by tintor 9y ago

SwellJoe 9y ago
Yeah, that's true. But, my foresight was pretty spot on about Weebly, too. I think the first time I said basically the same thing here on HN was in 2007 while we were still in YC together (and, multiple times since then). Certainly by 2008, I'd said it a few times in public places. Edit: Here's a few... 2008: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=352445 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=352445 2008: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=216633 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=216633 2007: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37589 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37589
- da02 9y ago
  How did you find these links? Google? Or did you write your own search app?
  - SwellJoe 9y ago
    There are several HN search implementations. I happened to use: https://hn.algolia.com/ https://hn.algolia.com/ But, Google would work with the `site:news.ycombinator.com` feature.
- ec109685 9y ago
  You really nailed your Facebook prediction though ;)
  - SwellJoe 9y ago
    Yeah, but lots of people predicted facebook's success at that point in time. I think the person I responded to was very much in the minority in thinking facebook wouldn't be able to ring the cash register when the time came. I'm more pleased to have been right about Weebly. They weren't necessarily the hottest company from our batch with investors at the time, and they weren't the odds-on favorite to be among the biggest YC exits. There have been, what, maybe a half dozen bigger exits in all of YC history, thus far, if that many? I haven't really kept up with YC companies that I don't know personally, and I'd guess that in five-to-ten years this may seem like a quaintly small exit by YC standards, but for now, that's a lot of money. I liked them based on their execution and pragmatism, not on their credentials or merely being smart (everybody in YC was wicked smart...it's the first time I'd been in a room where I was pretty confident that most of the folks in it were smarter than me), and I think investors may have been occasionally looking first at the companies out of Stanford/MIT/CMU/etc. I doubt they had trouble raising money but I never recalled them being widespread favorites among the Valley's cognoscenti either.

"... the top one I would have wanted to invest in had I been in a position to do so ..." hindsight is 20/20

by tintor 9y ago

"... the top one I would have wanted to invest in had I been in a position to do so ..." hindsight is 20/20

Yeah, that's true. But, my foresight was pretty spot on about Weebly, too. I think the first time I said basically the same thing here on HN was in 2007 while we were still in YC together (and, multiple times since then). Certainly by 2008, I'd said it a few times in public places. Edit: Here's a few... 2008: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=352445 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=352445 2008: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=216633 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=216633 2007: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37589 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37589

da02 9y ago
How did you find these links? Google? Or did you write your own search app?
- SwellJoe 9y ago
  There are several HN search implementations. I happened to use: https://hn.algolia.com/ https://hn.algolia.com/ But, Google would work with the `site:news.ycombinator.com` feature.
ec109685 9y ago
You really nailed your Facebook prediction though ;)
- SwellJoe 9y ago
  Yeah, but lots of people predicted facebook's success at that point in time. I think the person I responded to was very much in the minority in thinking facebook wouldn't be able to ring the cash register when the time came. I'm more pleased to have been right about Weebly. They weren't necessarily the hottest company from our batch with investors at the time, and they weren't the odds-on favorite to be among the biggest YC exits. There have been, what, maybe a half dozen bigger exits in all of YC history, thus far, if that many? I haven't really kept up with YC companies that I don't know personally, and I'd guess that in five-to-ten years this may seem like a quaintly small exit by YC standards, but for now, that's a lot of money. I liked them based on their execution and pragmatism, not on their credentials or merely being smart (everybody in YC was wicked smart...it's the first time I'd been in a room where I was pretty confident that most of the folks in it were smarter than me), and I think investors may have been occasionally looking first at the companies out of Stanford/MIT/CMU/etc. I doubt they had trouble raising money but I never recalled them being widespread favorites among the Valley's cognoscenti either.