4 ms·
Ask PG: Please reply here or write an essay on:
1. how you feel after successfully helping/mentoring/funding 80 companies?
2. What is the secret of YC's success and the success of YC funded companies?
3. How did you came up with YC business model?
4. What is the most important thing you think companies/founders get from your program? (i know most of them will say VC connection, demo day, mentoring etc. but is it anything else that we are not seeing?)
and finally
5. what advise would you give to the people who wants to replicate your model (as there are few clones already) not to make money but to help grow the spirit of entrepreneurship, employment and innovation?
Pg, your reply/essay will go long way to help - because I think if there are more YCs then there are more successful startups, more startups will bring more jobs in the market, there will be more innovation and it help directly and in-directly the whole economy (especially to the third world countries who might implement your model to get balls rolling).
- jraines 18y agoAsk PG: please make me a sandwich. Edit: In all seriousness, you can probably find answers to most of these in his existing essays.
- rms 18y agosudo Ask PG: please make me a sandwich.
- immad 18y agoKinda demanding, especially since you are saying the purpose of the information is to help YC competitors.
- ideas101 18y agoYC competitors will fail if they don't have honest soul to help others to grow. Also YC model looks easy from outside but if you try to know the nity-gritty of their business model then you will realize that its a hard work and the passion behind it has to be genuine otherwise there would have been hundreds of clones all over world. I see YC as a social entrepreneurship than just a money making machine and hence if Pg can share something that can help other entrepreneurs and countries then it would be like an adding jewel to his legacy crown.
- nostrademons 18y ago"Benevolent" != "do all the work for your competitors". Besides, if you're not smart enough to figure out how to improve on the YC model on your own, why should entrepreneurs come to you for advice?
- euccastro 18y agoBecause he's smart enough to ask?
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- redorb 18y agoprobably too self serving for PG, along with all the other reasons
- sbt 18y agoReading the essays will answer the meaningful questions here.
- jrockway 18y agoCan we "pls" leave the expression "pls" on Reddit and Digg?
- stcredzero 18y agoI started with Slashdot, got disillusioned, then went over to Digg, then Reddit, and now I'm here and have a better appreciation for Slashdot. This experience prompts me to formulate a law: When you start wishing social news site X won't become like social news site Y, it's probably inevitable at that point.
- jrockway 18y agoSlashdot went bad differently than Digg and Reddit. Digg and Reddit went bad by appealing to too many people, and making commenting too easy. Slashdot is bad because people post the same fucking diatribes over and over. I guess this happens on Reddit and Digg too, but to a lesser extent. You could roll Slashdot back to 1999 and it would be the same people with the same views talking about the same thing. We get your point, enough already :) Oh well, at least there's still Lambda The Ultimate.
- apgwoz 18y ago> Oh well, at least there's still Lambda The Ultimate. Sssshhhh! The others will hear you.
- nostrademons 18y agoL:tU is scary enough that most of the unwashed masses take a look at it and then go away. They've done a really good job at keeping the bar high.
- michael_dorfman 18y ago"You could roll Slashdot back to 1999 and it would be the same people with the same views talking about the same thing. We get your point, enough already :)" 1) Roll Slashdot back to 1999 2) ?????????????? 3) Profit!
- pg 18y ago1. A lot more experienced. Before YC, the only startups I knew about were the ones started by me and by friends. Now I know which of their qualities were essential to their success, and which were incidental. 2. This answer will sound useless, but it's the same reason anyone is good at anything. There's no single secret. There are about 20 different things we have to do, from recognizing talent to talking about product ideas to matching people up with VCs, and we try hard to do them all well. 3. By accident. When we first started YC, we didn't know what to do, so we started with a summer program. Most college students regard summer jobs as disposable anyway, so we figured no one would mind if the experiment was a disaster and all the companies failed. As it turned out, that batch did remarkably well. 4. This one I already did write about: http://ycombinator.com/about.html http://ycombinator.com/about.html 5. That it's not as easy as it looks. A lot of people think investing is like betting on horses: you pick, they race, and if they win you get money. Actually it is a lot more active than that. And the earlier the stage, the more work it is. If you want to invest at this stage, you need to have the same qualities you'd need to be a successful founder.
- ph0rque 18y agofollow-up question to #1: which qualities are successful to the startup's success? I've read essays where you say determination is more important than intelligence; would you add anything else to that?
- pg 18y agoDetermination, solid friendship between the founders, flexibility, intelligence, honesty, design sense, experience, in that order.
- wumi 18y agofunny how most commenters strike down the person for asking, yet PG actually replies to 4/5 questions. why not either a) try to answer the questions or b) let PG answer them, because he seemed pretty willing.
- menloparkbum 18y agoPart of 2) is that YC has made raising (seed) capital like applying to college, something that most people just coming out of college already know how to do. Previously it involved meeting rich people and smooth talking them out of their money, something that very few people just coming out of college know how to do.