3 ms·
It appears to me that almost all companies theoretically have a chance of growing that big. You never know what area they'll pivot into and if they'll find unex
by thegeomaster 8y ago
It appears to me that almost all companies theoretically have a chance of growing that big. You never know what area they'll pivot into and if they'll find unexpected growth along the way. And so I think that there wouldn't be YCombinator's top 10% without the long tail of lesser-valued (and even longer tail of failed) startups. A lot of it comes down to the people who run them and pure chance. So it doesn't make much sense to say that a startup will not be worth $SOME_VALUATION at some indeterminate point in the future. We see these 180° changes a lot when looking at successful companies in retrospect, and they can deliver order of magnitude differences in market cap.
Of course, if you're not building a startup but an "ordinary", self-sustainable company (37Signals is a widely known example), then VCs and YCombinator are not for you. But that kind of follows from the definition.