8 ms·

I like YC as much as the next guy, but here's an important question: Why have we never seen a blog post saying that it's not worth it? Even if YC has an extrem

by rriepe 16y ago

I like YC as much as the next guy, but here's an important question: Why have we never seen a blog post saying that it's not worth it? Even if YC has an extremely high satisfaction rate, the sheer number of startups they've funded has to have left at least one with a bad taste in their mouth. I love hearing feedback like this and I almost never get tired of reading this article (especially when it has a good spin to it, like this). I'm just interested to hear a dissenting opinion. (If one is out there, please link me.)

random42 16y ago
Because people do not criticize the alma-mater and mentor, especially as influential as, YC (and by extension PG) in public.
- dariusmonsef 16y ago
  Just my thoughts... I think a lot of the people that have a bad experience did so by their own actions. A lot of people flame out during YC... but that it's because of founder issues, personal issues, legal problems... etc. They just quietly go away.
  - chewb 16y ago
    Likewise, a lot of the greater YC success stories did it mostly by their own actions.
- ig1 16y ago
  Doesn't seem to have stopped people criticizing VC firms.
  - neworbit 16y ago
    VCs are a dime a dozen. YC is a network.
    - ig1 16y ago
      You think there's a dozen Sequoias or DFJs ?
      - jackowayed 16y ago
        Have there been any "Sequoia invested in me and totally fucked me over" posts? I'd guess there have been very few if any.
        ig1 16y ago
        Someone hasn't seen the Facebook movie then :-) My understanding is that the relationship depicted between Sean Parker/Sequoia in the film is pretty close to the reality.
pg 16y ago
Actually it's possible to say when it wouldn't be worth it: http://paulgraham.com/equity.html http://paulgraham.com/equity.html I think the reason we don't often hear about borderline cases is that the market is truncated at the high end by later stage investors, who wouldn't allow the startups they'd funded to participate in YC even if they'd be net ahead as a result. I.e. I've seen more than one series A funded startup that we could have helped sufficiently to justify the dilution. But (as of this writing) no VC would let one of their series A funded companies do YC. As for funding a large number of companies, that's net beneficial as long as we can devote sufficient attention to each one, because it means the alumni network they become part of is larger. And we know we're able to devote sufficient attention to each one because we can measure it in (a) office hour signups (I have office hours this afternoon and there are still open slots) and (b) how well each batch does after Demo Day (more startups in the summer 2010 batch have raised additional funding than any previous batch).
- rriepe 16y ago
  Most who decide it's not worth it would (or rather, should) do so ahead of time. I see. Still, give a free car to a hundred people and at least one will complain about the color of the interior. There's gotta be a sour YC alumnni out there somewhere. Even if he has no right blaming YC, I'd still like to hear his side of the story.
  - pbiggar 16y ago
    FWIW, I failed at YC (in that my company failed after doing YC). Here's my account: http://blog.paulbiggar.com/archive/why-we-shut-newstilt-down/ http://blog.paulbiggar.com/archive/why-we-shut-newstilt-down.... The relevant YC part: > YC had consulted and advised us every step of the way. When we had co-founder problems, they gracefully refused to take sides. When we wanted to make a new product, they advised us not to proceed without co-founders, and that we’d need to move to Silicon Valley to be fair to those co-founders. And finally, they didn’t expect a cent back, telling us to give all the money back to our later investors. Not once in my whole time at YC did I believe that they valued their investment more than they valued us, and they were OK with us closing down. YC is a class act.
dariusmonsef 16y ago
Dissenting Opinion: YC has some of the most uncomfortable chairs.
- bigboote 16y ago
  Downright dangerous, too.
pbiggar 16y ago
> Why have we never seen a blog post saying that it's not worth it? Because it's worth it. I know some folks who are not-extremely-satisfied with YC, but even then they were mostly-satisfied.
chesser 16y ago
> Why have we never seen a blog post saying that it's not worth it? I can think of some reasons. 1) If your company doesn't make it, then you got investment and owe nothing, so complaining seems a little silly. 2) If your company DOES make it, chances are it's because of introductions via YC networking. If you somehow got funded and it wasn't YC-related, YC didn't hurt. 3) It's a self-selected group. There are those that are NOT a good fit for YC, and they don't apply in the first place. 4) Other-selection. Maybe YC only picks people who seem to have drunk all the kool-aid already. 5) Even if you felt screwed over, badmouthing YC would likely burn bridges. So it would just compound your problems. 6) Would a dissenting opinion be trumpeted or quashed by the editors here? Not being aware of any examples doesn't mean they aren't out there. 7) People don't want to do postmortems on their failures in general, and blaming others is generally seen as bad form, even if they really ARE to blame. 8) Brainwashing. Even people who join street gangs would almost never blame them for messing up the member's life. It becomes an in-group identity. YC ain't no street gang, and the social ties alone can be a huge thing for people who otherwise feel quite isolated, even if YC per se isn't their cup of tea. 9) There are so many difficulties that a million other things are more likely to screw up a startup than anything YC does. 10) Since focus is key, if YC gets you to focus obsessively for 3 months, that alone probably outweighs any negatives that may pop up. If your personal trainer or drill sergeant whips you into shape, then you got in shape, even if you think the process wasn't 100% optimal. The real tiger beats the paper one. A big part of it is just psychologically "giving yourself permission" to make something THE priority. If you are doing a formal program, WITH A TIME LIMIT, friends and family understand that in a way they don't understand you just doing it by yourself, and won't bother you with distractions. And due to social conditioning, you have a LOT of psychological tweaks making YOU prioritize your own project over surfing and wasting time. Note every term how few comments there are on this site from people doing the program. They don't have time to read "OMG Steve Jobs replied to my e-mail" and "37 ways I am better than you" posts or argue about them.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
coffeemug 16y ago
Nothing is perfect. If you go on Amazon or Yelp and look up reviews for high-end products or restaurants, there is always that one reviewer that complains the service is one millisecond to slow, the temperature is one hundredth of a degree short, and the experience isn't quite like the insane ideal they've built up in their head. But for most pragmatic people, a good high end product passes all reasonable standards of quality, so they don't bother going out of their way to find quirks and then complain about them. YC is full of pragmatic people, by virtue of the interview process. This set is disjoint from the set of people that would give a BMW 7 series a one star review, because in order to build a successful business you need the types of people that focus on the right things. If someone held a gun to my head and asked me to list everything I was dissatisfied with at YC, I could probably find some quirks, but I'd really be grasping at straws. After they offered us investment without a single line of code or a single customer, welcomed us as if they knew us for years and not once questioned our decisions, gave us advice and introductions necessary to get the company off the ground, guided us to find additional investment when the country was in the worst recession since the Great Depression, after all these things, complaining that the quality of free food at dinners doesn't quite live up to a meal at Peter Luger would be... just plain strange.
vaksel 16y ago
i think it's probably due to the fact that you get as much out of YC as you put into it. If you need help they'll give it to you...they have those kinds of connections. So the only thing it comes down to is money, and it's pointless to complain about that when you just flamed out and the equity is worth 0. And if you are a success, you attribute a large part of it to the connections you got through YC. or <tinfoilhat> they are afraid of getting on PGs bad side, and having him email every person in the valley, saying that they shouldn't work with you</tinfoilhat>
- chewb 16y ago
  The thing is, if you need a really good advisor, you don't give away 6% of your company to do it. That's unheard of in Silicon Valley. If you want to bring on a great advisor, you'll probably only need to give up 1% (or a fraction of it).
  - dariusmonsef 16y ago
    True. But YC is team of advisors + a network of a few hundred other startups that got your back. (+$ & Events, Dinners, Etc.)
poet 16y ago
There are a number of people with extensive startup experience on HN who don't think YC is worth it. Thomas and the guys from 37signals come to mind. There's a lot of experience and validation that comes from bootstrapping that YC doesn't provide.
- dariusmonsef 16y ago
  You cam bootstrap AND do yc.

by rriepe 16y ago

random42 16y ago

Because people do not criticize the alma-mater and mentor, especially as influential as, YC (and by extension PG) in public.

dariusmonsef 16y ago
Just my thoughts... I think a lot of the people that have a bad experience did so by their own actions. A lot of people flame out during YC... but that it's because of founder issues, personal issues, legal problems... etc. They just quietly go away.
- chewb 16y ago
  Likewise, a lot of the greater YC success stories did it mostly by their own actions.
ig1 16y ago
Doesn't seem to have stopped people criticizing VC firms.
- neworbit 16y ago
  VCs are a dime a dozen. YC is a network.
  - ig1 16y ago
    You think there's a dozen Sequoias or DFJs ?
    - jackowayed 16y ago
      Have there been any "Sequoia invested in me and totally fucked me over" posts? I'd guess there have been very few if any.
      - ig1 16y ago
        Someone hasn't seen the Facebook movie then :-) My understanding is that the relationship depicted between Sean Parker/Sequoia in the film is pretty close to the reality.

pg 16y ago

Actually it's possible to say when it wouldn't be worth it: http://paulgraham.com/equity.html http://paulgraham.com/equity.html I think the reason we don't often hear about borderline cases is that the market is truncated at the high end by later stage investors, who wouldn't allow the startups they'd funded to participate in YC even if they'd be net ahead as a result. I.e. I've seen more than one series A funded startup that we could have helped sufficiently to justify the dilution. But (as of this writing) no VC would let one of their series A funded companies do YC. As for funding a large number of companies, that's net beneficial as long as we can devote sufficient attention to each one, because it means the alumni network they become part of is larger. And we know we're able to devote sufficient attention to each one because we can measure it in (a) office hour signups (I have office hours this afternoon and there are still open slots) and (b) how well each batch does after Demo Day (more startups in the summer 2010 batch have raised additional funding than any previous batch).

rriepe 16y ago
Most who decide it's not worth it would (or rather, should) do so ahead of time. I see. Still, give a free car to a hundred people and at least one will complain about the color of the interior. There's gotta be a sour YC alumnni out there somewhere. Even if he has no right blaming YC, I'd still like to hear his side of the story.
- pbiggar 16y ago
  FWIW, I failed at YC (in that my company failed after doing YC). Here's my account: http://blog.paulbiggar.com/archive/why-we-shut-newstilt-down/ http://blog.paulbiggar.com/archive/why-we-shut-newstilt-down.... The relevant YC part: > YC had consulted and advised us every step of the way. When we had co-founder problems, they gracefully refused to take sides. When we wanted to make a new product, they advised us not to proceed without co-founders, and that we’d need to move to Silicon Valley to be fair to those co-founders. And finally, they didn’t expect a cent back, telling us to give all the money back to our later investors. Not once in my whole time at YC did I believe that they valued their investment more than they valued us, and they were OK with us closing down. YC is a class act.

dariusmonsef 16y ago

Dissenting Opinion: YC has some of the most uncomfortable chairs.

bigboote 16y ago
Downright dangerous, too.

pbiggar 16y ago

> Why have we never seen a blog post saying that it's not worth it? Because it's worth it. I know some folks who are not-extremely-satisfied with YC, but even then they were mostly-satisfied.

chesser 16y ago

> Why have we never seen a blog post saying that it's not worth it? I can think of some reasons. 1) If your company doesn't make it, then you got investment and owe nothing, so complaining seems a little silly. 2) If your company DOES make it, chances are it's because of introductions via YC networking. If you somehow got funded and it wasn't YC-related, YC didn't hurt. 3) It's a self-selected group. There are those that are NOT a good fit for YC, and they don't apply in the first place. 4) Other-selection. Maybe YC only picks people who seem to have drunk all the kool-aid already. 5) Even if you felt screwed over, badmouthing YC would likely burn bridges. So it would just compound your problems. 6) Would a dissenting opinion be trumpeted or quashed by the editors here? Not being aware of any examples doesn't mean they aren't out there. 7) People don't want to do postmortems on their failures in general, and blaming others is generally seen as bad form, even if they really ARE to blame. 8) Brainwashing. Even people who join street gangs would almost never blame them for messing up the member's life. It becomes an in-group identity. YC ain't no street gang, and the social ties alone can be a huge thing for people who otherwise feel quite isolated, even if YC per se isn't their cup of tea. 9) There are so many difficulties that a million other things are more likely to screw up a startup than anything YC does. 10) Since focus is key, if YC gets you to focus obsessively for 3 months, that alone probably outweighs any negatives that may pop up. If your personal trainer or drill sergeant whips you into shape, then you got in shape, even if you think the process wasn't 100% optimal. The real tiger beats the paper one. A big part of it is just psychologically "giving yourself permission" to make something THE priority. If you are doing a formal program, WITH A TIME LIMIT, friends and family understand that in a way they don't understand you just doing it by yourself, and won't bother you with distractions. And due to social conditioning, you have a LOT of psychological tweaks making YOU prioritize your own project over surfing and wasting time. Note every term how few comments there are on this site from people doing the program. They don't have time to read "OMG Steve Jobs replied to my e-mail" and "37 ways I am better than you" posts or argue about them.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

coffeemug 16y ago

Nothing is perfect. If you go on Amazon or Yelp and look up reviews for high-end products or restaurants, there is always that one reviewer that complains the service is one millisecond to slow, the temperature is one hundredth of a degree short, and the experience isn't quite like the insane ideal they've built up in their head. But for most pragmatic people, a good high end product passes all reasonable standards of quality, so they don't bother going out of their way to find quirks and then complain about them. YC is full of pragmatic people, by virtue of the interview process. This set is disjoint from the set of people that would give a BMW 7 series a one star review, because in order to build a successful business you need the types of people that focus on the right things. If someone held a gun to my head and asked me to list everything I was dissatisfied with at YC, I could probably find some quirks, but I'd really be grasping at straws. After they offered us investment without a single line of code or a single customer, welcomed us as if they knew us for years and not once questioned our decisions, gave us advice and introductions necessary to get the company off the ground, guided us to find additional investment when the country was in the worst recession since the Great Depression, after all these things, complaining that the quality of free food at dinners doesn't quite live up to a meal at Peter Luger would be... just plain strange.

vaksel 16y ago

i think it's probably due to the fact that you get as much out of YC as you put into it. If you need help they'll give it to you...they have those kinds of connections. So the only thing it comes down to is money, and it's pointless to complain about that when you just flamed out and the equity is worth 0. And if you are a success, you attribute a large part of it to the connections you got through YC. or <tinfoilhat> they are afraid of getting on PGs bad side, and having him email every person in the valley, saying that they shouldn't work with you</tinfoilhat>

chewb 16y ago
The thing is, if you need a really good advisor, you don't give away 6% of your company to do it. That's unheard of in Silicon Valley. If you want to bring on a great advisor, you'll probably only need to give up 1% (or a fraction of it).
- dariusmonsef 16y ago
  True. But YC is team of advisors + a network of a few hundred other startups that got your back. (+$ & Events, Dinners, Etc.)

poet 16y ago

There are a number of people with extensive startup experience on HN who don't think YC is worth it. Thomas and the guys from 37signals come to mind. There's a lot of experience and validation that comes from bootstrapping that YC doesn't provide.

dariusmonsef 16y ago
You cam bootstrap AND do yc.