7 ms·

Every batch there are some groups that fall apart between when we agree to fund them and when YC starts. Sometimes we tell them not to worry about it and do YC

• MortenK 16y ago
  To be fair, the guy had to manage an unscheduled move from kansas to sf, including family in one week. At the same time he had to figure things out with the cofounders. In such a short timeframe, isnt it understandable that YC werent notified earlier?
  • jedsmith 16y ago
    I can see the other side. YC's requirements are not a surprise (and are quickly Googleable). If Jon's cofounders weren't on board with YC's requirements (namely, moving to San Francisco), that's something he should have been aware of before pitching and getting accepted, and probably should have come up during his pitch -- to YC, it could have been a sign that he didn't know his cofounders well. My knowledge of this is limited to reading the comments here and Jon's blog post, but it's fair to see YC's side as well on feeling a bit blindsided. That's what I read between Paul's lines, anyway, specifically since he used the phrase "up front with us". Not pointing fingers or anything, just understanding both sides and responding to you specifically.
    • NewMonarch 16y ago
      A big life decision like that takes at least a few days to process and decide. We had 7. Things got pretty crazy in that week, understandably.
      • jedsmith 16y ago
        I wasn't pointing fingers at you in this, as I said - I was responding to the question directed at Paul. Now, I'll respond to you. I thought this privately, but your comment kind of pushed me over: I'm not sure if it's intentional, so I apologize if it isn't and I'm completely off-base. I mean no disrespect, and I'm just trying to understand what I'm reading. I'm reading a bit of exasperation from you that you weren't provided enough time to make life-changing decisions by YC. It almost sounds like blame, even though your blog post leans the other way. Whether you overtly admit it or not, it sounds like you hold a bit of a grudge that you lost out on that YC round because you weren't provided enough time to uproot your (and your cofounders') lives. Based on Paul's response, it sounds like they had wished they'd have known in that garden meeting that perhaps your cofounders weren't on board. I don't think it's an unfair assumption that you knew, when you pitched YC, that your cofounders had families and were rooted. I think Paul is expressing disappointment that he was blindsided by you hours before YC started with something hitherto unmentioned. Is it unfair to say that perhaps you should have expressed at the initial meeting that the next round might have been better? I can't imagine YC would have pulled funding from you had you said, at the initial meeting, "can we please shoot for Winter? this is a big deal, and I know your round starts soon, and I want to be respectful of my cofounders and give myself time to get things together". I'd have considered that a sign of wisdom, personally, and gained a lot of respect for you. My take, anyway. It worked out in the end, so bravo.
        • NewMonarch 16y ago
          Yeah it wasn't really like that. The guys were willing to move if they had to. They were willing to make the move and I had no idea they were going to be out until they were. But after getting swept up in everything for a few days preparing to move, it just became clear it wasn't going to work. There was no intentional omission of facts. When I accepted, I expected us all to be there. And to clarify, I don't blame YC at all. I love those guys. I really admire Paul and sometimes even quote the few interactions we've had. I think he's a genius and seriously hope we can work together on something one day. (Hi, Paul!) In my comment above, I was actually just trying to explain that everything happened very fast. I tried to update people as best as I could. It was just a very crazy week.
  • DevX101 16y ago
    If I were managing an incubator with 1000 applicants twice a year, and 2/3s of a founding team decided they didn't want to join the program, I would take that as a vote of no-confidence from those two members. In a lot of situations in life, you have imperfect information and you have make the best judgment call based on what you have. Maybe those 2 guys didn't go to YC because of family obligations although they'd really love to, but maybe they just thought the startup team didn't really have legs and was just a side project. At that early in the game, the 2 cofounders knew the author better than PG did. I'd make the same call.
    • NewMonarch 16y ago
      FYI, we were all full-time, the business was already profitable and we were all living off of the income it was generating. The startup clearly had legs then and still does.
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• 9oliYQjP 16y ago
  The problem is assessing who the critical members of the partnership are at that moment. I've met companies where the quiet, reserved hacker in the background was the real brains for the technical and business side of things. The other partner(s), while critical for adding that je ne sais quoi which the hacker required to be effective, were easily replaceable. Some hackers just want to be Karl Rove. The problem with that is unless somebody tells you about Karl Rove, you'll think all the pawns he puts into place are the ones who are irreplaceable. They aren't, though you might mistake them as such because they are the public face of operations. It's not common, but also not rare for teams to have the invisible Wizard of Oz who is really pulling the strings behind the scenes. Neither Ferrari nor Michael Schumacher have won much since Ross Brawn parted ways with them as technical director. Yet he managed to take Brawn GP (formerly Honda F1), which was a joke of a team, to both the Drivers and Constructors championships in its second year with him at the helm (first as Brawn GP). While even more variables are at play, take a look at the LA Lakers with and without Jackson as head coach. Then tell me how many people attribute Kobe to their success and don't really ever mention Jackson's name. Would Apple have been the same company (wait for it) had it not had Jonathan Ive? I'm not quite sure how YCombinator would accept this business based on one co-founder and then dismiss them when he was the only one left. Not being upfront about things would definitely be a warning sign. But again, in his mind, you accepted the business based only on him. Why would it be such a big deal if the two other co-workers left? I've read some other comments about it being a vote of non-confidence in the business. Talk to 95% of employees in companies and probably 2/3s of partners. Secretly, they think the company is going to hell in a hand basket and will be dead or in serious trouble in 2 years time. It's human nature to be skeptical to the point of fearing a business' prospects; Maslow's Hierarchy and all that jazz. A startup doesn't satisfy very many of those levels... people get antsy.
  • NewMonarch 16y ago
    Incidentally, the other 2 guys are running a successful t-shirt printing company. You should totally order your swag from them. http://threadbird.com/ http://threadbird.com/
  • jeromec 16y ago
    You're right about Phil Jackson. He's a basketball genius. LA has always been able to attract top talent, but raw talent alone doesn't equal multiple championships at NBA level.
• anmol 16y ago
  To me, Jon seems to have demonstrated exactly like the type of resourcefulness YC asks for in its applications [1]. Unfortunately there was no way for YC to predict the Jon had these chops at the time. The fact that YC can make such predictions with high-accuracy, from simply an application and a 10-minute conversation, is very impressive. There are bound to be borderline calls now and then. If you have de-identified application data, it would be interesting to know what early patterns in applications predict future success. [1] Jon hustled his way into YC, found a way to make the move when his co-founders weren't willing to, kept the company running and profitable meantime, and closed a large seed round with top-notch investors, in perhaps roughly the same timeframe that he would have with YC.
  • Keyframe 16y ago
    I think YC here demonstrated that type of resourcefulness is not what they ask for. Looks to me they are more on the side of reliable, steady, old-school business with team values vs resourceful ingenious type of people that stop at nothing. Makes sense business-wise to rely on steady signals vs riding the wave, but in any case YC is just a business.
• idiopathic 16y ago
  Paul, thank you for adding your point of view, and I understand that it was a bad surprise to hear the bad news to late. But if I understood correctly: 1. he was not planning on applying to YC, you asked him to 2. he had a good living situation and local contacts, and you asked him to move to SV 3. he had a functioning company wit income and co-founders, and you asked him to do something (move to SV) that blew up the company As he makes all these sacrifices, in a very short schedule, you decided that you no longer wanted to fund him, as he turned up, suitcase in hand. It is fine that you did not want to fund him into your group, and that you have well-tested criteria about co-founders. But the guy made sacrifices for you and YC, and from what I understand, you / YC dumped him in the last minute. To me, relationships are built on moments of truth. (Not my phrase, I heard it from the CEO of a health insurance company.) What do you do when things are going badly, rather things are going well. Perhaps you are being modest, but I cannot see any mention of anything you did to help him, now that he was in a foreign city with no connections and no co-founders, trying to follow your instructions. "Apply for the next YC" does not count as help, and the ability to mention that you had accepted him previously does not count as help either (although I am sure he used it in his self-introductions). Good on him for finding funding, and of course he is a good entrepreneur for picking himself up and continuing, and you are a good spotter of entrepreneurs for selecting him in the first place. But to me, this story does not reflect well on YC.
  • pg 16y ago
    No, you have the story wrong. We didn't push him to apply to YC. And he definitely didn't split up the company for us. He hadn't yet done it when he arrived in SF, and when we learned he was planning to, we advised him not to.
    • idiopathic 16y ago
      I am sure I do have the story wrong, if only because I was not there. I just went on what was posted so, could the original author of the story either correct the story, or correct PG? For "We didn't push to apply to YC", the original posting had said "I hadn't really considered an incubator like YC because we already had a product, customers, and whatnot and I thought I really just needed cash to hire a bunch of people. But one of the guys at breakfast really liked what we were doing and wrote an intro email to Harj, one of the partners at YC. It was mid-May so the application deadline for the Summer 2010 session had already passed. But Harj and I had coffee the next day, and he liked what he saw so he invited me to come interview for late acceptance." And for "he definitely didn't split up the company for us", I was going on "So the day before YC started, I sent Paul and the gang an email letting them know that my team was changing. I didn't think it would be a huge problem. I (naively) thought that they'd just give me advice on how to navigate the new situation. But alas, Paul was not happy with the changes and told me it might put us in jeopardy of getting funded by them." In other words he did not say that you had told him the company should stay put, you had told him you would not fund him, now that the company had split up in trying to fulfil YC's requirement for SV location. By the way, I am entirely aware of a third possibility, i.e. that you are both right, and that two different people can have correct but different memories of the same situation. But the story as it was written did not make YC look good, even though the author is promoting it with cheeriness as coming through adversity.