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Not only was Daniel (and his co-founder Shai) the youngest in our YC batch, but they built and launched a couple of different startup ideas in the time that the

Not only was Daniel (and his co-founder Shai) the youngest in our YC batch, but they built and launched a couple of different startup ideas in the time that the rest of us built a couple of features. Daniel easily could've packed it up when he lost his cofounder - Shai had to go back to Israel a week or two before Demo Day. Instead, he built a prototype of what would become Greplin (in a week), pitched it to investors at Demo Day, secured funding from Sequoia, and is riding a rocketship. When PG and YC say that they invest first and foremost in founders, this is a perfect example of what they're talking about. Every startup hits a rough-patch, and some even look like they have no hope at all, but the best founders persevere against crazy odds and will themselves to succeed.

6ren 16y ago
So Daniel was a solo founder, for Greplin?
- danicgross 16y ago
  for a bit. then i met robby walker.
  - billclerico 16y ago
    brilliant pickup by the way. robby is a god.
maxdemarzi 16y ago
I never really got the "we invest in founders" idea until now. YC funds people who execute.
jganetsk 16y ago
I am going to risk being downvoted to hell on this. Maybe Daniel isn't "persevering against crazy odds" and "willing himself to success". It's apparent from the story that he's a really fucking good coder. With a reasonably accurate estimation of his own abilities, and with all the support and inspiration around him at YC, it didn't take much perseverance and extraordinary will to put something together. He just had to continue doing what he loves and does best... writing code. I certainly can't speak for Daniel. I get tired of these descriptions of entrepreneurs that make them sound like cancer survivors. I think founders often have extraordinary skill, and that changes the required personal characteristics considerably.
- answerly 16y ago
  >I think founders often have extraordinary skill I think that was Aaron's point. Daniel is an extraordinary person. An ordinary person would probably have just given up given a similar set of circumstances.
  - jganetsk 16y ago
    I certainly can't disagree with your viewpoint. A person with extraordinary characteristics is likely to have extraordinary accomplishments. That's a pretty safe argument. But, your classification of people into 2 simple categories is exactly the kind of discussion I like to avoid. From the story, I see a person with skill, confidence, and good odds of success. Aaron's description is one of people with willpower and perseverance in the face of almost impossible odds. These are two completely orthogonal issues. It may be that Daniel is all of the above. But, as a community, we should have more sophisticated dialog on what makes folks successful. If I were to ever start a company on my own, it would be with the knowledge that I have only half of the traits touted around here. I'm more interested, at this point, in the shortcomings of successful founders and how they compensated.
    - gentschev 16y ago
      To me, the most important point is that even extraordinary people face many times in the development of their companies where things look very dim. Being able to ignore that feeling and keep working and changing your assumptions and approaches is at least as rare as more definable talents. There are a lot of very talented people who are actually less resilient to hardship because they're not as used to being tested or failing as people with supposedly lesser abilities.
- Harj 16y ago
  Daniel's coding ability, or love of writing code, isn't the reason he's managed to get this far. I remember meeting with him regularly after demo day; no investors were interested, he had no co-founder and an idea that was all of a week old with a very buggy prototype (by very buggy, I mean didn't work). Things looked bleak. I still believed in Daniel's determination but even I was thinking in the back of my head, at least he'll be able to take these experiences with him on his next startup. "Extraordinary skill" or not, the fact is the majority of people would have given up at this point. Daniel instead kept doing back to back investor meetings during the day and coding at night. He's of course benefitted from being smart and part of YC but clearly those can't be sufficient conditions for success, if they were we'd have a 0% failure rate at YC.

6ren 16y ago

So Daniel was a solo founder, for Greplin?

danicgross 16y ago
for a bit. then i met robby walker.
- billclerico 16y ago
  brilliant pickup by the way. robby is a god.

maxdemarzi 16y ago

I never really got the "we invest in founders" idea until now. YC funds people who execute.

jganetsk 16y ago

I am going to risk being downvoted to hell on this. Maybe Daniel isn't "persevering against crazy odds" and "willing himself to success". It's apparent from the story that he's a really fucking good coder. With a reasonably accurate estimation of his own abilities, and with all the support and inspiration around him at YC, it didn't take much perseverance and extraordinary will to put something together. He just had to continue doing what he loves and does best... writing code. I certainly can't speak for Daniel. I get tired of these descriptions of entrepreneurs that make them sound like cancer survivors. I think founders often have extraordinary skill, and that changes the required personal characteristics considerably.

answerly 16y ago
>I think founders often have extraordinary skill I think that was Aaron's point. Daniel is an extraordinary person. An ordinary person would probably have just given up given a similar set of circumstances.
- jganetsk 16y ago
  I certainly can't disagree with your viewpoint. A person with extraordinary characteristics is likely to have extraordinary accomplishments. That's a pretty safe argument. But, your classification of people into 2 simple categories is exactly the kind of discussion I like to avoid. From the story, I see a person with skill, confidence, and good odds of success. Aaron's description is one of people with willpower and perseverance in the face of almost impossible odds. These are two completely orthogonal issues. It may be that Daniel is all of the above. But, as a community, we should have more sophisticated dialog on what makes folks successful. If I were to ever start a company on my own, it would be with the knowledge that I have only half of the traits touted around here. I'm more interested, at this point, in the shortcomings of successful founders and how they compensated.
  - gentschev 16y ago
    To me, the most important point is that even extraordinary people face many times in the development of their companies where things look very dim. Being able to ignore that feeling and keep working and changing your assumptions and approaches is at least as rare as more definable talents. There are a lot of very talented people who are actually less resilient to hardship because they're not as used to being tested or failing as people with supposedly lesser abilities.
Harj 16y ago
Daniel's coding ability, or love of writing code, isn't the reason he's managed to get this far. I remember meeting with him regularly after demo day; no investors were interested, he had no co-founder and an idea that was all of a week old with a very buggy prototype (by very buggy, I mean didn't work). Things looked bleak. I still believed in Daniel's determination but even I was thinking in the back of my head, at least he'll be able to take these experiences with him on his next startup. "Extraordinary skill" or not, the fact is the majority of people would have given up at this point. Daniel instead kept doing back to back investor meetings during the day and coding at night. He's of course benefitted from being smart and part of YC but clearly those can't be sufficient conditions for success, if they were we'd have a 0% failure rate at YC.