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I wasn't implying that YC had changed, just that I can't tell what the reasoning is anymore. The second link is an interesting thing to link, because the reason

by kick 7y ago

I wasn't implying that YC had changed, just that I can't tell what the reasoning is anymore. The second link is an interesting thing to link, because the reason I included the last line (along the lines of "I guess it could be sold to a malware vendor or something") was more or less because I was thinking on that; I took my time to think, and couldn't find many optimistic things. My only other guess outside of the one listed is that it could be sold to Facebook or twitter after getting a large audience, because it aligns with historical acquisitions somewhat. I'd be happy to be shown wrong in a year (I'd literally take anything over what I imagine is going to happen to it), but presently I'm mostly just confused. Responding to the edits I only noticed after responding: "Don't be discouraged if what you produce initially is something other people dismiss as a toy. In fact, that's a good sign." I wasn't trying to discourage the people making the extension! I was mostly seeing if I could get any spare guesses as to what YC's mindset was when thinking about this. Regarding whether what it's combating is a big deal: Certainly, but I'm not sure if the solution to all of those is...a new big tech company, to put questions of profitability aside. It seems partially like bait to be acquired by a social media company, or Nielsen (which is a literal malware company at this point, they pay users to MITM their connections; a way to get the same data without paying seems like something they'd love).

dang 7y ago
I'm no expert in YC's business, but I think the confusion might be coming from thinking about this too similarly to how later-stage investment works, where there are fewer investments to place and more information available, and therefore more up-front analysis. It's not feasible to do that in YC's case, where they fund hundreds of startups a year. Nor can such analysis apply anyhow—there's too much uncertainty at the earliest stage. The way YC looks for signal is different: simple and rooted in a few fundamentals. Do the founders seem effective? are they talking to users? and so on. The funny thing is, even though the fundamentals are simple and have been laid out in pg essays for a decade or more, it's surprisingly hard to reason with them. The mind doesn't like to stop with so little. I think that's why YC funding something like this feels paradoxical. (In the present case, it wasn't what they applied with but something they came up with later; but that helps make the point.) "Bait to get acquired" would be considered a negative, since that's not how a business like YC ends up with the few big successes that make or break it. It's more like this: is there some plausible random world in which this thing ends up becoming a major breakthrough? It doesn't have to be probable, just fairly imaginable. And the founders have to seem like the kind of people who might, with luck, pull it off. (Sorry for editing the carpet from under you! What I just wrote here was in response to your pre-edited comment too, but hopefully is still relevant.)
- kick 7y ago
  (It's no problem! I edit after posting about as much as anyone, so I definitely understand it! I appreciate the depth of response; I just made sure to wait a bit before forming a response to this one; it's fun to watch the stages a comment goes through, sort of like watching thought in process but more refined. Thanks for putting so much thought into your responses!) That last line in the second paragraph made it click for me, thank you! At first I was under the impression they were funded after the 6 MVPs, but it makes sense that they were funded before/during that! With that bit of context, "betting on the founders" in this case makes much more sense to me.
mrkurt 7y ago
I think yc would consider all those acquisitions you mentioned to be failures. One of the best things about yc is they are happy to get behind interesting projects built by interesting people and see what happens.
- kick 7y ago
  _I_ would consider all of those acquisitions to be failures, but YC has funded advertising companies and other "What if we sell user data?"-style companies in the past, so I'm not entirely sure. (Kuhcoon comes to mind, which was a notable backfire.)

by kick 7y ago

dang 7y ago

I'm no expert in YC's business, but I think the confusion might be coming from thinking about this too similarly to how later-stage investment works, where there are fewer investments to place and more information available, and therefore more up-front analysis. It's not feasible to do that in YC's case, where they fund hundreds of startups a year. Nor can such analysis apply anyhow—there's too much uncertainty at the earliest stage. The way YC looks for signal is different: simple and rooted in a few fundamentals. Do the founders seem effective? are they talking to users? and so on. The funny thing is, even though the fundamentals are simple and have been laid out in pg essays for a decade or more, it's surprisingly hard to reason with them. The mind doesn't like to stop with so little. I think that's why YC funding something like this feels paradoxical. (In the present case, it wasn't what they applied with but something they came up with later; but that helps make the point.) "Bait to get acquired" would be considered a negative, since that's not how a business like YC ends up with the few big successes that make or break it. It's more like this: is there some plausible random world in which this thing ends up becoming a major breakthrough? It doesn't have to be probable, just fairly imaginable. And the founders have to seem like the kind of people who might, with luck, pull it off. (Sorry for editing the carpet from under you! What I just wrote here was in response to your pre-edited comment too, but hopefully is still relevant.)

kick 7y ago
(It's no problem! I edit after posting about as much as anyone, so I definitely understand it! I appreciate the depth of response; I just made sure to wait a bit before forming a response to this one; it's fun to watch the stages a comment goes through, sort of like watching thought in process but more refined. Thanks for putting so much thought into your responses!) That last line in the second paragraph made it click for me, thank you! At first I was under the impression they were funded after the 6 MVPs, but it makes sense that they were funded before/during that! With that bit of context, "betting on the founders" in this case makes much more sense to me.

mrkurt 7y ago

I think yc would consider all those acquisitions you mentioned to be failures. One of the best things about yc is they are happy to get behind interesting projects built by interesting people and see what happens.

kick 7y ago
_I_ would consider all of those acquisitions to be failures, but YC has funded advertising companies and other "What if we sell user data?"-style companies in the past, so I'm not entirely sure. (Kuhcoon comes to mind, which was a notable backfire.)