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The author didn't say anything about "interesting" vs. "boring" companies or ideas. He said YC should curtail funding of dev tools/SaaS startups, because the tr

The author didn't say anything about "interesting" vs. "boring" companies or ideas. He said YC should curtail funding of dev tools/SaaS startups, because the traction they appear to have is misleading. They're selling to each other, revenue moving in a circle, without demonstrating value creation outside of the sphere of similarly-situated startups. Not explicitly stated, but he's also implying it's a portfolio risk for YC.

shadowmore 6y ago
This is a point Peter Thiel brings up regularly on a larger scale, i.e. the circular, narrow nature of modern innovation, where instead of improving the physical world around us, we're way too heavily invested in this self-perpetuating "world of bits" that increasingly reduces total innovation in the world. Incidentally, a great talk that includes that point here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SO_00POR-Po https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SO_00POR-Po
danenania 6y ago
It's a myth imho that it's just so easy to sell your saas/devtool product to other YC companies (in your batch or otherwise), and that it somehow guarantees you early traction. It may have been true in the Stripe days when there were much smaller batches, but now being in YC means being bombarded with pitches from your batchmates (and then from each new batch as an alumni). Highly effective growth channels tend to quickly get over-saturated, and this one is no different. Companies in YC are maniacally focused on their own goals and generally don't have the time and energy to adopt products just as a favor. They also tend to have NIH syndrome. They'll try it and give you feedback, but getting them to really use it is still very hard and requires that you're truly solving a problem. I think a lot of companies start YC with this idea that they'll just sell to other YC companies, then quickly change their minds when they see how hard it actually is. Other early stage startups are not great customers for most b2b companies.

shadowmore 6y ago

This is a point Peter Thiel brings up regularly on a larger scale, i.e. the circular, narrow nature of modern innovation, where instead of improving the physical world around us, we're way too heavily invested in this self-perpetuating "world of bits" that increasingly reduces total innovation in the world. Incidentally, a great talk that includes that point here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SO_00POR-Po https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SO_00POR-Po

danenania 6y ago

It's a myth imho that it's just so easy to sell your saas/devtool product to other YC companies (in your batch or otherwise), and that it somehow guarantees you early traction. It may have been true in the Stripe days when there were much smaller batches, but now being in YC means being bombarded with pitches from your batchmates (and then from each new batch as an alumni). Highly effective growth channels tend to quickly get over-saturated, and this one is no different. Companies in YC are maniacally focused on their own goals and generally don't have the time and energy to adopt products just as a favor. They also tend to have NIH syndrome. They'll try it and give you feedback, but getting them to really use it is still very hard and requires that you're truly solving a problem. I think a lot of companies start YC with this idea that they'll just sell to other YC companies, then quickly change their minds when they see how hard it actually is. Other early stage startups are not great customers for most b2b companies.