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1- Who have you passed on you wish you hadn't? 2- What is one of the assumption you had about the entire process that ended up not being true? 3- Who is one e
by rokhayakebe 15y ago
1- Who have you passed on you wish you hadn't?
2- What is one of the assumption you had about the entire process that ended up not being true?
3- Who is one entrepreneur (or team) whom you really thought had it wrong, but invested in anyways because they had that je-ne-sais-quoi?
- pg 15y ago1. I shouldn't say specifically because YC applications are supposed to be confidential, but if you look at the more successful startups funded by YC's competitors, there's a large overlap. 2. How predictable outcomes would be. 3. Airbnb.
- yters 15y agoMore or less predictable?
- pg 15y agoLess predictable. We thought we'd learn how to pick winners. What we learned instead is that it's impossible. Not just because luck is such a big factor, but because founders change.
- ph0rque 15y agoGiven that founders change, is there something one can do as a founder to change into one whose company is more likely to succeed?
- pg 15y agoYes: become tougher and more ambitious, and less self-indulgent. Probably the single most important change is to overcome the fear of failure that makes one accept early, small acquistion offers. It's hard to turn down an early offer for a few million, but every successful startup has.
- staunch 15y agoYou said in FAW that you would have sold Viaweb for peanuts if you had the opportunity. Luckily the low offers fell through. Why not add a new fund to YC for the purpose of partially cashing out founders, as an alternative to them selling early? This seems to be a missing component from the "what would have helped us at Viaweb" strategy.
- pg 15y agoWe have been actively encouraging later stage investors do to this, and it is now very common.
- yters 15y agoCan you elaborate on toughness? I.e. not pushed around as much by potential buyers, users?