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I used to read the articles about the YC batches and the launch threads here, hoping for many of them to succeed and be interested in the various ideas. But lat

I used to read the articles about the YC batches and the launch threads here, hoping for many of them to succeed and be interested in the various ideas. But later years I've stopped. First reason is because it's so damn many. If all of them had a launch thread here on HN it would probably be more than one a day. Secondly because so many of them now feels like "X for Y". Or just X in a new geography.

matsemann 5y ago
From a TC article I googled from this week: > MadEats is an online ghost kitchen food delivery service in the Philippines That to me is nothing new, just a way to kill my local restaurants. > An online store builder that claims to have a setup process 10x faster than Shopify. Might be a cash cow and useful, but nothing exciting, eessentially Shopify in a different wrapping. > Tinai aims to help modernize this with a digital bookkeeping service Other than being in a new geography, it's nothing new. > Membo: A premium way to grocery shop. Membo is a next-day grocery delivery service in Europe that optimizes for freshness and quality, instead of 15-minute speed. We got many of these already. There are of course exciting ones as well. But so much not-new that I just don't bother shifting through it all anymore.
- arielm 5y ago
  One consistent theme I see here is possible stability for investors. Bookkeeping works and is that crowded of a space, so maybe with enough cash they can get some ROI. Same for food delivery. I’m not saying this is good, and I could be wrong here. This is just an observation. But… if you look at what happened to music in the last 20ish years you see basically the same shift away from creativity and variety and a focus on repeating what works. I think starting a company these days has become much easier without funding though, so real hungry entrepreneurs _can_ bring excitement and creativity to this game.
- jdavis703 5y ago
  > That to me is nothing new, just a way to kill my local restaurants. At least in the Bay Area the ghost kitchen model seems to be a way for local food entrepreneurs to try new brands. I know of several brick and mortar restaurants that are operating ghost kitchens out of their storefront, along with “startup” restaurants operating from ghost kitchen commissaries.
tptacek 5y ago
What I learned from several years of operating a consulting business building security teams for startups is that you probably have no intuition for which startups are going to be viable and which aren't. Certainly, the idea that you can evaluate their prospects from how exciting a single-sentence description is turns out to be totally false.
- corin_ 5y ago
  I think you're missing the point of parent comment (or at least the point I'd be making) - it's not that those descriptions make it seem like the business will fail, it's that those descriptions make me not care whether or not they fail. I suspect the person you replied to, like me, isn't disappointed because they want to cheer on a possible unicorn but because they want to cheer on startups that are doing interesting things.
  - tptacek 5y ago
    Why does it matter whether any of us care whether they fail? That's not the point of YC.
    - corin_ 5y ago
      They were commenting about their personal feelings, as am I. Neither of us have stated we think YC will do badly because of it. On the other hand, while I don't think it's bad enough for YC to suffer massively, they have presumably been helped in the past by having a strong following of techy people who just like YC and who assume that a startup funded by them is likely to be interesting. Will they lose that reputation, and if so will it matter to how successful they are? I've no idea, but it's not impossible.
    - k__ 5y ago
      Because it implies interest in what these startups do. The OP only said it seems that YC companies became less interesting over the years.
  - matsemann 5y ago
dustingetz 5y ago
The world is connected now & the Internet is in the deployment phase. Capital, like water, floods the low ground first and there are tons of zero-risk opportunities to roll out first world infrastructure in the rest of the world

matsemann 5y ago

From a TC article I googled from this week: > MadEats is an online ghost kitchen food delivery service in the Philippines That to me is nothing new, just a way to kill my local restaurants. > An online store builder that claims to have a setup process 10x faster than Shopify. Might be a cash cow and useful, but nothing exciting, eessentially Shopify in a different wrapping. > Tinai aims to help modernize this with a digital bookkeeping service Other than being in a new geography, it's nothing new. > Membo: A premium way to grocery shop. Membo is a next-day grocery delivery service in Europe that optimizes for freshness and quality, instead of 15-minute speed. We got many of these already. There are of course exciting ones as well. But so much not-new that I just don't bother shifting through it all anymore.

arielm 5y ago
One consistent theme I see here is possible stability for investors. Bookkeeping works and is that crowded of a space, so maybe with enough cash they can get some ROI. Same for food delivery. I’m not saying this is good, and I could be wrong here. This is just an observation. But… if you look at what happened to music in the last 20ish years you see basically the same shift away from creativity and variety and a focus on repeating what works. I think starting a company these days has become much easier without funding though, so real hungry entrepreneurs _can_ bring excitement and creativity to this game.
jdavis703 5y ago
> That to me is nothing new, just a way to kill my local restaurants. At least in the Bay Area the ghost kitchen model seems to be a way for local food entrepreneurs to try new brands. I know of several brick and mortar restaurants that are operating ghost kitchens out of their storefront, along with “startup” restaurants operating from ghost kitchen commissaries.

tptacek 5y ago

What I learned from several years of operating a consulting business building security teams for startups is that you probably have no intuition for which startups are going to be viable and which aren't. Certainly, the idea that you can evaluate their prospects from how exciting a single-sentence description is turns out to be totally false.

corin_ 5y ago
I think you're missing the point of parent comment (or at least the point I'd be making) - it's not that those descriptions make it seem like the business will fail, it's that those descriptions make me not care whether or not they fail. I suspect the person you replied to, like me, isn't disappointed because they want to cheer on a possible unicorn but because they want to cheer on startups that are doing interesting things.
- tptacek 5y ago
  Why does it matter whether any of us care whether they fail? That's not the point of YC.
  - corin_ 5y ago
    They were commenting about their personal feelings, as am I. Neither of us have stated we think YC will do badly because of it. On the other hand, while I don't think it's bad enough for YC to suffer massively, they have presumably been helped in the past by having a strong following of techy people who just like YC and who assume that a startup funded by them is likely to be interesting. Will they lose that reputation, and if so will it matter to how successful they are? I've no idea, but it's not impossible.
  - k__ 5y ago
    Because it implies interest in what these startups do. The OP only said it seems that YC companies became less interesting over the years.
- matsemann 5y ago

dustingetz 5y ago

The world is connected now & the Internet is in the deployment phase. Capital, like water, floods the low ground first and there are tons of zero-risk opportunities to roll out first world infrastructure in the rest of the world