2 ms·

I mean, I like this website, but I've never understood why doing a digital business would require loads of investment. Scale is like the whole point of "digital

by jrm4 5y ago

I mean, I like this website, but I've never understood why doing a digital business would require loads of investment. Scale is like the whole point of "digital." I supposed a more nuanced question would be -- has YC made any essentially good businesses? Like "something GOOD that literally would be very difficult to make without tons of extra dollars?" I strongly doubt it, but maybe?

brightball 5y ago
Time costs money.
space_fountain 5y ago
Isn’t scale exactly why. There are many digital companies that cost about the same amount to run if they have 5 users or 5 million. That means there will be many cases where you only start making money at scale
vgeek 5y ago
Aren't they following a similar model to modern colleges? Build the prestige and then coast? There have been recent threads detailing extension/open admission online colleges potentially diluting colleges' brands. With a few dozen companies per batch, it seems like you would get more attention and the air of exclusivity. Now there are hundreds per batch with companies that are essentially rehashes of other YC companies from 10 years back. For every novel idea company, there seem to be a dozen variations of market analytics (no, your Customer Data tracking platform is not unique) or niche infrastructure management (solving complexity created for the sake of complexity vs simply avoiding... Where have we ended up) companies. They're obviously looking for the decacorn type companies but so many seem to be best case scenario of acquireihires. If you ignore flashy tech and buzzwords, it has never been easier to build the software. What keeps getting harder is getting material visibility in the marketplace due to the huge influx of niche participants and small avenue of promotional channels.

2 ms·

I mean, I like this website, but I've never understood why doing a digital business would require loads of investment. Scale is like the whole point of "digital

by jrm4 5y ago

brightball 5y ago
Time costs money.
space_fountain 5y ago
Isn’t scale exactly why. There are many digital companies that cost about the same amount to run if they have 5 users or 5 million. That means there will be many cases where you only start making money at scale
vgeek 5y ago
Aren't they following a similar model to modern colleges? Build the prestige and then coast? There have been recent threads detailing extension/open admission online colleges potentially diluting colleges' brands. With a few dozen companies per batch, it seems like you would get more attention and the air of exclusivity. Now there are hundreds per batch with companies that are essentially rehashes of other YC companies from 10 years back. For every novel idea company, there seem to be a dozen variations of market analytics (no, your Customer Data tracking platform is not unique) or niche infrastructure management (solving complexity created for the sake of complexity vs simply avoiding... Where have we ended up) companies. They're obviously looking for the decacorn type companies but so many seem to be best case scenario of acquireihires. If you ignore flashy tech and buzzwords, it has never been easier to build the software. What keeps getting harder is getting material visibility in the marketplace due to the huge influx of niche participants and small avenue of promotional channels.