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How does this happen so often with YC companies? You'd think the amount of applicants would raise the bar of scrutiny a little. Can't tell if I'm getting older
by 0des 5y ago
How does this happen so often with YC companies? You'd think the amount of applicants would raise the bar of scrutiny a little.
Can't tell if I'm getting older or if more often now some of the newer YC inductees are getting accepted on factors other than their tech accumen.
- dang 5y agoI'm curious how you arrived at that impression? YC has funded thousands of startups and as far as I know there have been very few bad eggs. Occasionally they've had to disown one, but it's surprisingly rare. I don't know if there were any signs of uBiome being bad when YC funded them in 2014.
- 0des 5y agoLol I like how you sneak in here like a regular commenter. Due to how close you are to YC I don't think I could in good faith try to convince you one way or the other, its just an outsiders perspective from someone who has been here just as long as you, but is not employed by YC, that's all
- pvg 5y agoYou could try to convince the rest of us
- clpm4j 5y agoOut of the thousands of startups they've funded, how many have been confirmed as scams?
- pedalpete 5y agoZach from UBiome actually has the science background and was an adjunct professor at (I think) Berkeley. With YC, they are judging companies at 10 minute interviews, I'm guessing they aren't able to do much due diligence.
- sub7 5y agoYC has gone from 7 super high quality startups in a yearly class to some 300 founderitis startups twice a year. Nobody who knows anything thinks it's actually a quality signal anymore, it's really just a high passthrough noise filter From their perspective, they still just need the 1 giga unicorn a year to give their LPs excellent returns so it is what it is
- uncomputation 5y agoNot too often (although Dreamworld, Balto, and Zenefits come to mind) given the scale. What is more troubling to me than outright scams is just brand dilution and noise. The classes have been rising and show no signs of stopping. With 300 companies per class now, I get the impression it’s a numbers game (we just need one big win to make up for all the duds) than anything really mission-driven.
- toomuchtodo 5y agoReturns are the mission as a fund. If you have this enormous pool of capital due to well placed bets (which YC has), would you not, over time, make more speculative bets to win even more over time? As your scale grows, the odds of suboptimal choices increases (even with domain expertise assisting in due diligence). The reputational risk is minimal, and bad eggs can be written off as mistakes/chance character failures.
- 0des 5y agoSure, in a vacuum where reputation is neither cumulative or tarnished beyond social repair you might be right, but that is not how it plays out. Enough bad bets and you won't see anything special in joining as the resources are spread too thin and the barrier too low.
- jacquesm 5y agoInstallmonetizer.