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Wasn't YC always explicit (at least if you read between the lines) about looking for founders with good pedigree regardless of having a feasible product?
by admissionsguy 4y ago
Wasn't YC always explicit (at least if you read between the lines) about looking for founders with good pedigree regardless of having a feasible product?
- cornholio 4y agoBut I really wonder how many of these founders can convincingly explain in 5 minutes how gradient descent or transformers work. I know that's the first type of question I would ask any founder of an AI company before investing.
- palata 4y agoDo VCs understand that? Do they care? My feeling is that they want to see a projected growth that looks like an exponential, and buzzwords.
- admissionsguy 4y agoThe typical thinking among businesspeople is that you can always "hire a nerd" for those things. The early YC was a departure from that with PG praising technical prowess in his essays so much. It would seem this mindset has much less sway now.
- mmmmmbop 4y agoThe combination of gradient descent and transformers is a weird choice to ask founders about. One is an almost trivial algorithm, whereas the other is a cutting-edge research result.
- version_five 4y agoYes and that makes sense as an investment thesis. But what happens when you attract a bunch of ambitious people with great pedigree and then either steer them or select for jumping onto a hype bubble at it's peak with an undifferentiated cobbled together offering? That's what concerns most about this, is how somehow it looks like they've optimized for a bunch of "follower" founders.