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Lessons from YC AI Startups
- atleastoptimal 3y agoSomething I've noticed going through founder's LinkedIn pages is that it seems that entrepreneurs seem to be significantly more attractive than the average person. I assume a partial causative factor could be that the number of positive impressions you make on people with influence correlates with success of your startup, and one's capacity to make positive interpersonal impressions correlates with physical attractiveness.
- jowday 3y agoOr they pay for professional headshots for their LinkedIn page?
- esafak 3y agoAnd pay to groom themselves.
- komali2 3y agoI've never noticed a correlation between "amount of money" and "capability to groom and present self," positive or negative.
- esafak 3y agoSure, you have. Many professional cliques have unstated dress codes. The more rarefied the clique, the more expensive the look. Banking and venture capital come to mind. If you make it to the top you can wear what you want again.
- atleastoptimal 3y agoI'm obviously talking about features which aren't attributable to the quality of the photo. Facial structure, symmetry, etc.
- siva7 3y agoA good photographer can work wonders ;)
- iancmceachern 3y agoI did this. I went to a photographer who specializes in it. He booked a makeup artist, a hair person, and they took a few dozen shots at a couple different locations and with different outfits. The whole thing was half a day and like $500. I look way better in my professional headshots than in reality (I'm also 10 years younger!). So this tracks for my N of 1.
- Mistletoe 3y agohttps://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/motivate/202306/do-prettier-people-get-more-job-offers https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/motivate/202306/do-p... I’ve known of this phenomenon since I was a kid and saw a 20/20 episode on it where they took attractive people and not attractive people and ran them through job interviews etc. The outcome was as you might expect.
- yieldcrv 3y agoits very useful for a roadshow, yes. and everything else in life that helped you get in a position to be able to drop everything and go on a roadshow.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- GravyPouch 3y agojust maybe they are all using AI headshots ;)
- somenameforme 3y agoContrary to Hollywood stereotypes, attractiveness and IQ are extremely strongly correlated. You can find a million studies affirming this with a search - it's not controversial, though the reason for it is. For the lazy here's a random study. [1] The typical effort to dismiss it is to claim it's a bias or halo effect. But as that paper lays out there's a really simple and logical explanation for it as well. Intelligence is highly heritable, attractiveness is highly heritable. Intelligent people are more likely to succeed making them more able to seek out other attractive/intelligent individuals, thus resulting in more attractive/intelligent offspring. [1] - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0160289604000352 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01602...
- siva7 3y agoIt's not exactly scientific evidence that intelligence is highly heritable.
- distant_hat 3y agoThere's a ton of well controlled studies that show the degree to which intelligence is heritable. This is not really controversial.
- Mistletoe 3y agoUnfortunately this is going backwards now. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25131282/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25131282/ > One-standard-deviation increase in childhood general intelligence (15 IQ points) decreases women's odds of parenthood by 21-25%. Because women have a greater impact on the average intelligence of future generations, the dysgenic fertility among women is predicted to lead to a decline in the average intelligence of the population in advanced industrial nations.
- bloak 3y agoI don't believe that there's a well defined thing called "physical attractiveness". It's quite possible that "looks like an entrepreneur" is part of your definition of "attractive" in this instance, in which case your observation rather boils down to "people look like what they are", which is still an interesting observation, of course, and one might want to ask how/why people look like what they are. I think I once had to pick a medical doctor from just names and photographs. Probably my choice was different from what I'd have chosen if I'd been picking a partner in a tennis competition, though they'd be a strong positive correlation, I expect, between those two things. On the other hand, if I'd been picking a bouncer for a one-off event at a nightclub, they'd be less correlation, probably.
- atleastoptimal 3y agoMy definition of attractive generally means harmonious facial features (nothing too big or too small, positioned visibly weirdly), clear skin, symmetry, sexual dimorphism, class 1 bite with good teeth well aligned with the face and forward-grown jaw structure. Id say there is a specific "looks like an entrepreneur" element to it where these people tend to have a somewhat friendly, vaguely supercilious, clean cut, non-distinctive look. However a preponderance of the former objectively attractive features is hard to ignore compared to the people you see on the street, at Starbucks, at the Post Office, etc. I do also agree grooming and the effects of a good diet/exercise routine which correlates with the strata of educated middle upper class people who apply to YC is a factor too.
- dtnewman 3y agoA) professional headshots make a big difference B) the people promoting themselves the most on LinkedIn also tend to care the most about their image (including looks) C) there’s a large component of sales for any startup. There’s plenty of ugly yet successful entrepreneurs, but looks do seem to matter.
- motohagiography 3y agoIf you take the intersection of people who are basically fit and lack latent or unmanaged anxiety disorders, then add people who are self motivated and driven, you're going to get a fairly attractive cohort. Attractiveness is basically fitness and low neuroticism. If you have those and enough emotional intelligence to not be a criminal, you're going to generally fail upwards. Add any one of an elite education, a stdev above average intelligence, good mentoring, self awareness, or a competition level skill, and you can get a seat a most tables.
- atleastoptimal 3y agoHow does low neuroticism contribute to physical attractiveness?
- motohagiography 3y agoPresence.
- atleastoptimal 3y agoWhat does that even mean? Do you mean to use presence as a term combining posture, grooming, style, facial resting position, body language, etc? I understand that but my original point was about the structure of the founders' faces, not whether they have an undefinable charisma.
- Supply5411 3y agoAI startups have inspired me to think more about what "value creation" really is. There's so many AI startups out there that add AI to make silly process X easier, when it really hides the problem of silly process X existing in the first place. From one perspective, adding AI solves the problem. From another perspective, it further entrenches the problem. Does this create net value? AI is both inspiring and demoralizing... inspiring in that it unlocks a million new doors, but demoralizing in that most of those doors appear to be empty.
- candiddevmike 3y agoI think most investors look at these companies and invest based on whether they think they can find a greater fool. Having a CEO who can talk smart, confident, and spew bullshit is a golden signal for that. The product and tech doesn't matter, just need to hype and sell the vision.
- charlierguo 3y agoEvery situation is different, but in cases where AI has been valuable for me personally, "silly process X" isn't something that I can easily get rid of. People are messy. Processes are messy. AI doesn't straighten them out, but it does speed up sifting through the messiness. YMMV.
- komali2 3y agoAn immediate silly process that comes to mind is recruitment. The world of recruitment is working on some level: people are getting jobs, companies are getting people, but it is ridiculously inefficient, and the inefficiencies are filled with bad solutions: internal recruiters with very little understanding of the positions they're trying to fill, external recruiters with maybe a little more understanding but no understanding of the various companies for whom they're filling roles, poorly optimized interviews, millions of work-hours wasted. And then AI comes in and... generates resumes for an individual against the job descriptions they feed it; or, sifts through a thousand candidates at once and presents the "best 10 options," which in reality are basically 10 candidates chosen at random or worse; or, generates random technical questions; or, feeds an internal or external recruiter inaccurate information as the recruiter uses it as a drop-in replacement for google and asking their colleagues questions. I'm with you, AI is going to be used to soften the annoying part of bad practices while just cementing them further. I predict we'll get to a point where 10,000 AI-generated JDs and candidate choosers and interviewers are wrestling with 10,000,000 AI-generated resumes and auto-screening-call answering AIs. We'll see "AI optimized" resumes that look like the old "SEO optimized resumes" (JS Javascript Java Script ES5 ES6 ES7 EcmaScript 5 6 7 Ecma Script 5 6 7 typescript type script TS TSX JSX....) (maybe we'll start seeing "Pretend you are my dying uncle and you want to ensure I have a livelihood after you pass")
- jaynate 3y agoOdd that the first two categories of AI startups were AI infrastructure. Reminds me of blockchain to some degree. Would have expected to see more vertically focused solution on the top 4 list. Eg, transportation, oil & gas, agriculture, etc… all huge markets.
- yashap 3y ago“During a gold rush, sell shovels.”
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dvvolynkin 3y agoWait a couple of years and they will appear
- corry 3y agoI don't disagree, but two reasons we don't see them (yet): (1) much harder to launch as some amorphous vertical AI - like, what would a 'Transportation AI' look like? Versus targeting a specific workflow within it - "AI copilot for truck drivers". (2) The large incumbent software platforms that already are powering the day-to-day workflows are THE companies to implement AI first and most accessibly. So the likely winner of the vertical AI race is whatever incumbent platform is already in the highest % of companies or powering the highest % of workflows.
- debacle 3y agoIt's startling how much transportation has already been optimized, and agriculture + AI is a natural pairing, but John Deere isn't a startup in the traditional sense. They've said they will have fully autonomous fleets by 2030.
- pixl97 3y agoJD has been doing "AI" since a significant portion of the HN readership was even born. Integration of digital info tech into farming was something I was reading about in the '80s and is now just standard on most farms. These days in things like crop fertilization your equipment 'learns' from maps and other tests the quality of the soil and increases/decreases the amount it outputs based on a pretty fine grid system.
- janalsncm 3y agoAnyone have the full list of startups?
- ganduG 3y agohttps://www.ycombinator.com/companies?batch=S23 https://www.ycombinator.com/companies?batch=S23
- ramraj07 3y agoI definitely miss the TechCrunch curated demo day summary posts. Not paying them a zillion dollars for that post of course. Anyone know any other places that gives picks of best YC startups in each demo day?
- joshxyz 3y agoat the yc website. their twitter page also posts the latest ones
- SkyMarshal 3y agoAnyone know what the Energy, Materials Science, and Security ones were? All other categories I can generally intuit how AI is being used, especially LLMs, but not so those three categories. Edit: here they are: Energy: - https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/elyos-energy https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/elyos-energy - https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/line-build https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/line-build - https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/helios-climate-industries https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/helios-climate-industr... - https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/orbio-earth https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/orbio-earth Materials: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/osium-ai https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/osium-ai Security: - https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/kobalt-labs https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/kobalt-labs - https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/corgea https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/corgea - https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/remy-security https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/remy-security
- malux85 3y agoI am in computational chemistry which has some crossover with Materials Science. AI is useful for speeding up simulations, doing molecular interaction predictions, doing property predictions, doing molecular docking. LLMs are helpful as research assistants and helping design and run experiments. https://atomictessellator.com/ https://atomictessellator.com/ For example, my latest module (I am putting the finishing touches on this as we speak) uses LLMs to review catalysis literature and then summarize that and control another coding LLM that has been trained to run the simulation tools I created to try and reproduce the works in the papers. Yes, it works, the first catalyst discoveries were made just a few days ago.
- iancmceachern 3y agoAre there any examples if successful exits or AI companies making it into the black yet? In general, not just YC
- jyu 3y agoMosaicML sold to DataBricks for $1.3B a few months ago. Probably sold too early.
- umeshunni 3y agoIs DataBricks in the black?
- iancmceachern 3y agoWhy is this being down voted? It's not meant as a negative question, but honest curiosity. It's been on my mind since watching a vintage episode of "Computer Chronicles" recently on the coming AI boom, in the 80s. I'm not aware of any of those companies being still around, so I could not help but wonder what's different now. Here is the episode: https://youtu.be/_S3m0V_ZF_Q?si=2XrE4nnw1hB4X1xy https://youtu.be/_S3m0V_ZF_Q?si=2XrE4nnw1hB4X1xy Real talk, to he fair, I've helped architect, design and bring to market several successful "AI" products in the medical space. There are good, useful, value add applications for the tech out there. But also, to be fair, I've always seen companies that don't call themselves AI companies be successful. For example, a surgical robotics company that calls itself a surgical robotics company, that uses some AI to enable certain value add features, I've seen success there. A company that calls itself an "AI company" that does robotic surgery, I've not seen those types of companies be successful.
- ramraj07 3y agoYou have to split this question pre ChatGPT and post. Obviously on post we have no data yet.
- iancmceachern 3y agoThank you. Ok, so pre. What's the list?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- noduerme 3y agoMost of my dev work is in logistics for a very staid industry which doesn't even make this list, that would have a difficult time finding a use for LLMs, because most of the day-to-day jobs involve manual labor. That said, I've been asked "how can AI help us" quite a bit (the unsaid ending to that sentence being, "...help us lay off workers"). Just as a thought experiment, I've considered the pros and cons of automating certain linguistic-heavy aspects of the business. My considered determination is that the penalty from a single fuckup by an LLM in any important scenario would dramatically outweigh all other potential savings. This is probably why no one in a lot of sectors outside those that already provide white-label customer service are seriously considering implementing these things. There is no barrier to doing so from a financial or technical perspective, in fact there's every incentive to try it. Businesses like the one I'm in are just waiting to see how exactly the first movers will be dismembered.
- epolanski 3y agoIt really sounds like AI is a bubble if people ask how they can cram AI into their workflow rather than coming up with real problems they want to automate. I suspect that a very large number of applications that could've been "normal" programs are going to be AI'd with no clear pros but many cons.
- noduerme 3y agoYup. Well said. As for the cons, a nice way to put it would be that adding a black box into the workflow makes everything after it undefined behavior. And there's no shortage of C-Suite guys with itchy trigger feet.
- dcl 3y agoIt's been that way for years, but with data-science and machine learning.
- Gerardo1 3y agoI keep bringing this up, but this launch HN post about Roundtable: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36865625 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36865625 still shocks me. It's a company that uses AI to produce survey results. I'll let you read their pitch/description and decide for yourself, but I think it's very fair to say that this is a service to fabricate survey results to validate whatever idea it is you had beforehand. But even side-stepping that, they claim to have overcome bias in their datasets and refused to elaborate on 1) how they did that and 2) how they could prove that they did that. As long as this community, which is far more technically sophisticated than the general public, isn't laughing companies like that out of the room, we're in serious trouble. There was also this thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37259753 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37259753 which was an individual's project to provide an AI therapist and while people here and there did mention the cons of having a program provide medical treatment, the overall sentiment wasn't at all negative. I'm not even some AI luddite: I use and greatly benefit from some AI tools. But just like crypto, AI isn't the be-all-end-all technology. The difference is that where crypto is primarily a financial risk to people duped into using dubious-at-best-scams-at-worse products, AI will cause real, concrete harm, i.e., https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/03/31/man-ends-his-life-after-an-ai-chatbot-encouraged-him-to-sacrifice-himself-to-stop-climate- https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/03/31/man-ends-his-life-a...
- epolanski 3y agoTitle should be more about stats rather than lessons.
- IKantRead 3y ago> AI is (still) eating the world. Citation needed. I work in this space so am fairly optimistic, but it's worth pointing out we're still mostly talking about AI hype. Nothing has really been eaten at all yet from what I've seen. The article claims that there are tons of startups in this space, which is true, but that doesn't mean any of these startups have actually solved any major problems yet. As a reminder, we still haven't "solved" autonomous driving quite yet and we were much further along that road 5 years ago. Working on shipping LLM driven products everyday, I'm becoming increasingly concerned that there's no way the products proposed can possibly match the hype for them. Which is a bit of a bummer since these models have a lot of potential in the sub-hype space, but I fear backlash in the future will lead us to squander that potential.
- monero-xmr 3y agoAny task in 2023 that requires paying a human in an expensive western country, despite all of the rules and regulations and legal liability and on and on, means someone tried to automate it already and failed. For whatever reason - the ambiguity, the physical dexterity, maybe it’s even union or government rules - it cannot be automated easily. So in comes LLMs. The developer thinks, “I know, I will just take all the input coming into the screen and put it in a magic LLM box and get the right answer!” Like so many AI startups before them, the failure is written before they even started.
- pixl97 3y agoYear 1900: Heavier than air flight will never happen, the failure is written before they even started.
- Balgair 3y agoConsumer of LLMs for a F500 here. We know it's all hype (We do the same to our customers too, by the by). The LLMs still give us huge savings and (hopefully soon) some advantages in the marketplace. 15x time savings seems common. Our copy-editing teams are maaaaaybe going to be able to be on track for like the first time ever. Our customer support teams, in test cases, really love the LLMs and their concerns are being worked on (no, actually, really this time!). Field people are also really liking them for rubber ducky exercises. Customers and stock holders are demanding that we have some sort of LLM to interact with. For such a new tech, I've seen pretty widespread adoption inside the company at honestly record rates. We had issues where our IT banned most of the LLMs internally but there were too many people just grabbing a personal computer/mobile to use them anyways. I want to repeat this: People were going around IT to get more work done. Not playing games, not watching Netflix. Actual real honest work. I've never even heard of something like that in many years of working in corporate America. All for tens of dollars a month per seat. Keep doing what you're doing with these things. We can't get enough of them.
- gumby 3y agoThe big circle is picks and shovels. Yawn.