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Many of the YC projects I've seen posted on HN don't look like rockets. Or maybe I'm of the false impression that developer tooling, or products that bring iter
by mhitza 3y ago
Many of the YC projects I've seen posted on HN don't look like rockets. Or maybe I'm of the false impression that developer tooling, or products that bring iterative improvements cannot be rockets.
- malfist 3y agoAre you confusing Show HN projects with companies accepted into the Y Combinator startup incubator? They're two very separate classifications
- diggan 3y agoMaybe parent is referring to "Launch HN" posts (https://news.ycombinator.com/launches https://news.ycombinator.com/launches), which features YC startups.
- camdenreslink 3y agoAny posts with “Launch HN” are promoted posts from YC startups.
- jnovek 3y agoYC focuses on product-market fit so it's not uncommon to see a YC company start as something that just looks like a single feature. The product objective of doing this is to gather some early user feedback so you can grow and refine that feature into an entire business. Until that happens you are flying blind.
- wslh 3y agoI think we often miss the marketing part and take a lot of focus in the technology stack. A good part of the need for funding is linked to the marketing part. You can make hundreds of technology copycats of existing unicorns but surely cannot market themselves as the did.
- fakedang 3y agoWell honestly, if your product requires a significant amount of marketing dollars to reach "product market fit", is it really PMF? Going by the definitions stated by Marc Andreessen and some of the YC Partners, product market fit is when you don't really need to spend marketing dollars because your product is growing so organically (with minimal marketing spend) that your team is barely able to keep up with the growth. Chatbase is a very good example for a PMF product, one that comes off my head, and that didn't require any VC funding. On the other hand, I remember a YC startup launching similar in the summer, but I don't remember its name now.
- wslh 3y agoIf you receive money from A16Z or enter the YC program the marketing is embedded with the investors and accelerators.
- stuartjohnson12 3y agoIterative improvements can definitely be rockets. Algolia is just a search provider. Supabase is just Firebase with better UX. Figma is just a drag and drop design tool.