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This would mean YCombinator ~ American Idol.
by ssharp 14y ago
This would mean YCombinator ~ American Idol.
- raverbashing 14y agoYou jest, but there are a lot of similarities Of course, YC doesn't profit from very bad contestants, so there's one difference But if you see the progression of the candidates through the competition you can certainly draw several parallels. YC doesn't have a 'clear cut' winner as AI, still you know that there is a slight mismatch between 'winning the competition' and be 'market successful'. One rarely matches the other. And of course, the issues of focus, strategy, pressure are very similar among AI and YC. Some contestants start shining early on in the competition, some have perfect technique, but in the end, it only goes so far if it isn't a balance of competences.
- ssharp 14y agoThe analogy I was going for was that American Idol gives people without outlets to a record label a path to a record deal. YC gives teams a path to become an investment-worthy company (or maybe even company successful enough to not need further investments). However, this ends up supporting the VC = Record Label analogy that I don't think is strong.
- raverbashing 14y agoMakes sense, but yeah, VC as a Record Label is not really a good analogy Record Labels give much more support to their protégés, and "charge a higher fee" as well (VCs don't ask for 'creative control' of their startups as an example)
- zach 14y agoI noted five years back that YC in its early years seemed like School of Rock: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5954 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5954 Now that the tech and investing world has changed, YC seems more like Motown Records. It's worth pointing out that in its early days, Motown used to release records on Chess and other labels, but at some point it naturally just made sense for Motown to become its own label.