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Ask HN: Do YC Startups Lack Spine?
By that I mean the kind of business instincts that are needed to really make a killing in the marketplace.
There seems to be an abundance of admirable nobility in the aims of YCers but not a lot of ruthlessness.
Maybe this is a function of the relative youth and inexperience of most of the groups that apply.
Would YC be more profitable if they were more open to older entrepreneurs that are ready to rumble?
- prospero 18y agoI can't say for sure, but I'm pretty certain no one's been turned down because they've been too "ready to rumble".
- vaksel 18y agoWhat exactly do you mean by ready to rumble?
- villageidiot 18y agoI'm talking about assertively competitive business practices. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let's_get_ready_to_rumble http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let's_get_ready_to_rumble!
- vaksel 18y agoI know what the phrase means...what I meant is what exactly do you think a startup can do to play hardball? To me it just doesn't look like they have the resources to devote to that. They can't stop a competitor using litigation. They don't have a group of lobbyists or senators in their pockets. They have to compete naturally, by building a better product. So to repeat the question, what exactly do you think a startup should do, to qualify as a "ready to rumble" startup.
- french 18y agoSounds like the Bill Gates school of IT. The YC startup community has a different set of social mores which emphasize usefulness of the product, a certain trendiness with respect to what else is happening in the current web 2.0 world. We are not really the budding monopolist types. Yes, there is a certain timidness in the YC community about the dark art of business. But that's mainly because most of us have never worked :)
- sorp 18y agoWell, I've worked in the business world. But I have no interest in "assertively competitive business practices". Most of the managers I worked for who were comfortable with that type of approach were exactly the reason I wanted to escape into the startup world and never look back at corporate life again. So, if you want to call that 'timid', go ahead. I'd rather do my own thing, make a good product and try avoid "doing evil" as much as I can. This probably sounds cliched or like I'm trying to win some brownie points but it's actually how I think. It's not worth it for me to live in that kind of "assertively competitive" way that I see my father and his colleagues living - or working, I should say. That feels like the old way of doing things.
- yoy 18y agoYou're talking about the Dark Side. Don Corleone. Donald Trump. Dick Cheney. Bill Gates. Cloak and dagger stuff. Yeah, I'm not very good at that either.
- paul9290 18y agoI'd say most here want to build awesome products that people use! Most are not businessman first, but our journey lead us to be such.... Ruthless ... can anyone name a well known inventor who started off ruthless? Tough for me to even write that word as I want to create good in the world and profit from it. Being ruthless... blech!
- noodle 18y agoi believe the yc startups follow the "if you build it they will come" type of philosophy, as opposed to the "shove it down your throats" or "cut costs to make a bigger margin" vibe i'm getting from the OP.
- madoff 18y agoOr the "screw your best friend over by stealing an idea he's been working on, implement it behind his back and launch it before he even has a chance to register the domain name he told you about over lunch". Google it.
- ram1024 18y agogoogle no worked. perhaps you were hallucinating this event
- olefoo 18y agoYour googlebait is not effective, can you at least share the domain name with us?
- kirse 18y agoMight be thinkcomp whining about how Zuckerberg stole Facebook from him... Only guy on here who seems to actively bring up his grudge. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=328235 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=328235
- thinkcomp 18y agoSorry, but if you're implying that I was impersonating someone else (in this case, the person whose username is madoff, who I don't know) just to revisit this topic, you'd be incorrect. (You'd also be kind of rude.) I bring up what happened with Facebook when it has some contextual relevance. There's a lot people here who could learn from that series of events, and I think I'm entitled to discuss it just like anyone else. As you'll note, however, I didn't even mention it until you did--and I only noticed that due to a traffic spike. And for the record, I agree. By and large, YC startups do lack spines.
- cabalamat 18y agoWhat is the optimum amount of ruthlessness for a startup to have? I think this depends entirely on what industry sector a startup is targeting. For example, a startup in the drug dealing, extortion, pimping or organised crime sectors should probably be very ruthless and very "ready to rumble". But for a website -- the sort of business most HN readers are more likely to be in -- ruthlessness is much less likely to be effective. The thing you're most likely to achieve with it is getting people to think you're an arsehole.
- gruseom 18y agoEvidence?
- rms 18y agohttp://www.paulgraham.com/good.html http://www.paulgraham.com/good.html
- booke 18y agoCan we think for ourselves for once? I don't know if you've noticed but a lot more companies succeed from not listening to pg's advice than vice versa.
- ntoshev 18y agoa lot more companies succeed from not listening to pg's advice than vice versa Got any hard data to support your claims?
- booke 18y agoThe S&P 500
- randallsquared 18y agos/from/while/
- rms 18y agoSockpuppet? I'm not sure where your hostility is coming from -- I think that link sufficiently answers the question asked. I didn't make any comment about one philosophy of business over any other.
- mattmaroon 18y agoThis really doesn't make any sense at all.
- skmurphy 18y agoThe kind of killing that Hewlett and Packard made in the marketplace was predicated on fair dealing and a commitment to their employees and their community. What entrepreneurs would you like to see HN readers emulate?
- tptacek 18y agoThis question doesn't make any sense. YC is open to older entrepreneurs. Who knows whether they're ruthless, or ruthless enough? And why accept your premise that what's needed to win is ruthlessness?
- cchooper 18y agoI doubt it pays to be ruthless when you have nothing to back it up. If you can't dominate, you have to cooperate.
- anewaccountname 18y ago>I doubt it pays to be ruthless when you have nothing to back it up. Did the market cap of Microsoft suddenly drop while I wasn't looking or something?
- cchooper 18y agoDid Microsoft become an early-stage YC startup when I wasn't looking or something?
- anewaccountname 18y agoMicrosoft was ruthless when they were early stage; that is how they got to where they are.
- cchooper 18y agoNot when they were two guys writing Altair Basic. They survived off sales to hobbyists. Being ruthless wouldn't have go them very far.
- fallentimes 18y agoWhat business instincts are you talking about? Is this from the Brazen Careerist or something? It just seems like you're making generalizations driven by anecdotes. If you're more specific and backup your claims with data (or even concrete examples) I think you'll get better answers.
- SwellJoe 18y agoCheck back in a few years. We're only three years into observing the YC experiment. The average exit in the valley takes seven years. Over the next five years, we'll have pretty solid data about whether the YC model, and its companies, can "really make a killing in the marketplace".
- pg 18y agoTextually this is a classic troll. But at least it's not an account newly created for the purpose, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and play along. Let's start by clarifying your question. Did Larry & Sergey, when they started, have these business instincts about making a killing in the marketplace that you're referring to? Because if they did they seem to have been well hidden. And if they didn't, these qualities don't seem to be worth much. Also, can you tell me more about the youth and inexperience of the people who apply to YC? No one, as far as we know, sees the applications except us. Your last question I can at least answer with certainty: no. It takes 4-5 years for a startup to achieve liquidity. No YC-funded startup is that old; the median is only about 18 months old. Our profitability now is therefore noise, which means no change in the applicants would have affected it significantly.
- villageidiot 18y agoI appreciate you treating the question in the good faith in which it was intended. While the topic may be provocative, I felt it was relevant, based on my observations of YC. However, because I can only provide anecdote as evidence of my case, I asked the question to discover whether my observations about YC are shared or whether I am suffering from a delusion. Textually this may seem like trollish behavior but some of the responses to the question seem to belie this suggestion. As for your point about Google, some ideas are so powerful that they fall outside the conventional expectations of business practice. The fact that Google's founders have, until lately anyway, been unassertive in the manner of Microsoft, does not indicate that Bill Gates' approach "is not worth much". Absent some ground-shaking idea like Google's, I would argue the assertive approach of Microsoft is the norm for a successful company and a key ingredient missing in the YC environment.
- fallentimes 18y agoCan you please clarify what you mean by assertive approach? You continually use Microsoft as an example, but I don't really think spending half a decade in courts is assertive. Or maybe you could use some mid sized companies as examples as Google and Microsoft are both anomalies.
- siong1987 18y agoWhere he draws the conclusion from?
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- tyler 18y agoThis would be a much more interesting question if you were to give specific examples of how specific YC startups are "spineless", and perhaps how they could be less "spineless". Without that, I'd simple respond: "They're not."
- sokoloff 18y agoIn what way(s) do you think YC isn't open to older entrepreneurs? If anything, I suspect older entrepreneurs aren't as open to YC than the other way around. In my own case, if I wanted $20K in expenses for a startup, I'd login to e*trade and transfer it, or I'd write a check for it. Doesn't seem worth giving up 6% for the cash, though if I were intent on striking out on my own, I'd almost certainly talk to YC, to see if a "3% for $1 and advice/contacts" deal could be worked out.