4 ms·

It makes sense. If you are an investor and have a strong belief that a specific product or idea is a good one - you might want to decouple your odds of success

by Ballas 2y ago

It makes sense. If you are an investor and have a strong belief that a specific product or idea is a good one - you might want to decouple your odds of success from the people/team/company executing that idea.

bingemaker 2y ago
YC also says that they don't believe in the idea, but the founders ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- ethagknight 2y ago
  Seems reasonable to pick two horses in a race you believe is worth running
  - billy-ilograph 2y ago
    This creates an extremely obvious conflict of interest.
    - pavlov 2y ago
      The conflict of interest is simply dead and forgotten in an era where the president-elect has his own cryptocoin, his own social media company, and appoints his billionaire supporters to improve efficiency in the parts of government that directly oversee those billionaires’ own businesses.
      - xpe 2y ago
        Yes, political corruption is a drag/loss on everyone except the corrupt ones. Worse, it can shift a system out of its viable operating zone. Corrupt individuals in a market can destroy the market. But what is the connection to the parent comment? No matter how corrupt one part of government or a market becomes, it doesn’t excuse further corruption. If anything, more corruption makes additional corruption more likely to break the whole system.
        BeefWellington 2y ago
        I think it's reasonably straightforward they were making the point that conflict of interests are no longer taken seriously, along with many other related things. Politics tends to be a trailer of social views, not a leader.
        svnt 2y ago
        The connection is that the conflict of interest being discussed was only ever a social/ethical contract. That social contract is in the bin right now, so the question is moot.
        xpe 2y ago
        Individuals who voted for Trump don’t necessarily want to throw away a social contract. Many of them do support societal norms, albeit different ones. And some don’t even think in these terms; they are more motivated by other factors. Along with many, I think their collective actions point in a direction that (a) undermines democratic rule and (b) enables Trump’s corruption, but they seem to be relatively unaware or disagree with such effects. Many of them think Trump will combat one some types of corruption (the “deep state”). Overall, I’m more inclined to think many/most Trump supporters have reasonable core values, especially at the individual and family levels, but due to their information sources and mental processing, their overall choices don’t bode well for us, together. The biggest breakdown I think has to do with epistemic values: how does one find truth. I don’t think most people, of any party, have the individual ability and discipline to make sense of a modern world in a rational, scientific manner. This isn’t something easily achieved, after all. About me: I strive to not “blame” individuals in the traditional sense, because I reject free will as a meaningful concept. (Roll back the clock and a person will the behave the same in a deterministic universe. And if the universe has intrinsic randomness, we can’t ascribe free will to that randomness.) So instead of blaming individuals, I focus on systems and their statistical effects.
        svnt 2y ago
        I don’t think I made the assertion that anyone wants to throw away a social contract. I said it was in the bin — it has been thrown away, and not by recent Trump voters, but it started long before that, maybe when ethics became something you didn’t learn until or unless you went through a professional program. Having talked with a few religious Trump voters that I consider intelligent, they have a larger picture of the world, whereas I think a lot of Harris voters (being vaguely irreligious/atheist) are implicitly making the USA their whole world. Trump voters do not see the risk the same way, and have faith elsewhere. For many Harris voters this was an existential issue. That all said, those Trump voters I spoke with still seemed apologetic. However it came about, there clearly is a misalignment in the stated social values world, and that is why that social contract doesn’t exist anymore. Whether that is because family forces, or tribal forces, or identity forces, or something else carried the day instead, well, maybe the future historians can sort out.
    - xpe 2y ago
      We need to define conflict of interest. Question: is an investor who gives money to one organization, but is not involved in the decision-making, conflicted if they give money to another organization? Are they self-conflicted (undermining their own likelihood of success)? Are they contractually or legally conflicted? Have they breached the trust of people they invested in? Are they ethically conflicted? Answers to these questions are non-obvious. Attempts to simplify the set of relevant questions means imposing a worldview. On the ethical question, a consequentialist would say it depends on the outcomes. Like many consequentialist analyses, this is complicated. Consider this: Investing in a similar company might validate the market and make it more likely for the company and/or its people to reach viability.
    - Suppafly 2y ago
      >This creates an extremely obvious conflict of interest. That's not necessarily bad though. People like to throw out these terms that sometimes have negative connotation as if they are inherently negative. If you think the conflict of interest is a bad thing, you need to elaborate on why you feel it's bad, not just pretend it's prima facia bad.
    - edm0nd 2y ago
      but two horses can still win though. One can come in first and the other come in second. That's two wins.
    - ethagknight 2y ago
      It’s not a marriage. Have you ever watched any racing of any sort? One team frequently has multiple contestants. First and third is better than just third.
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  > YC also says that they don't believe in the idea, but the founders ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ That still doesn't preclude them backing two founder groups that have similar ideas.
- CuriouslyC 2y ago
  If that were true, there'd be no point in ever applying a second time to YC. Anecdotally, people do get accepted after 2-4 failures. Maybe YC was on the fence about those founders and their willingness to slam themselves against a wall repeatedly tipped the scales, or maybe they invest in a certain kind of founder and when they run out of those they invest in "promising" ideas.
authorfly 2y ago
What's interesting is that the people who are able to predict and come up with the idea (e.g. a researcher using AI in 2021) are often not the best ones to execute on it (typically, lack of experience or capacity to handle the pain of growth while marketing). What's most interesting is that most people aren't just "one type". In your life you go through multiple roles. Just like how most people, regardless of their income at age 20 will be earning top 35% income by age 35, people move up in their roles (and struggle at a young age to understand that this will happen to them). It's all about timing and age. I believe some investors go for multiple teams purely because the ratio of those types is different - like a different risk profile. They invest in one with 80% AI boffins, and one with 80% business folks, and one will likely win in the circumstance of the moment (in the ChatGPT era - mostly the business folks. In the data driven AI era - mostly the AI boffins)
- MrMcCall 2y ago
  Human beings are the only creatures capable of self-evolution, using our minds to analyse the world around us and the world we have nurtured within us. Over time, we can stagnate into ossified animalistic patterns of selfishness, or we can expand our curiosity, consciousness, and, hopefully, our realization that compassion for others is the source of our own happiness. We can either find ways to better integrate ourselves into a better future for those around us, or wall ourselves off from the world around us. We would do well to remember that carpenters don't make hammers, nor computer scientists their own food, soil, packaging, tractors, or trains. The use of the vast sums available to successful tech investors gives them a greater point of leverage than the rest of us not so endowed. And the more power is given, the responsibility is required, though few acknowledge or heed such wisdom. At the end of the day, no matter how confident many folks are, who really has the humility and intelligence to know if a person is a genius? Very few, I guess. Very, very few, indeed.
- bwestergard 2y ago
  "Just like how most people, regardless of their income at age 20 will be earning top 35% income by age 35" Could you say more about this, or perhaps provide a link where we can read more?
codegeek 2y ago
Exactly. I think this is a brilliant strategy by YC. They know that some ideas have great potential. They just back multiple teams and hope that one of them will win with their execution.

by Ballas 2y ago

bingemaker 2y ago

YC also says that they don't believe in the idea, but the founders ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

ethagknight 2y ago
Seems reasonable to pick two horses in a race you believe is worth running
- billy-ilograph 2y ago
  This creates an extremely obvious conflict of interest.
  - pavlov 2y ago
    The conflict of interest is simply dead and forgotten in an era where the president-elect has his own cryptocoin, his own social media company, and appoints his billionaire supporters to improve efficiency in the parts of government that directly oversee those billionaires’ own businesses.
    - xpe 2y ago
      Yes, political corruption is a drag/loss on everyone except the corrupt ones. Worse, it can shift a system out of its viable operating zone. Corrupt individuals in a market can destroy the market. But what is the connection to the parent comment? No matter how corrupt one part of government or a market becomes, it doesn’t excuse further corruption. If anything, more corruption makes additional corruption more likely to break the whole system.
      - BeefWellington 2y ago
        I think it's reasonably straightforward they were making the point that conflict of interests are no longer taken seriously, along with many other related things. Politics tends to be a trailer of social views, not a leader.
      - svnt 2y ago
        The connection is that the conflict of interest being discussed was only ever a social/ethical contract. That social contract is in the bin right now, so the question is moot.
        xpe 2y ago
        Individuals who voted for Trump don’t necessarily want to throw away a social contract. Many of them do support societal norms, albeit different ones. And some don’t even think in these terms; they are more motivated by other factors. Along with many, I think their collective actions point in a direction that (a) undermines democratic rule and (b) enables Trump’s corruption, but they seem to be relatively unaware or disagree with such effects. Many of them think Trump will combat one some types of corruption (the “deep state”). Overall, I’m more inclined to think many/most Trump supporters have reasonable core values, especially at the individual and family levels, but due to their information sources and mental processing, their overall choices don’t bode well for us, together. The biggest breakdown I think has to do with epistemic values: how does one find truth. I don’t think most people, of any party, have the individual ability and discipline to make sense of a modern world in a rational, scientific manner. This isn’t something easily achieved, after all. About me: I strive to not “blame” individuals in the traditional sense, because I reject free will as a meaningful concept. (Roll back the clock and a person will the behave the same in a deterministic universe. And if the universe has intrinsic randomness, we can’t ascribe free will to that randomness.) So instead of blaming individuals, I focus on systems and their statistical effects.
        svnt 2y ago
        I don’t think I made the assertion that anyone wants to throw away a social contract. I said it was in the bin — it has been thrown away, and not by recent Trump voters, but it started long before that, maybe when ethics became something you didn’t learn until or unless you went through a professional program. Having talked with a few religious Trump voters that I consider intelligent, they have a larger picture of the world, whereas I think a lot of Harris voters (being vaguely irreligious/atheist) are implicitly making the USA their whole world. Trump voters do not see the risk the same way, and have faith elsewhere. For many Harris voters this was an existential issue. That all said, those Trump voters I spoke with still seemed apologetic. However it came about, there clearly is a misalignment in the stated social values world, and that is why that social contract doesn’t exist anymore. Whether that is because family forces, or tribal forces, or identity forces, or something else carried the day instead, well, maybe the future historians can sort out.
  - xpe 2y ago
    We need to define conflict of interest. Question: is an investor who gives money to one organization, but is not involved in the decision-making, conflicted if they give money to another organization? Are they self-conflicted (undermining their own likelihood of success)? Are they contractually or legally conflicted? Have they breached the trust of people they invested in? Are they ethically conflicted? Answers to these questions are non-obvious. Attempts to simplify the set of relevant questions means imposing a worldview. On the ethical question, a consequentialist would say it depends on the outcomes. Like many consequentialist analyses, this is complicated. Consider this: Investing in a similar company might validate the market and make it more likely for the company and/or its people to reach viability.
  - Suppafly 2y ago
    >This creates an extremely obvious conflict of interest. That's not necessarily bad though. People like to throw out these terms that sometimes have negative connotation as if they are inherently negative. If you think the conflict of interest is a bad thing, you need to elaborate on why you feel it's bad, not just pretend it's prima facia bad.
  - edm0nd 2y ago
    but two horses can still win though. One can come in first and the other come in second. That's two wins.
  - ethagknight 2y ago
    It’s not a marriage. Have you ever watched any racing of any sort? One team frequently has multiple contestants. First and third is better than just third.
robertlagrant 2y ago
> YC also says that they don't believe in the idea, but the founders ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ That still doesn't preclude them backing two founder groups that have similar ideas.
CuriouslyC 2y ago
If that were true, there'd be no point in ever applying a second time to YC. Anecdotally, people do get accepted after 2-4 failures. Maybe YC was on the fence about those founders and their willingness to slam themselves against a wall repeatedly tipped the scales, or maybe they invest in a certain kind of founder and when they run out of those they invest in "promising" ideas.

authorfly 2y ago

What's interesting is that the people who are able to predict and come up with the idea (e.g. a researcher using AI in 2021) are often not the best ones to execute on it (typically, lack of experience or capacity to handle the pain of growth while marketing). What's most interesting is that most people aren't just "one type". In your life you go through multiple roles. Just like how most people, regardless of their income at age 20 will be earning top 35% income by age 35, people move up in their roles (and struggle at a young age to understand that this will happen to them). It's all about timing and age. I believe some investors go for multiple teams purely because the ratio of those types is different - like a different risk profile. They invest in one with 80% AI boffins, and one with 80% business folks, and one will likely win in the circumstance of the moment (in the ChatGPT era - mostly the business folks. In the data driven AI era - mostly the AI boffins)

MrMcCall 2y ago
Human beings are the only creatures capable of self-evolution, using our minds to analyse the world around us and the world we have nurtured within us. Over time, we can stagnate into ossified animalistic patterns of selfishness, or we can expand our curiosity, consciousness, and, hopefully, our realization that compassion for others is the source of our own happiness. We can either find ways to better integrate ourselves into a better future for those around us, or wall ourselves off from the world around us. We would do well to remember that carpenters don't make hammers, nor computer scientists their own food, soil, packaging, tractors, or trains. The use of the vast sums available to successful tech investors gives them a greater point of leverage than the rest of us not so endowed. And the more power is given, the responsibility is required, though few acknowledge or heed such wisdom. At the end of the day, no matter how confident many folks are, who really has the humility and intelligence to know if a person is a genius? Very few, I guess. Very, very few, indeed.
bwestergard 2y ago
"Just like how most people, regardless of their income at age 20 will be earning top 35% income by age 35" Could you say more about this, or perhaps provide a link where we can read more?

codegeek 2y ago

Exactly. I think this is a brilliant strategy by YC. They know that some ideas have great potential. They just back multiple teams and hope that one of them will win with their execution.