6 ms·

I'd love to know who "wins" in a scaled YC vs. the oceanic tide that is the SP500 and it's capital sucking and brain sucking ways. A Google can stop 10000 poten

I'd love to know who "wins" in a scaled YC vs. the oceanic tide that is the SP500 and it's capital sucking and brain sucking ways. A Google can stop 10000 potential startups simply with RSUs and cap another 10000 by buying them out (which is kinda good for YC but not really... they'd rather own a chunk of a Google).

thierrydamiba 2y ago
I think you’re vastly underestimating how hard it is to pick winners and stifle competition. Using your logic, if it was so easy why didn’t Google stop OpenAI? Meta? Perplexity?
- Gud 2y ago
  Maybe they killed a hundred similar companies and those three slipped through?
  - high_na_euv 2y ago
    Hundreds of Facebooks? Very unlikely
  - williamstein 2y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- miltava 2y ago
  I think that maybe we underestimate how hard it is to choose the right companies to “kill” when you’re a competitor. The default mode is to say that they won’t go anywhere because of many factors (they don’t have the resources, the access, the capability, etc). But sometimes they do. And in restrospect it’s obvious, but it’s not by the time you had the chance to stop it. And I think it’s probably good.
  - allenjhyang 2y ago
    Also hard to marshal the resources you need internally to "kill" a competitor. Sometimes the way to handicap a startup rival is to build the feature / product yourself, but then the bigtech firm runs into the challenges of moving a large org quickly.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  > why didn’t Google Because hubris. One glaring flaw of well-capitalized large tech (perhaps the only one) is thinking they can build something better internally, when they have enough cash to simply buy best of breed off the market. At times Google understood this: Android 2005, YouTube 2006, Writely/GoogleDocs 2006, DoubleClick 2007, Motorola Mobility 2012, Waze 2013, DeepMind 2014
  - jmknoll 2y ago
    Either thinking they can build something better internally, thinking the new thing doesn't matter, or realizing that it does matter but not having the ability to move fast and commercialize it. e.g. Microsoft circa 2000 didn't think they could build a better internet. They just thought that the internet didn't really matter that much. Google in 2022 knew that LLMs mattered, and had spent a ton of money, but OpenAI just got a better product to market faster.
  - eitally 2y ago
    I'd add HTC's mobile phone unit to the list of strategically important Google acquisitions (and prehaps Dropcam, too). Without either of those -- even with all the fits & starts, they'd never have gotten to where they are today, building pretty great hardware with pretty good support and a decent supply chain, and largely with "good" software on top.
tim333 2y ago
I think they are both winning. Googling gives "The 2024 Y Combinator (YC) top companies have a combined valuation of $458 billion. In 2023, these companies generated a total revenue of $57.2 billion." Which is not bad starting from basically nothing 20 years ago. I don't think the S&P is doing badly either.
- fakedang 2y ago
  Plot a graph of the companies against their revenue and profit numbers and you'll end up with 2 massively skewed incline curves. Plot a graph of their companies which are public, and they're mostly trading below their debut. YC did do the right thing (investing in super early stage startups) at the right time (ZIRP environment), but now with the proliferation of too many startups and applicants, I'm not so certain on how much of a future it has with getting the next best thing. Already seeing quite a few startups that either bootstrapped or raised without YC, while a number of YC companies are stuck in pivot loops.
- worksonmymach 2y ago
  I like this metric. YC doesn't own all of that but that doesn't matter for this exercise. That $458 billion is disjointed. It cannot move as one (when needed) like say Microsoft can. It cannot buy GitHub or OpenAI. But then it wont self distruct either. That is both a plus and minus.
  - tim333 2y ago
    Yeah. I think YC's ownership is of the order of 3%.
JoshTriplett 2y ago
If you make buyout offers to 10000 startups, how many of those say "no" to those offers? Not everybody is willing to send an "our incredible journey" post to all their users.
klooney 2y ago
> A Google can stop 10000 potential startups simply with RSUs The real killer here is the Bay Area housing market. You need those RSUs to pay for a place to stay.
- foobarian 2y ago
  If the engineers are just middlemen for plumbing that money to property owners, seems like owning property in the Bay Area might be a good idea.
  - mistrial9 2y ago
    older generations did just that. In the Internet boom, people commonly talked about "place being obsolete" and other detached thinking.. perhaps lessening the emphasis on buying real property nearby. Of course, not everyone played by the same rule book. Observe the result.
  - 0_____0 2y ago
    That was the policy intention in the 70s. Prop 13 plus zoning most land area for SFH ensured that boomer property owners could get rich. Back then it wasn't clear just how rich, though.
  - antaviana 2y ago
    It seems there is the opportunity to disrupt that market, so that tech companies can pay property owners directly, without the middlemen.
    - sangnoir 2y ago
      That's not nearly disruptive enough. I'm raising seed rounds for HackerRV - a high end, compact RV rentals for knowledge workers that does away with the need for houses. Starlink comes standard, with additional subscriptions available for showers at aelect locations, and mail delivery addresses. Our previous venture (BackyardBnB) was scuttled by literal NIMBYs.
    - llamaimperative 2y ago

thierrydamiba 2y ago

I think you’re vastly underestimating how hard it is to pick winners and stifle competition. Using your logic, if it was so easy why didn’t Google stop OpenAI? Meta? Perplexity?

Gud 2y ago
Maybe they killed a hundred similar companies and those three slipped through?
- high_na_euv 2y ago
  Hundreds of Facebooks? Very unlikely
- williamstein 2y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
miltava 2y ago
I think that maybe we underestimate how hard it is to choose the right companies to “kill” when you’re a competitor. The default mode is to say that they won’t go anywhere because of many factors (they don’t have the resources, the access, the capability, etc). But sometimes they do. And in restrospect it’s obvious, but it’s not by the time you had the chance to stop it. And I think it’s probably good.
- allenjhyang 2y ago
  Also hard to marshal the resources you need internally to "kill" a competitor. Sometimes the way to handicap a startup rival is to build the feature / product yourself, but then the bigtech firm runs into the challenges of moving a large org quickly.
ethbr1 2y ago
> why didn’t Google Because hubris. One glaring flaw of well-capitalized large tech (perhaps the only one) is thinking they can build something better internally, when they have enough cash to simply buy best of breed off the market. At times Google understood this: Android 2005, YouTube 2006, Writely/GoogleDocs 2006, DoubleClick 2007, Motorola Mobility 2012, Waze 2013, DeepMind 2014
- jmknoll 2y ago
  Either thinking they can build something better internally, thinking the new thing doesn't matter, or realizing that it does matter but not having the ability to move fast and commercialize it. e.g. Microsoft circa 2000 didn't think they could build a better internet. They just thought that the internet didn't really matter that much. Google in 2022 knew that LLMs mattered, and had spent a ton of money, but OpenAI just got a better product to market faster.
- eitally 2y ago
  I'd add HTC's mobile phone unit to the list of strategically important Google acquisitions (and prehaps Dropcam, too). Without either of those -- even with all the fits & starts, they'd never have gotten to where they are today, building pretty great hardware with pretty good support and a decent supply chain, and largely with "good" software on top.

tim333 2y ago

I think they are both winning. Googling gives "The 2024 Y Combinator (YC) top companies have a combined valuation of $458 billion. In 2023, these companies generated a total revenue of $57.2 billion." Which is not bad starting from basically nothing 20 years ago. I don't think the S&P is doing badly either.

fakedang 2y ago
Plot a graph of the companies against their revenue and profit numbers and you'll end up with 2 massively skewed incline curves. Plot a graph of their companies which are public, and they're mostly trading below their debut. YC did do the right thing (investing in super early stage startups) at the right time (ZIRP environment), but now with the proliferation of too many startups and applicants, I'm not so certain on how much of a future it has with getting the next best thing. Already seeing quite a few startups that either bootstrapped or raised without YC, while a number of YC companies are stuck in pivot loops.
worksonmymach 2y ago
I like this metric. YC doesn't own all of that but that doesn't matter for this exercise. That $458 billion is disjointed. It cannot move as one (when needed) like say Microsoft can. It cannot buy GitHub or OpenAI. But then it wont self distruct either. That is both a plus and minus.
- tim333 2y ago
  Yeah. I think YC's ownership is of the order of 3%.

JoshTriplett 2y ago

If you make buyout offers to 10000 startups, how many of those say "no" to those offers? Not everybody is willing to send an "our incredible journey" post to all their users.

klooney 2y ago

> A Google can stop 10000 potential startups simply with RSUs The real killer here is the Bay Area housing market. You need those RSUs to pay for a place to stay.

foobarian 2y ago
If the engineers are just middlemen for plumbing that money to property owners, seems like owning property in the Bay Area might be a good idea.
- mistrial9 2y ago
  older generations did just that. In the Internet boom, people commonly talked about "place being obsolete" and other detached thinking.. perhaps lessening the emphasis on buying real property nearby. Of course, not everyone played by the same rule book. Observe the result.
- 0_____0 2y ago
  That was the policy intention in the 70s. Prop 13 plus zoning most land area for SFH ensured that boomer property owners could get rich. Back then it wasn't clear just how rich, though.
- antaviana 2y ago
  It seems there is the opportunity to disrupt that market, so that tech companies can pay property owners directly, without the middlemen.
  - sangnoir 2y ago
    That's not nearly disruptive enough. I'm raising seed rounds for HackerRV - a high end, compact RV rentals for knowledge workers that does away with the need for houses. Starlink comes standard, with additional subscriptions available for showers at aelect locations, and mail delivery addresses. Our previous venture (BackyardBnB) was scuttled by literal NIMBYs.
  - llamaimperative 2y ago