4 ms·

Of course, Big Techs have leverage of their bottomless coffers. What they can't develop, they buy. What was the last successful product idea coming from, say, F

by flail 1y ago

Of course, Big Techs have leverage of their bottomless coffers. What they can't develop, they buy. What was the last successful product idea coming from, say, Facebook? Or on a smaller scale, what's the last genuine Attlassian success? Yet, when it comes to product innovation, the momentum is always on the side of the new players. Always has been. Project management/work organization software? Linear. Async communication? Slack. Social Media? TikTok. One has to be curious how Zoom is doing so well, given that all the big competition actually controls the channels for setting up meetings. Self-publishing? Substack. Even with AI, everyone plays catch-up with Sam Altman, and many of the most prominent companies are newcomers. We could go on and on. Yes, Big Techs will survive because they have enough momentum to survive events such as the Balmer-era MS. But that doesn't mean they lead product innovation. And it's expected. Conflicting priorities, growing bureaucracies, shareholders' expectations, old business lines (and more), all make them less flexible.

scarface_74 1y ago
Again let’s look at YC’s latest batch of companies. How many of them are doing anything “innovative”? An innovative product is one where customers in aggregate are willing to pay more for it than it costs to create and run. Any idiot can sell a bunch of dollar bills for 95 cents. Going back to the latest batch of YC companies, there value play can easily be duplicated by any company in their vertical either by throwing a few engineers on it or creating a statement of work for the consulting company I work for and I can pull together a few engineers and knock it out in a few months and they will already have customers to sell it to. There was one recent YC company (of course one of the BS AI companies) that was a hiring a “founding full stack engineer” for $150K. It looks like they were two non technical “serial entrepreneurs” without even an MVP that YC threw money at. You can’t imagine how many times some hair brain underfunded startup reached out to me to be a “CTO” that paid less than I made as a mid level employee at BigTech with the promise of Monopoly money “equity”.
- thenanyu 1y ago
  VCs generally expect some small single digit % of their companies to succeed and return the fund If 90% of the companies fail or are outright fraudulent it doesn’t really matter
  - scarface_74 1y ago
    And how many of those “succeed” by creating good products compared to just being acquihires where after acquisition you soon see a blog post about “our amazing journey”?
    - thenanyu 1y ago
      Single digit percentage, like I said. Often low single digits
- flail 1y ago
  The last YC batch was like ~170 companies, correct? Each year, there are like 150 million startups. So let's not take YC stable for the whole startup ecosystem. And I'm with you with a critical view on their all-in move toward AI. It's just what all the VCs do, and it's hard to say who's parroting who in this setup (I think that others are parroting YC, but feel free to challenge me on that). Having said all that, I wouldn't be surprised if a couple of companies from this year's cohort made it big. If you look at YC's biggest successes year by year, you will often (but not always) find a household name. Was there anyone who predicted these would be the greatest hits? Of course not! That's the whole point of having an investment portfolio. You can be wrong a lot of times if you secure an early investment in a unicorn every other year or so. Also, "one recent example" of poor investment decision doesn't invalidate 2 decades of rather successful investment portfolios (as a whole, not individually). In no way is it a YC defense. I'm very critical of the whole startup funding ecosystem, and they are a prominent player. Yet, if they were consistently stupid with their decisions, they wouldn't exist, let alone be the most desired accelerator out there. Also, if it's that simple to copy what they do and what the companies in their portfolio do, why wouldn't Google et al. take their almost infinite funds and get the competing offers for non-BS ideas up and running in no time? I bet that if you had an idea that could pay off thousandfold, you'd get enough eager ears to hear you out in any big tech. And still, it's the makeshift mass of startups that come through with new products. One has to wonder why things like Shopify, Stripe, Zapier, or Figma did not come from the big tech. Each would have an ideal match. Even if you look at the AI landscape, how come Lovable made such a career? After all, they repackage the AI capabilities rented elsewhere. Somehow, with all the ingenuity of building ChatGPT, OpenAI and the rest didn't get it.
  - scarface_74 1y ago
    Let’s look at YCs “successes” as far as the companies that have gone public. https://medium.com/@kazeemibrahim18/the-post-ipo-performance-of-y-combinator-companies-a-mixed-bag-of-success-and-struggle-58e9a4006f01 https://medium.com/@kazeemibrahim18/the-post-ipo-performance...
    - flail 1y ago

by flail 1y ago

scarface_74 1y ago

Again let’s look at YC’s latest batch of companies. How many of them are doing anything “innovative”? An innovative product is one where customers in aggregate are willing to pay more for it than it costs to create and run. Any idiot can sell a bunch of dollar bills for 95 cents. Going back to the latest batch of YC companies, there value play can easily be duplicated by any company in their vertical either by throwing a few engineers on it or creating a statement of work for the consulting company I work for and I can pull together a few engineers and knock it out in a few months and they will already have customers to sell it to. There was one recent YC company (of course one of the BS AI companies) that was a hiring a “founding full stack engineer” for $150K. It looks like they were two non technical “serial entrepreneurs” without even an MVP that YC threw money at. You can’t imagine how many times some hair brain underfunded startup reached out to me to be a “CTO” that paid less than I made as a mid level employee at BigTech with the promise of Monopoly money “equity”.

thenanyu 1y ago
VCs generally expect some small single digit % of their companies to succeed and return the fund If 90% of the companies fail or are outright fraudulent it doesn’t really matter
- scarface_74 1y ago
  And how many of those “succeed” by creating good products compared to just being acquihires where after acquisition you soon see a blog post about “our amazing journey”?
  - thenanyu 1y ago
    Single digit percentage, like I said. Often low single digits
flail 1y ago
The last YC batch was like ~170 companies, correct? Each year, there are like 150 million startups. So let's not take YC stable for the whole startup ecosystem. And I'm with you with a critical view on their all-in move toward AI. It's just what all the VCs do, and it's hard to say who's parroting who in this setup (I think that others are parroting YC, but feel free to challenge me on that). Having said all that, I wouldn't be surprised if a couple of companies from this year's cohort made it big. If you look at YC's biggest successes year by year, you will often (but not always) find a household name. Was there anyone who predicted these would be the greatest hits? Of course not! That's the whole point of having an investment portfolio. You can be wrong a lot of times if you secure an early investment in a unicorn every other year or so. Also, "one recent example" of poor investment decision doesn't invalidate 2 decades of rather successful investment portfolios (as a whole, not individually). In no way is it a YC defense. I'm very critical of the whole startup funding ecosystem, and they are a prominent player. Yet, if they were consistently stupid with their decisions, they wouldn't exist, let alone be the most desired accelerator out there. Also, if it's that simple to copy what they do and what the companies in their portfolio do, why wouldn't Google et al. take their almost infinite funds and get the competing offers for non-BS ideas up and running in no time? I bet that if you had an idea that could pay off thousandfold, you'd get enough eager ears to hear you out in any big tech. And still, it's the makeshift mass of startups that come through with new products. One has to wonder why things like Shopify, Stripe, Zapier, or Figma did not come from the big tech. Each would have an ideal match. Even if you look at the AI landscape, how come Lovable made such a career? After all, they repackage the AI capabilities rented elsewhere. Somehow, with all the ingenuity of building ChatGPT, OpenAI and the rest didn't get it.
- scarface_74 1y ago
  Let’s look at YCs “successes” as far as the companies that have gone public. https://medium.com/@kazeemibrahim18/the-post-ipo-performance-of-y-combinator-companies-a-mixed-bag-of-success-and-struggle-58e9a4006f01 https://medium.com/@kazeemibrahim18/the-post-ipo-performance...
  - flail 1y ago