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> so many yc start-ups have co-founder issues My guess would be that it's the number of "companies in simultaneous crisis" that grew beyond control. I used to
by larsberg 14y ago
> so many yc start-ups have co-founder issues
My guess would be that it's the number of "companies in simultaneous crisis" that grew beyond control. I used to warn new managers that somewhere just above 8 employees is the point where you always have one that is going through a serious illness in the family, divorce, addiction to drugs/video games, or something else that will take up all of your attention (if you let it).
Extrapolating to companies, I'd bet that the senior YC staff can handle, say, 5 companies in crisis (e.g., "co-founder issues") but growing to 10 was just too much and things started falling through the cracks. Or became unfun, since when you're handling crises you're ignoring the stars, which is a very common new manager mistake.
And unfortunately you can't scale the VCs to handle more crises; you either need more time from senior YC-crew or you have to find the equivalent of a human resources department to handle those issues and just stop trying to fix them yourself.
- 001sky 14y agoThis is an interesting consideration with expedition/adventure team size. There is a tradeoff with redundancy (someone will have a spare x) that keeps the group moving, and the increasing liklihood of somone haveing a problem at any given time. You need to minimize the latter, b/c not just its slower/more comlex, but it eliminates the redundancy (your 1 spare is now used gone, but larger group still to worry about, etc). This is often why an ideal team size is 2, not 8-10.