I'll call hogwash. This article, I think, is missing the point by a thousand miles. I don't think that YC invests in guys who want to draw cats for you (no of

I'll call hogwash. This article, I think, is missing the point by a thousand miles. I don't think that YC invests in guys who want to draw cats for you (no offense to Mr. Cuban). That's the first layer. I've been to pitch events where within the first 11.3 words you know that it is going to go nowhere. And then you learn that someone threw money at them. What percentage of startups have a chance --purely on the nature of the business they propose to attack-- to reach a billion dollars. Is it 1%, 2%, 10% or 0.1%? I would venture to guess that, YC or not, if you took all startups launching in the US, a very small number of them have a shot at a billion dollars. No, not because there might be execution problems or anything like that. Markets with billion dollar potential are relatively scarce when compared to, say, $25MM, $50MM or even $100MM markets. And, even if you found one, there's the very real possibility of it being a displacement market rather than virgin territory ready for the taking. In other words, you have to share the cake with n players. More accurately, you have to STEAL cake from others. Chances are you are going to get poked in the eyes and kicked out of the room before that happens. If the market is only good for a billion dollars total and there are ten players already in it, what are the chances of you capturing 100% of it? Right. This means that, in order to even have a shot at a billion dollars you have to look for a market that is large. Huge large. If, for easy numbers, you identify a $100bn market, now you only have to steal 1% of the cake. And, while I am not saying that this is easy, it would be far more plausible than capturing 100% of a billion dollar market.