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YC ignores a lot of good ideas because it's really focused on BIG ideas. YC wants to build Paypal, not 37signals. They lean toward ambitious infrastructure idea
by tbrooks 18y ago
YC ignores a lot of good ideas because it's really focused on BIG ideas. YC wants to build Paypal, not 37signals. They lean toward ambitious infrastructure ideas which also have a higher failure rate. But there is a huge number of great ideas with lower risk/reward ratios that will still make stellar companies. I say bring it on... it's a great time to be in the HTML writing business. :)
- pg 18y agoWe'd be happy to have funded 37 Signals. We funded Wufoo, which is very much like 37 Signals, and we'd be delighted to fund more companies like that.
- unalone 18y agoBut Wufoo still deals with a Big Idea: namely, something that's creating a large infrastructure on the Internet. 37signals is a private, internal service: they make things that appeal to closed niches. On the other hand, Wufoo is something that's more public, in a sense. Maybe it's just a matter of what YC companies get named more than others, but the ones that immediately come to mind are big-problem companies. Reddit for finding news online. Disqus for comments. Scribd for document indexing. Wufoo for forms. There aren't as many niche sites (versus something like TechStars, which had a cooking site) - or am I just missing lots of niche YC sites?