4 ms·
Is it a good thing or a bad thing that Y Combinator's two biggest home run successes - Airbnb and Dropbox - both did not seem to fit Y Combinator's typical sele
by pshin45 13y ago
Is it a good thing or a bad thing that Y Combinator's two biggest home run successes - Airbnb and Dropbox - both did not seem to fit Y Combinator's typical selection criteria at the time?
Yes, the Airbnb founders have always been "relentlessly resourceful", but 2 of their 3 cofounders were not hackers, which as far as I know is generally a big red flag for YC. And as someone else mentioned, PG thought their idea was terrible and only chose them because he liked their grit.
Drew Houston does seem to fit the mold of a prototypical YC founder, but it can't be stressed enough that he was rejected the first time he applied to YC. If Drew Houston had decided to not apply again and decided to get funded by someone else, the way we view YC today might be significantly different. Of course, maybe Dropbox wouldn't be where it is today without YC's help, but I don't wanna delve too much into counterfactuals.
My point is, seeing as YC's two biggest successes came from two teams that normally were rejected by their model, should YC be criticized for being too narrow in the way they evaluate startups, or should they be lauded for being willing to be contrarians against their own model when it came to Airbnb and Dropbox?