2 ms·

To be fair, noone knows if your advice is good or bad(essays notwithstanding). Can you give an example of some specific advice you gave to one of the YC startup

• harpastum 18y ago
  I think the point of the essays and this community is to give startups an idea of the sort of advice they'll be getting [1]. Any "specific" advice would either be too close to the issues to have any meaning outside the company. As far as I can tell, PG has no qualms about "trade secrets"--if he thinks the advice would benefit everyone starting up a company, he will probably write an essay about it. If those ideas and themes resonate with you, you have an idea of what benefits you'll reap from the support of the YC staff. [1] Work hard to create wealth. ( http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html )
• pg 18y ago
  Actually around 300 people know, because that is about the number of founders we've funded. So if people (e.g. those applying for funding) want to know if YC is worth it, we usually suggest they contact some and ask them individually. I could never talk about conversations I'd had with specific startups, because the more useful the advice was, the more precisely you'd be able to identify the startup.
  • vaksel 18y ago
    Well yeah, I was more talking about people outside looking in, like the author, since he can't judge the quality of the advice he resorts to just comparing the monetary terms