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Paul's recent mentions about scaling Y Combinator have prompted me to give some thought to the matter myself, but the first thing I realized is that I don't rea
by dfranke 20y ago
Paul's recent mentions about scaling Y Combinator have prompted me to give some thought to the matter myself, but the first thing I realized is that I don't really know what's preventing it from scaling. What's the current limiting factor?
Amount of money available to invest?
How much attention you can pay to the people you fund?
The number of applications that don't suck?
And given an unlimited supply of the current limiting factor, how much bigger could you get before running up against one of the other two?
- pg 20y agoRight now it's the number of good applications. That number appears to be increasing fairly rapidly, though. Then it will be our attention.
- amichail 20y agoOut of curiosity, what do you think of the work done at the MIT Media Lab? Would you fund those sorts of things? http://www.media.mit.edu/research http://www.media.mit.edu/research
- dfranke 20y agoThat sounds like it puts you in approximately the same boat as traditional VCs.
- dougw 20y agoPaul, there is nothing to the amount of attention given to applicants after acceptance?
- Alex3917 20y agoSo there are basically two factors then: 1) Smart people within YC 2) Smart people applying to YC So basically you have to find the optimal ratio and then grow both in proportion. :-)
- brezina 20y agoIn my mind there is no question that the limiting factor is Paul's time. The amount of time Paul spends with his portfolio of companies is the integral of the number of companies he funds with 50% decay to account for companies that quit. There is obviously a physical limit at 24 hrs/day.