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I haven't read it carefully, but I noticed a few mistakes. It's Y Combinator, not Y combinator. We started it in March 2005, not the summer. A lot more than
by pg 17y ago
I haven't read it carefully, but I noticed a few mistakes.
It's Y Combinator, not Y combinator. We started it in March 2005, not the summer. A lot more than 14% of the first 70 companies received follow-on funding; generally 2/3 or more do.
Also, I think this:
"While Paul Graham was influential through his essays, he is far more influential now that he runs the most high-profile accelerator programme in the world."
is actually false. Writing is by its nature a more effective generator of fame than almost any other kind of work. It's unlikely that switching part of your time from writing to some other kind of work would increase your fame. And in fact I have independent corroboration of this. Before I started YC, my site was often the first Google search result for "graham" and sometimes even for "paul." It's nothing like that now.
- mmt 17y agoMy reading is that by "influence" he meant, not fame, but effect. Perhaps this comment is, then, merely another thesaurus suggestion, though more for the sake of content than form.
- pvg 17y agoIt's hardly 'independent corroboration' since both the ranking methods and the availability and popularity of information available on the net that matches these simple and common terms have likely changed dramatically (probably much more so than your own popularity) since you started writing. It's very typical now for common term searches to list wikipedia pages in the top few ranks, for instance, and that change is entirely independent of your own fame trajectory.
- jedc 17y agoHi, Paul, and thank you for the clarifications. (They'll be reflected in the final version.) I would presume that Y Combinator wouldn't have been as successful without your body of writing, but that without Y Combinator your writing wouldn't been seen by nearly as many people. My opinion is that they're tied quite closely together.
- pg 17y agoI read it a little more carefully, though still not completely, and I see another thing that's misleading: the poll of potential founders. What you end up measuring that way are what random people expect to get out of something like YC. You're thus two steps removed from the actual function of a ycomorph. (Because the people who get accepted aren't randomly selected, and even they may be surprised by what ends up being the most valuable.) E.g. I notice that the feature that rated highest in the poll was "connections to future capital." That's actually pretty far down the list of what we do. But I've noticed that the worse a startup is, the more they think this is where our value lies. Their product is perfect, of course; the reason no one wants to invest in them is simply that they lack that magic intro from insiders. In fact the most valuable and the hardest thing we do is the low-rated "product support."
- jedc 17y agoI need to edit my wording of that description. It was actually a mix of potential founders, as well as people that have gone through Y Combinator, TechStars, etc. Amongst the founders that have been through Y Combinator, the "connections to capital" was virtually the same score, "brand and alumni connections" was higher than the overall average, and the other factors were all lower than the overall averages. The non-founders actually rated "connections to capital" marginally lower than the overall group (YC + others) of funded-founders.