4 ms·

I'm sorry, everyone in this god damn thread is stupid if you think there is a recipe for this shit. This is all part of the propaganda machine to make YC releva

by lowglow 12y ago

I'm sorry, everyone in this god damn thread is stupid if you think there is a recipe for this shit. This is all part of the propaganda machine to make YC relevant. This is just a warning. Down-vote me to heaven.

robg 12y ago
YC has exactly shown there is a recipe. And that goes back before they were popular - the very first class in fact. After all this time of YC doing things, why don't you have have actual criticism, instead of ad hominem. So why troll?
- bdcravens 12y ago
  Read my response: I think the point is that a recipe implies perfect ingredients + perfect preparation = predictable results, which is far from true. You can follow the recipe to the letter and still fail. You can't judge a recipe by successes, but by its repeatability (I don't care about someone else's feast when I'm trying to make MY meal based on the recipe they followed)
  - dlss 12y ago
    Lecture one starts with Sam saying ``idea * execution * luck == results and the luck term is a random number between 0 and 10,000`` Deterministic recipes don't exist anywhere outside the hard sciences (and even there it's not really deterministic -- chemical synthesis and experimental physics have an art to them) Stochastic recipes on the other hand do exist. I think YC's recipe is quite good. Thiel's is cooler though :p
gokhan 12y ago
One size does not fits all since all the companies and their businesses are different. But that does not mean there are tested practices going well with most cases. Take, for example, the required reading from 1st lesson, Do things that don't scale [1]. And I know Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia didn't feel like they were en route to the big time as they were taking "professional" photos of their first hosts' apartments. They were just trying to survive. But in retrospect that too was the optimal path to dominating a big market. I remember reading somewhere that PG advised the photo thing to AirBnB, I might be wrong, to see if better photos is good for business (it appears it is). Now we have the same advice though a required reading link in the lesson. This does not mean your startup may benefit from such actions that don't scale but it's a good advice nevertheless. And being a long time lurker on HN, I'm sure I have heard most of the advice here and there but it's great for me to get them at home from thousand of kilometers away in a totally different country. [1] http://paulgraham.com/ds.html http://paulgraham.com/ds.html
seizethecheese 12y ago
What this all means is that YC's core value stems more from their brand than their knowledge, because if the reverse were true this class wouldn't exist publicly. It doesn't hurt to divulge your secret sauce, if that can only slightly hurt you while reinforcing your access to top talent.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
bdcravens 12y ago
I think YC's success speaks for itself. However, there's a bit of truth in what you say: a recipe implies a guaranteed, repeatable result. YC's process has worked, but it's more like a recipe where no matter how perfect you prepare the ingredients, you have no clue what the temperature on the oven is. Sometimes it's not warm enough, and you never gain traction. Sometimes it's too warm, and you burn up in an environment that's overrun. Sometime's it's just right, and you get Dropbox.
prostoalex 12y ago
There are two types of recipes - how to succeed at something and how to avoid most common mistakes at something. This seems to be the latter kind.

by lowglow 12y ago

robg 12y ago

YC has exactly shown there is a recipe. And that goes back before they were popular - the very first class in fact. After all this time of YC doing things, why don't you have have actual criticism, instead of ad hominem. So why troll?

bdcravens 12y ago
Read my response: I think the point is that a recipe implies perfect ingredients + perfect preparation = predictable results, which is far from true. You can follow the recipe to the letter and still fail. You can't judge a recipe by successes, but by its repeatability (I don't care about someone else's feast when I'm trying to make MY meal based on the recipe they followed)
- dlss 12y ago
  Lecture one starts with Sam saying ``idea * execution * luck == results and the luck term is a random number between 0 and 10,000`` Deterministic recipes don't exist anywhere outside the hard sciences (and even there it's not really deterministic -- chemical synthesis and experimental physics have an art to them) Stochastic recipes on the other hand do exist. I think YC's recipe is quite good. Thiel's is cooler though :p

gokhan 12y ago

One size does not fits all since all the companies and their businesses are different. But that does not mean there are tested practices going well with most cases. Take, for example, the required reading from 1st lesson, Do things that don't scale [1]. And I know Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia didn't feel like they were en route to the big time as they were taking "professional" photos of their first hosts' apartments. They were just trying to survive. But in retrospect that too was the optimal path to dominating a big market. I remember reading somewhere that PG advised the photo thing to AirBnB, I might be wrong, to see if better photos is good for business (it appears it is). Now we have the same advice though a required reading link in the lesson. This does not mean your startup may benefit from such actions that don't scale but it's a good advice nevertheless. And being a long time lurker on HN, I'm sure I have heard most of the advice here and there but it's great for me to get them at home from thousand of kilometers away in a totally different country. [1] http://paulgraham.com/ds.html http://paulgraham.com/ds.html

seizethecheese 12y ago

What this all means is that YC's core value stems more from their brand than their knowledge, because if the reverse were true this class wouldn't exist publicly. It doesn't hurt to divulge your secret sauce, if that can only slightly hurt you while reinforcing your access to top talent.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

bdcravens 12y ago

I think YC's success speaks for itself. However, there's a bit of truth in what you say: a recipe implies a guaranteed, repeatable result. YC's process has worked, but it's more like a recipe where no matter how perfect you prepare the ingredients, you have no clue what the temperature on the oven is. Sometimes it's not warm enough, and you never gain traction. Sometimes it's too warm, and you burn up in an environment that's overrun. Sometime's it's just right, and you get Dropbox.

prostoalex 12y ago

There are two types of recipes - how to succeed at something and how to avoid most common mistakes at something. This seems to be the latter kind.