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This is YC advice boiled down to its essential and most generalizable terms. Because it's general (applies to almost all their founders) it's also generic - the
by subdane 12y ago
This is YC advice boiled down to its essential and most generalizable terms. Because it's general (applies to almost all their founders) it's also generic - the patterns matched across hundreds of humans. It leaves out the human toil, mistakes and doubt - but most importantly the emotions. It doesn't tell you why you should follow this advice. It doesn't show you what happened to the folks that did. It takes for granted its assumptions about what's valuable. Same for success.
It's the Cliff's notes for the YC ideology. So it could be the Cliff's notes part you find hollow, or it could be the YC ideology part you find hollow.
- abstractbill 12y agoA lot of YC's advice was not considered obvious when they started out (nearly ten years ago!). If some of it seems generic and obvious now, that's because they've succeeded - more than anyone else - in discovering and sharing some actually repeatable strategies for building startups.
- cookiecaper 12y agoMaybe it's just about who it's obvious to. YC is run by technical people, and most VC firms aren't. When PG got into the game and started making good picks because he actually knew what he was talking about and had direct experience, unlike the finance guys dicking around with macro-scale projections pulled out of thin air, he wrote down the obvious from his perspective and was immediately copied (poorly, in general) by the people that saw the success knowing what you're talking about can bring.