[HN Gopher] Was Y Combinator worth it? ___________________________________________________________________ Was Y Combinator worth it? Author : mitchpatin Score : 70 points Date : 2023-08-10 20:41 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (tableflow.com) (TXT) w3m dump (tableflow.com) | 1123581321 wrote: | Given the domain name, I was hoping to see some attempt to | quantify/aggregate multiple answers. | | I think nearly any startup would benefit unless the founders | entered into business with a strong perspective and network. | pclmulqdq wrote: | I think the real question is whether the benefit is worth the | 10%. That's pretty expensive. | | From a macchiavellian perspective, it does appear that the | benefits mostly attach to the founders (unless you are selling | products to startups) and the 10% attaches to the company, | which suggests that the optimal strategy post-YC may be to fail | and start another company. | | Edit - Obviously I'm not suggesting killing a good company that | hits it big and gets a bunch of traction, but if your post-YC | company isn't in that position (and almost all of them aren't, | by the way, thanks to the risky nature of startups), you have | some very awkward math to do on whether to pivot or shut down. | s1artibartfast wrote: | That is entirely dependent on how much you're leaving on the | table by failing. When gambling, it might make sense to quit | while you're up but that entirely depends on the expected | value of your next bet. | | From a macchiavellian perspective, you also have to consider | how much benefit the founder would stand again from having a | more successful startup instead of failing. | [deleted] | paxys wrote: | 90% of a big number is a lot better than 100% of a small | number. If you get benefit out of YC and your company has | momentum, killing it and starting fresh on your own is | absolutely not the best strategy. | te_chris wrote: | Given it's a corporate blog and YC will still be on the cap, | what's the point of the leading question? | electricduck wrote: | You know, I've been reading Hacker News for god-knows-how-long, | and it never occurred to me to look up what Y Combinator even | was. | downWidOutaFite wrote: | Our Eternal September has arrived. | TheRealSteel wrote: | Same! | [deleted] | joshxyz wrote: | thats what i love about hn. | | i sometimes think yc is just a front to secure payment for hn | servers for many many years. | colechristensen wrote: | Isn't it just like... a couple of servers? As in, entirely | fundable by one person who could afford the time to moderate. | tomwojcik wrote: | 2 machines https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16076041 | mcpeepants wrote: | many, many, many years | fragmede wrote: | It's a rounding error in some of the budgets that | startups deal with. It becomes closer to the situation | with the Long Now, which is a clock to last 10,000 years. | With LLMs, even the moderation becomes an fixture in the | project that can endure. With Solar and a GPU and some | Internet. | nkingsy wrote: | llm moderation, what could go wrong | fasterik wrote: | You mean this isn't a website for lambda calculus enthusiasts? | aatd86 wrote: | Wait... This is not lambda-the-ultimate? | | Where am I? | mrwnmonm wrote: | Why combinator, Y? | btown wrote: | Why the lucky combinator | agumonkey wrote: | not so loud, you're gonna hug it to death | [deleted] | momothereal wrote: | I feel like I used to see a lot more Launch HN, Y Combinator | batches, etc. Or maybe I started tuning them out | dalbasal wrote: | No... I'm pretty sure he isn't near as interested in yc | anymore. | thallavajhula wrote: | >So, for us YC was a no-brainer. | | Saved you a click. | | If the general consensus is that YC is worth it, then why bother | publish something to state the obvious. I'd be more interested in | cases or scenarios where the founders felt YC wasn't worth it, | which I believe would be very low or non-existent. | threeseed wrote: | > which I believe would be very low or non-existent | | Only because your sample size are people who've attended YC. | | Ask all startups whether they think YC is worth it and the | percentage will be significantly higher. Because if you're an | experienced founder then the benefits versus dilution equation | will be far different than someone who is straight out of | college. | s1artibartfast wrote: | the rationale is relevant. if you are interested in the inverse | cases, you look at the reasons and assume the opposite. | PrimeMcFly wrote: | Y Combinator is for established businesses, right? Not just | business plans? | leetrout wrote: | They fund both but not much on these business plans unless the | team is connected or credentialed from what I can tell | cameroncooper wrote: | Yes, I think YC is almost always worth it. Even as a founder who | has raised VC and exited previously I found it to be worthwhile. | threeseed wrote: | This is simply not true. | | The optimum path for all startups is to either bootstrap | entirely or bootstrap up until the Series A where your | negotiation position is the strongest because you know your | unit economics and can demonstrate clear product-market fit. | | Of course many startups may simply not be able to bootstrap. | But equally there are many startups who could but choose the | YC/VC track because of cargo culting, naivety or ignorance of | all of the issues that it comes with e.g. dilution and the low | percentage of startups making it to Series-A. | | I would argue that most founders instead of emulating Stripe, | Airbnb etc should look to florists, bakeries, ecommerce sites | etc and learn the fundamentals for growing a business in a | cost-effective and sustainable way. And then decide after they | have a successful lifestyle business whether YC/VC will take | them to the next level. | brianwawok wrote: | * * * | elaus wrote: | What a curious product: CSV import as a service (or hosted on | premise). Would love to know where they pivoted from (according | to the blog post). | mitchpatin wrote: | We actually pivoted multiple times: | | 1. We applied to YC and initially started work on what we | referred to as "data-stack-as-a-service". The premise was to | provision, configure, and maintain the different components | required for a data stack: Data Warehouse, Integrations, | Transformations, Visualizations, etc. We had a working product | and a few paying customers. Ultimately we decided to pivot as | we felt the market for this was only small companies with small | budgets (many of whom might not even need a mature data stack). | | 2. Then we released a small open-source tool for Postgres that | could easily send webhook notifications when data was changed | (pg triggers sent websocket messages to a Go application). Off | of this we dove deeper into database tooling and building a | platform that offered branching, change management, and other | modern features for Postgres. We also had a prototype and | slightly larger contracts with a few early customers here. We | decided to pivot from this for a few reasons, but ultimately we | lost conviction in the idea and were more excited about data | import challenges that came up during user interviews. | | 3. As you mentioned, we're now working on CSV import as a | service. After building and maintaining CSV import tools many | times ourselves, we believe there's an opportunity to provide a | robust, pre-built experience. There are actually a few other | products in the market today. Our initial focus is to be the | most developer-friendly choice (a big part of why we're open | source). We want the decision to leverage an existing service | to be a no-brainer for any engineering team tasked with | supporting CSV import. | benzible wrote: | Not all that curious... https://flatfile.com | | If you're building a vertical SaaS and want to support import | from a file, and don't want to spend time reinventing the | wheel, this could be a big win. This would let new users bring | in existing data from another SaaS (that supports CSV export) | or where the incumbent is likely to be Excel. The development | time it would take to make something like this solid, usable, | and flexible enough to handle different formats would, in most | cases, be better spent on building domain-specific | functionality. | reneherse wrote: | That use case perfectly describes the needs of the SAAS | product my team is building. We have tons of domain specific | features we want to build, and anything that frees up dev | time for that work gets a look. | | While I haven't yet seen the pricing for your link or the OP, | this seems like a case where there aren't many negative | tradeoffs. | nda_dontask wrote: | [dead] | mks wrote: | There's so much more to CSV file import than just uploading and | parsing - service like this can become backbone of any | enterprise data exchange pipeline. For real mission critical | use cases you need features like being able to ingest multiple | gigabyte sized files reliably, quickly revert the import or | switch to a specific version, detecting errors and recovering | from partially corrupted files, detecting the new version is | available, possibly importing just changes, publishing metrics | on imported files to observability platforms, alerting if | anything goes wrong... | | If CSV import is not enough of a product (I believe it is) you | can add exporting functionality (e.g. export this table to CSV | and deliver to SFTP exactly once, but make sure to handle | target downtimes) and you have an "Enterprise File Gateway" | that could reduce development costs in many companies. | paxys wrote: | > We, however, were not in this position. Eric and I still had | full-time jobs when we were accepted. While we had been meeting | regularly for a few months to discuss different ideas, we had | absolutely zero traction, no working product, and very little | validation. | | This is the key part IMO. It's easy to give up 10% of what is | essentially an idea in your head in exchange for $500K and some | legitimacy from a big brand. That is exactly how an "accelerator" | is supposed to work. If you have spent time (sometimes years of | your life) and significant money actually building a product, | finding a market fit and gathering customers, YC's terms will | likely be much harder to swallow. | waithuh wrote: | YC did so well because they never really asked for the | qualifications other investors did and put an end to potential | founders deciding that its not worth it/procrastinating | mathewpregasen wrote: | was a great experience for me, even with the pandemic sabotaging | our demo day last minute | williamstein wrote: | Answer: "So, for us YC was a no-brainer." | lucb1e wrote: | ...because """ | | - we were in a bad place and, while a start-up in a good place | could raise more than YC's $500k in exchange for 10% of the | business, we couldn't. | | - we gained access to the knowledgebase that YC built of all | the problems (incorporating, tax filing, banking, HR systems, | etc.) and, for anything not in the KB, you can use their legal | team. | | - attaching the YC brand to your name adds legitimacy | | - we forged strong friendships with many of our batchmates. We | continue to meet on a regular basis to share updates, ideas, | and provide support to each other. Having other people that can | listen and empathize with the challenges you're experiencing | goes a long way. | | """ ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-08-10 23:00 UTC)