Comment by JonFish85 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JonFish85 | Hacker News Reader

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Wow, you're jumping to that conclusion already? As much as I'm sure the three of them are great additions in a lot of ways, none of them has led a product to a meaningful exit just yet (Pinterest, 123andme and Airbnb have yet to exit).

Now their valuations are sky-high, and they've raised an incredible amount of money, but it seems like a big chunk of YC people (people working for YC, not in the program) haven't really successfully led a company to a big exit (IPO or $100m+ cash buyout).

PG: Sold Viaweb for ~$50m

Sam Altman: Sold Loopt for ~$43.4m after raising ~$30m

Anne Wojcicki: Raised $191m, no exit

Ben Silbermann: Raised $1.3bn, no exit

Joe Gebbia: Raised $2.3bn, no exit

I'm sure they're all very bright people, but at the end of the day, these aren't companies that have been profitable or really been sustainable. They're great resources for how to raise lots of money, sure, but are they people who can speak at any great lengths about building a long-standing business?

I don't mean to sound incredibly negative about YC; I want to keep a level head when looking at them and what they offer.

You're measuring the wrong thing.

I'm talking about YC, not the companies of these specific YC partners. YC has done well through the transition. The best measurement for that is not "have YC partners exited their own firms at huge profits", but "do they provide meaningful help to people joining YC, do they bring great companies into YC, and do they make the tech industry overall better". I think the answer to that is pretty clearly yes.

YC open office hours, the YC fellowship (which hugely benefits remote people), expanding the partnership, expanding YC into new areas (hardware, bio, real science), etc. are more relevant than that Loopt was 3 years too early :)

Obviously it's still a work in progress. Would be interesting to look back in 10y.

Also, I'll just jump in here and say that not declaring any of Airbnb, Pinterest and 23andMe to be a success is farcical. You don't have to have exited to have a successful company.

The first part of your post complains about how few YC partners have led a product to a meaningful exit, but the last part complains about how they lack experience building a long-standing business. The two of them are to some extent mutually exclusive: once you exit, you are no longer building a long-standing business. (There are some exceptions where a company is acquired and then continues growing under the acquirer, like YouTube, Instagram, Twitch, and Reddit...and founders of the latter two happen to be YC partners.) Which do you care more about?

For building a long-standing product or business, I would argue that Pinterest, AirBnB, 23andMe, GMail, and Yahoo Mail all qualify, as does YC itself. That's why they haven't exited: Ben/Joe/Anne are all still building their businesses.

For exiting: PG/TLB/RTM (Viaweb), Kevin Hale (Wufoo), Justin Kan (Twitch), Michael Siebel (SocialCam), Paul Buchheit (FriendFeed) and Alexis Ohanian (Reddit) all exited for F-U amounts of money. Sam Altman (Loopt), Dalton Caldwell (iMeem), Garry Tan (Posterous), Qasar Younis (Talkbin), and Geoff Ralston (Lala) may have, but it's unclear from public documents whether the acquisitions of their companies resulted in a significant payoff to them after the liquidation preferences of their investors are taken into account.

It's sort of interesting that the inescapable conclusion is that VC funds power tech. What I mean is, if a business isn't sustainable, and the fact that they're sustainable doesn't matter, then it's thanks to the VC funds.

If you want to affect the world through business, the type of business you'll start is a startup. Counter-intuitively, it may be true that sustainability doesn't necessarily matter for a startup. If so, then sustainability in business doesn't matter for affecting the world.

That seems like dangerous thinking, and I've been trying to escape the conclusion. But since the home runs are how VCs make their returns, why is it a bad thing if 9 out of 10 startups eventually fail? And if it's not a bad thing, then why decry companies for being unsustainable, or the valley for funding them?

You can also exit via IPO and keep building the business, like Gates, Jobs, Zuckerberg.

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