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Comment by mej10 | Hacker News Reader

> I don't get the impression that they had a "ton" of money when they started.

Viaweb was PG's first company, which sold to Yahoo for $49 million in 1998. Just as an FYI -- I think PG/JL/YC are great.

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But how much went to them, vs investors, taxes, etc? It's not like they started YC with $50 million.

even if 10% went to them.. this is 1998.. it is a lot of money back back then (more than 99% of people will make in their life time) and is a lot of money now.

But not a lot of money in comparison to the VCs who could have done it in 1998. Not either a lot of connections in comparison to the VCs.

Ten million dollars is a lot of money, but not especially rare among financial types and tech titans.

But the people who actually make something like this are much rarer.

I covered that in my comment with the “and” clause. I don’t deny they were radically successful at making a club. That’s my point, their success was in making an elite social group, not in any special VC strategy. The only way to replicate their success (if that’s what you define success as) would be to somehow supersede their reputation as the most desirable club.

> That’s my point, their success was in making an elite social group, not in any special VC strategy. The only way to replicate their success (if that’s what you define success as) would be to somehow supersede their reputation as the most desirable club.

The reason their particular club became elite is that they developed a reputation for helping people to succeed. And they developed that reputation by doing it, repeatedly. That is what I would call a successful VC strategy.

You may not remember what VC was like at that time. $50k for 50% was the expected seed round for a 4-person new grad team with about a year under their belt in Boston. I remember thinking the YC deal was crazy good crazy early. Anybody remember what it was? I recall something like $25k for 10% in the first batch. This was enough for poverty rent and ramen for 4 people for 1 year. The only problem I had with this was that he wanted all founders to quit their job before even applying, and then getting in was tough odds.

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