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Comment by new_realist | Hacker News Reader

Y Combinator managed to convince startups that would have been founded anyway to give up expensive equity to them. I'm not sure they would have failed without YC.

Put another way, if you take a piece of every startup on the planet, can you claim influence if some of those startups eventually succeed?

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Airbnb was basically dead before they got into YC. They very likely would have quit, as they were heavily in personal debt and couldn’t find anyone to invest in them.

Reddit was pretty much PG’s idea, or at least an idea he helped Steve and Alexis come up with.

Stripe is hard to imagine getting started if PC hadn’t already had an exit with an earlier YC-funded startup.

I could go on and on, but the point is clearly false.

This is similar to the idea that it doesn't matter where you go to college - because the things that get you into top X schools are the same traits that correlate with success afterward. This paper is a study that makes that argument: https://www.nber.org/papers/w7322 (disclaimer - I only read the abstract)

Also - in fairness to YC - there are a staggering number of companies that are started every year. I don't have the stats but I would guess that YC outperforms the totality of the startup market.

Wait... how was the username "ford" never used on HN until now?

HN is a pretty small community. There are ample dictionary word usernames left.

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=generalmotors

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=usually

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=fucking

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=sucks

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=although

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=their

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=hummers

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=appear

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=rugged

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=tough

None of these are registered yet.

Is it remarkable because it's a name? I bet we can find lots of those, too.

I was surprised at ford in particular because it's the name one of the main characters of a book that's very popular in this community.

This character?

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=fordprefect

HN has polls? Is that an old feature that got removed or something noone uses anymore?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll

Go nuts

Surprised more of these haven't been snatched up yet, some of them are really pretty. Although tough has been registered for five years.

Usually, you'd be right, but actually, no it wasn't tough it seems that way now ;-)

So you learn the same thing at every college?

It is more like investing a bit in good college students in exchange for the lifetime share of their earnings.

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