Ask PG: Limits on competitive startups? | Hacker News Reader

Ask PG: Limits on competitive startups?

1 pointbigohms2 comments

I've been running an early concept in the same space market as a recent YC graduate start up. I have been following the team closely. My approach is different and bypasses/solves much of the regulatory & technical challenges they have been encountering.

Does YC self-limit accepting more than one attempt at a problem? Basic reasoning suggests it would be counterproductive to fund two competitive businesses.

Also, are there any controls in place that prevent any inside game being shared with these competitive companies?

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Quoth the FAQ:

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Will you fund multiple startups working on the same idea?

Yes. If you fund as many companies as we do it's unavoidable you'll end up with some overlap. Even if you tried not to accept competing companies, you'd still get overlap because startups' ideas morph so much. The way we deal with it is that when two startups are working on related stuff, we don't talk to one about what the other's doing.

In practice it has not turned out to be a problem, because most big markets have room for several slightly different solutions, and it's unlikely that two startups would do precisely the same thing.

http://ycombinator.com/faq.html

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With regards to "Also, are there any controls in place that prevent any inside game being shared with these competitive companies?" your main security is that YC are honest, not that there is a special Arc module which PG turns on to firewall off parts of his brain.

Sorry, I`m not PG, but I couldn`t help but comment. I hope you don`t mind.

From everything I`ve seen about YC and PG, they seem to value the co-founder much more than the idea. So the second attempt may work, where the previous attempt failed, because the people were better.

My favourite story about YC are the guys from Reddit. When they applied, their idea was to develop an app which let you pre-order your coffee from Starbucks and avoid the line. The idea didn't go over too well, but PG and JL really liked the co-founders, so they brought them back and worked out a better idea. They realized that these guys were special enough that the idea didn't matter.

As for controls to prevent inside gaming...I'm curious to know the answer to this as well! Are companies encouraged to brainstorm together? If so, do they have to sign anything?

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