Comment by wildermuthn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wildermuthn | Hacker News Reader

At West Point, I was one of ten cadets in my class of one thousand to make the parachute team. For some reason, the parachute team had become a symbol-status and a fast track to cadet success.

What's interests me the most is that I had no idea, no clue, that the skydiving team was a fast-track to promotion. I just wanted to jump out of planes. That wasn't the case with many of my teammates. We had some great talent on the skydiving team — the most talented men and women at West Point. But some of them hated jumping out of planes, and they did poorly.

Sama writes that the number and quality of YC applications has risen. That might not be a good thing. Talent and ambition aren't the greatest indicators of startup success.

I don't think its a coincidence that Dropbox, Reddit, AirBnb, Justin.tv, Loopt, and Stripe all came within the first few years of YC's existence, and that YC's more recent companies haven't taken off in the same way. It might be because immensely talented people see YC as their avenue to success.

If being immensely talented and ambitious was the prime requisite for startup-success, then YC would be in a great position. But as I understand it, having talent and ambition don't matter as much as having a determined, cohesive, and visionary team.

In the early years of yc, people said there weren't any good companies. It took years for Dropbox to become Dropbox. There are actually a lot more great founders and companies now, but it will be years before you realize it. That's the nature of this business.

Your point about ambition is a good one though. Filtering out people who are just there for the prestige generally isn't that hard though -- they have ways of self identifying :)

Someone mentioned in another thread that it seemed (allegedly, I don't know any of these people) like the type of people who apply for investment banking jobs are now applying for YC.

I think the most salient fact about this stereotypical type of person is that they don't know why they're doing it. They wouldn't be doing it if it weren't prestigious. You lose something there, even if the person is theoretically better on paper.

If so (about the IB-types), that sounds a little worrisome. These are the type of people that one could imagine being good at faking early progress on paper / online, and not following through because building a startup and being poor for multiple years doesn't feel very prestigious.

Michael Lewis said somewhere (I think the intro to The Big Short) that he never expected to write another Wall Street book after Liar's Poker. He thought it was the be-all, end-all warning to IB wanna-bees.

But he kept getting letters from college students to the effect of "I read your book, where is that kind of opportunity now?"

It wasn't just the money, or the power, it's just being more whatever than anybody else...

Stripe went through YC four years ago. Give the newer companies some time.

You wanted to jump out of planes, you were good at it, and you got selected to be one of the elites. Your talent for this and other things drove you towards your success. However, other people see jump school as the key to success, rather than a door to something they enjoy that having talent opens.

The same thing can apply to YC. There are a bunch of people with good ideas and talent who want to be successful, but they hate jumping out of planes. They think that if they can just get into YC and deal with not really enjoying it that much, then they'll be putting themselves on the inside track and it'll be smooth sailing from there. I don't think that's really a great outlook on life.

It's probably worth a mention that (a) there were lots of flops in the early YC batches too, you've just forgotten them, and (b) it takes a few years for any startup to take off so of course earlier YC startups will seem more successful.

Determination is the number one thing they look for in founders. I'm sure it's included in the consideration of quality.

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