Comments on: I Don’t Understand Y Combinator Hate

By: Gold Standard » Why Y Combinator’s Terms Are Poor (But I Still Like Them)

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 11:39:31 +0000

[...] supporters say their teams are little more than first-time entrepreneurs with ideas. That’s generally true, but YC’s hackers are able to build most prototypes in 3 months. [...]

By: natavia

natavia — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 15:23:48 +0000

this is stupid ok

By: soSO

soSO — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 11:49:58 +0000

you har

By: wulan

wulan — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 11:39:51 +0000

lucuuu

By: lucia

lucia — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 23:45:03 +0000

quiero ver mas fotitos por favor

By: Moxy

Moxy — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 19:10:34 +0000

Justin.tv was a wild ride in the beginning…

By: Joseph H

Joseph H — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 04:24:24 +0000

Y-Combinator is a mathematical expression that is important in programming theory that allows the concept of recursion to occur. It’s a clever name for a company that helps business “iterate” while they be the “fixed point operator.”

By: Andraz Tori

Andraz Tori — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:00:14 +0000

As founder of one of the companies that went through Seedcamp (Y-combinator inspired European competition) I have to say these kind of startup pipelines really make a difference.

They do help many entrepreneurs and if you don’t like it, well, don’t take the deal!

I also met Paul Graham while he was in London and he’s very straightforward guy, so I have no doubt entrepreneurs have as good experience going through Y-Combinater as we had going through Seedcamp.

Andraz Tori, Zemanta

By: Russ

Russ — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 14:42:58 +0000

Who the hell wrote that last comment refuting my comment?

By: Living the startup life!

Living the startup life! — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 12:16:55 +0000

They seem fine, but now that they have scaled up in the raw number of companies per program, I think the participants aren’t getting the same impact. Paul, apply a finer screen to the applicants, scale back down to 60-70% of the current number of participants, and help those in the program more.

By: Small Pets » Blog Archive » Hamster Search Engine Results

Small Pets » Blog Archive » Hamster Search Engine Results — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 09:37:40 +0000

[...] Comment on I Donât Understand Y Combinator Hate by Hamster Hank [...]

By: Felipe

Felipe — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 05:45:56 +0000

I don’t hate Y Combinator. I think it has its audience.

The money isn’t attractive. Some people mentioned that the advisors/mentors are the true value, but I think this is a bit overrated. Yes, they’re all very influential, successful people, but they don’t necessarily know everything about your business or user base. You’d get much better advices if you find power users and listen to what they want.

The true value is PR, plain and simple. You get good reviews on TC, good reviews from whatever other blogger you “mentor” knows, and then all the other copycat tech blogs, et voila, you start the buzz around your startup.

It’s all about marketing. The technology behind all of these companies are very simple (as they can all do from start to finish in less than 3 months)… a 15 year-old can do it on his spare time. It’s all about PR and marketing.

By: Sashi

Sashi — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 03:05:14 +0000

Sarah writes “…but they have no choice but to give up a sizable chunk of potential revenue.” Hmm really? Never heard of a VC taking portion on your revenue!

And do we say YouTube and Twitter are a ‘want’ or a ‘need’! I guess we too have to ’slink away’ then.

While the cash investment is less than $20K, the hand holding you get is twice that value. Plus the savings in time and money by avoiding common stuff like incorporating and other legal stuff that a typical entrepreneur has to go through ‘all alone’ is worth another $25K to $50K. So, the value contribution of YC is more in the range of $60K to $100K, IMHO. And 6% for that is a fair game.

I bet there are many startups ready to get into YC, even if they have to pay the $20K themselves.

By: Russ

Russ — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 02:35:49 +0000

WHO THE FUCK WROTE THAT COMMENT?? I sure didn’t.

What a complete fucking asshole.

-Russ

By: TicketStumbler

TicketStumbler — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 02:23:28 +0000

Bring it.

By: Kodaz

Kodaz — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 00:34:16 +0000

YC make it easy by creating ‘great-to not so great’ raw material for TC to write articles, that fill blog posting quotas.

YC understands how to promote their cause well. They have a robust media strategy for each of the companies that they foster. Other organisations don’t, and so they miss out on the TC exposure. If more companies honed this aspect, I’m sure that TC would be happy to facilitate the process. Attacks on YC are the result of them being good players, in a desert of poor start-up media strategy.

By: The Paisano® » Blog Archive » American Startup

The Paisano® » Blog Archive » American Startup — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 00:30:31 +0000

[...] I was asked to guest post again by Sarah Lacy on her blog, this time about the Y Combinator and their Demo Day for summer 2008. She knew that I liked what they did because of this tweet last week. So off I went to cover the semi-annual event and produced a post called “American Startup”. I tried to be as fair and honest as possible but it still generated a firestorm of controversy not only in the comments area on SarahLacy.com but also on TechCrunch because Michael Arrington published this post, “I Don’t Understand Y Combinator Hate” [...]

By: Dinesh B

Dinesh B — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 22:04:54 +0000

Getting access to free publicity and top notch advice for 6% equity seems like a bargain to me. Oh and yes, you get $20,000 to start the ball rolling, where is the issue? or would you rather have a VC come in and ask for a fair ahem ahem stake?

By: francine hardaway

francine hardaway — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 21:38:37 +0000

I’m in a similar space to YCombinator and it takes real guts to do what they do, because they take all the early risk without wiping out the entrepreneur. All funding is a crap shoot, but early funding is the biggest crap shoot at all because you are really taking most of the team risk as well as the market risk and the technology risk.

By: SDL

SDL — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 21:12:14 +0000

“Rather, they give **investors** less than $20,000 to give them the capital they need to take something at the idea stage through to a prototype.”

Did you mean entrepreneurs

By: Someone is Going to Get Burned, Why The Boot Camp Model is Dangerous | Andrew Hyde - Humble Yet Bold

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 20:09:55 +0000

[...] Michael Arrington posted today on why he doesn’t understand the hate about Y Combinator. [...]

By: Hamster Hank

Hamster Hank — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 19:44:25 +0000

What’s the affiliation between TechCrunch and Y Combinator? Are you disinterested commentators?

By: Michael Arrington

Michael Arrington — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 19:20:44 +0000

then why did you rewrite the post?

By: br

br — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 19:01:27 +0000

By: Ryan

Ryan — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 18:38:44 +0000

I would assert that many (most?) YC Founders would give up some equity in their company and go through the program even if there was no cash investment from YC.

Think of YC as advisors – this is where almost all of the value is. The money is just a practicality (i.e. most YC founders need the money to pay rent and eat