
Ask HN: Why not Y-Factor? - arisAlexis
seeing all these reality shows for singers, entrepreneurs hell even pornstars lately, why isn&#x27;t there a show&#x2F;broadcast with some of y-combinator&#x27;s teams? Sam Altman as judge? Paul as mentor? I would be a huge fan (probably would apply too).
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davismwfl
I can guess a few reasons.

1\. 90% of a startup is just hard work, it isn't something that makes for good
television. Imagine, a person creating and adding content to their financial
statement. Not exactly good television.

2\. IMO it trivializes the true nature of what YC team & the
startups/entrepreneurs do, which I don't think any of the Y Combinator team
wants to do.

3\. Hard work almost always trumps an idea. You can have a so-so idea succeed
amazingly well while an idea you felt was just out of this world great fails.
This usually happens because the entrepreneur doesn't work hard enough or
fails to see the opportunities. And all this takes a lot of time to work out,
so it isn't sexy television.

However, I could see a behind the scenes documentary following one class from
YC from acceptance to 1 year post YC. Document what the process is like, how
hard it is, let the entrepreneurs have a video confessional, etc. Almost like
a pure documentary but with a little Big Brother (the TV Show) tossed in there
as you could put video camera's up to catch times you don't have a crew
chasing people. I do think that could be really interesting, and having the YC
team and the class all giving feedback and details. This show though would
cater to a small audience by TV/Movie standards though, likely those who
wanted to apply to YC and a specific bread of entrepreneur. But I do think it
would be interesting.

There is a movie called startup.com from 2001
([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0256408/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0256408/))
that did a similar documentary type show, and we all watched it around that
time. Definitely interesting, but as you can imagine probably cost more to
produce, edit and distribute then anyone made.

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jeffmould
There have, or are going to be, a few actually:

1\. Startup U
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startup_U](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Startup_U))
Was a show about Draper University and their incubator program.

2\. Jason Calacanis is working on a reality series now, just not sure when it
is to be released. ([http://calacanis.com/2016/02/29/why-im-doing-a-reality-
show/](http://calacanis.com/2016/02/29/why-im-doing-a-reality-show/))

3\. BravoTV had Start-ups Silicon Valley ([http://www.bravotv.com/start-ups-
silicon-valley](http://www.bravotv.com/start-ups-silicon-valley))

As the other comment pointed out though there are problems with doing a
startup reality show. In order for it to "sell" and be worth the production
time, there needs to be a level of drama that is added to the show or
"instigated" by the director/producers. The other big problem is that 80% of
the show would be just watching people code or sit in meetings. Finally, as a
viewer you would want an underdog that prevails or at least one startup that
becomes a unicorn. There is no way to predict this from the start for sure.

Jason has stated his desire to keep it authenticate, so we will see.

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brudgers
I struggle to see how would might scale to a multi-billion dollar venture...or
rather many given the opportunity cost that the distraction of a television
show is likely to create.

~~~
arisAlexis
Imo yc is not only about creating billions. They fund nonprofits etc. That
would be cool and a tremendous spread o f knowledge for startupers

