

Ask PG: What % of a failed YCstartup employees are rehired by other YCstartups? - malandrew

Emilio Castilla and others have studied the movement of employees among the VC firms in Silicon Valley vs. Route 128 (http://www.stanford.edu/group/esrg/siliconvalley/docs/siliconvalleyedge.pdf)<p>Has anyone at YC or outside looked at the movement of employees and founders from failed YC startups to other YC startups? While no one in YC wants any of their peers to fail, I would imagine that the failed startups provide an ample base of talent from where other startups can hire from. Do you guys have any numbers on how much talent "stays in the family"?
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kellco
That's an interesting question. The other things I'd like to know is, "Why did
those startups fail? Was there anything the founders/employees could have done
to save it? What did they learn from their experiences."

If it's a marketplace, marketing, or product problem then ok. But if the team
fell apart, if there were internal conflicts, or if someone didn't pull their
weight...then those might not be good candidates to bring on board to other
startups no matter how smart they are. What bothers me about some teams are,
there are people that you can tell have no initiative, they do the minimum of
what's required, and they don't double check to make sure that everything
works and invariably something minor comes up to trip up the project that
could have been prevented. I hope I never get those people on my team, if I do
they need to go.

Another thing I'd also like to know is, "How many of those people from failed
YC startups founded another startup or did they just go back to a job or to
being an employee at another startup?"

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malandrew
Those are basically the same types of questions I have as well. I reckon there
is a lot to be learned from the YC network of startups. It's a great space for
a grad student at Stanford's or Berkeley's iSchools to investigate.

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amorphid
if you don't get an answer, that sounds like something you could brute force
by gathering a list of YC startups and looking up the founders on LinkedIn.

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malandrew
LinkedIn actually had pretty poor info when it comes to startups and the
people who work at them. The professional social network for startups works
well enough that many people have never felt a need to exploit LinkedIn
connections for their next gig. It's often salespeople who most appreciate
what LinkedIn has to offer. LinkedIn has always been surprisingly bad at
capturing the professional network value in asymmetrical relationships. Great
professionals and influencers (which YC founders are likely to be) are those
that avoid LinkedIn the most because it's a distraction.

