

Ask HN: Should Diaspora apply to Y Combinator? - cubes

Should Diaspora apply to Y Combinator?  At present Diaspora has over $175K pledged on Kikcstarter so, clearly, they don't need the money.  That said, I believe they would benefit significantly from the advice and community that Y Combinator has to offer.<p>I'd like to see Diaspora succeed, but I worry that the guys doing it seem smart but also a little green.  Would Y Combinator help them find more mature developers, and, in particular, security and cryptography experts to help round out the team?
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pg
We could introduce them to people, certainly. In fact Rtm knows a bit about
security and cryptography. But our top priority if they applied to YC would be
to encourage them to figure out what to build first, and build it.

They are in a dangerous position. They have a large number of people who like
them in a vague way-- who like not what they've built, but the general idea of
what they plan to build. In a startup you want the exact opposite: you want a
small number of people who like you a lot, not a large number who like you
slightly.

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jgrahamc
What Diaspora should do is ignore everyone, stop talking to the press, and
write some code. Then we'll see what they've got.

~~~
cubes
I agree that I would like to see some code, but don't underestimate the
importance of funding when running a startup. Even if Diaspora is not,
strictly speaking, a startup, it's worth talking to press while the story is
hot because it likely translates into more funding, and more funding can't
hurt their chances of success.

~~~
samd
There are more than a few arguments that say more funding does hurt their
chances of success.

~~~
cubes
I'd be less interested in arguments than seeing hard data that analyzes the
correlation between funding and successful outcomes. Money buys you time and
resources. Yes, there are famous examples of startups that have burned through
scads of cash, and failed, but I think there's a selection bias in those
stories; it's less remarkable when a well funded startup succeeds.

~~~
pg
The empirical evidence strongly favors taking funding. If you try making a
list of successful startups, without thinking about whether they took funding
or not, you'll find practically all the companies on your list took funding.

The fact that the few who succeed without raising money tend to be famous on
that account is evidence of how rare that combination is.

~~~
samd
It's not that simple though, funding comes in many forms and at different
times. Maybe large amounts of money upfront without any product is bad, but
large amounts of funding after having built something and gotten traction is
good.

If money were of no concern and you were solely interested in maximizing their
chances of success would you give each Y Combinator company 10 or 100 times as
much money?

~~~
pg
Yes. They do get 100x as much money when they raise series A rounds, and I
don't consider the ones that raise series A rounds to be headed for disaster
as a result. Nor empirically do they seem to be.

~~~
samd
I think there is something powerfully motivating about having such a limited
amount of time and money to build your product.

There probably is no ideal solution, different teams flourish under different
conditions.

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jhuckestein
Can we please give these guys some credit already?!

Thus far, they are doing great. They had an idea, published it and built a
community. Whatever they build, thousands of people are going to test it,
allowing them to make it even better.

What if all this was a legit ploy to edge their way into the startup scene?
Mission accomplished!

And talent-wise it's too early to know but they do seem to have a good feel
for community, design and architecture. They have a great mentor, too. Let's
just wait and see.

In the meantime we can congratulate them for their success so far. If
anything, they helped publicize Facebook's privacy problems.

Gee, cynicism and skepticism are NOT the same guys!

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krschultz
I've never seen so much unsolicited advice before. Why is everyone telling
Diaspora what to do? Because they are young? Because everyone else knows
better? This doesn't seem like the typical reaction to a startup's
announcement.

A lot of these people just want Diaspora to succeed because they want someone
to keep Facebook honest. The real solution is not to all cross our fingers for
Diaspora and hope. Instead maybe this is a sign several startups need to take
Facebook head on. A lot of them will fail, but something will succeed. Sure
Facebook has a massive network advantage - but so did MySpace. People will
adapt.

The unwillingness of people to tackle head on competition is understandable.
At first glance it would appear to make it more likely to fail. With a social
network, maybe because of the network effects that is true. In general having
competitors is a good sign that the market has money in it, and finding the
market is at least as hard as making a product and selling it.

~~~
cubes
Sure, but Diaspora, by virtue of the interest on Kickstarter has a priori
traction. I'd rather see a bunch of people interested in this problem work
together, and form Voltron as it were, than a bunch of different groups try
and fail.

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DenisM
Do they have a business model? YC is not a charity.

~~~
jhuckestein
There's plenty of YC startups that don't have or haven't had a business model
in the beginning.

Diaspora on the other hand has an obvious business model. Selling turnkey
hosting.

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DenisM
To whom?! To all the same people who purchased their own email servers for
personal use? That should be about zero people total.

~~~
cubes
How about all the people who pay for Wordpress and MovableType?

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DenisM
Consumers? I'd say abut zero, too. A small business type would pay for
wordpress to get his word out, but a regular person with a day job? I don't
see this happening. And I don't see Diaspora being appealing to small business
types, unlike wordpress.

There is currently no way to make money in social networks. Maybe someone
could invent one, that would be interesting to see.

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rokhayakebe
Are you affiliated with Diaspora? Did they express an interest in Y
Combinator?

~~~
cubes
Nope, but I imagine they read Hacker News, and would like to see them succeed.
I think Y Combinator could potentially help with that.

~~~
jacquesm
I thought so too, so I mailed one of the founders a couple of days ago.

