
The Dropbox IPO is a transformative moment for Y Combinator - zwieback
https://qz.com/1215389/the-dropbox-ipo-is-a-transformative-moment-for-y-combinator/
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austenallred
As the founder of a YC company, I don’t really care that much how Dropbox’s
IPO goes. I mean, I wish them all the best, but if something goes wrong that
doesn’t make me say, “Oh maybe YC isn’t as good as I thought.”

Dropbox is already successful by any reasonable measure, and YC has some
billion dollar exits (Twitch, Cruise) plus Stripe, Reddit, Airbnb etc. It’s
cool to see a YC company IPO, but whether Dropbox is worth $4B or $10B doesn’t
really move the needle, and doesn’t reflect on YC much at all.

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davidedicillo
True, but a different title wouldn't get as many clicks.

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AznHisoka
Yes, but this is still bad journalism, and a bad journalist. A Nazi is also
good at killing, but that doesn't mean he's a good human being.

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montrose
This makes some interesting points, but it seems ridiculous to say that
Dropbox's IPO is "make-or-break" for Y Combinator. Make or break in what
sense? That Dropbox's IPO will influence the opinions of retail investors
about other YC companies? That seems very unlikely; retail investors are
unlikely even to know Airbnb and Dropbox share that in common. Or does she
mean make or break in the sense that if Dropbox does badly, it will affect the
opinions of potential YC applicants? Even if it did, which seems unlikely, it
wouldn't "break" YC, because as she herself points out in the article, there
is already a big pipeline of successful alumni. Nowadays the path to IPO is on
the order of a decade (11 years in Dropbox's case), and while that means a
long wait till liquidity, it also makes the ecosystem pretty robust.

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zwieback
Agreed, I notice that QZ often has two different titles, one for the link and
one for the headline. I'm guessing a senior editor spices it up once the
author is done.

Here are the words from the link: _The Dropbox IPO is a transformative moment
for Y Combinator_

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montrose
Wow, I wondered if that was what happened. Someone should crawl the site to
collect other examples of this at Quartz. It would be a fascinating study of
linkbait being formed.

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heynk
Most media companies seem to do automated headline testing. It would be
awesome if someone made a crawler that somehow tracked this, and could
determine what the 'winning' headlines were.

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Gaussian
Bombastic headline, but no meat here. Y Combinator is a fantastic place for
founders/startups, especially for those that work hard at leveraging the
available mentorship during that fleeting three months.

The article's comparison of YC to Ivy League schools is hackneyed, but
relevant. YC's reputation, much like Harvard's, was built before most
competitors were ever around; that kind of esteem is hard to build and doesn't
disintegrate in a year or two. Paul Graham has said this.

YC's place in the tech world will hardly be subverted by a 'bad' IPO result
for Dropbox. Zenefits' issues, it should be noted, didn't slow down YC,
either—nor should they have.

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fomojola
Ah, QZ: one of the only sites that on principle I won't click on anything that
links there. Terrible click bait headlines, poorly constructed arguments,
scroll hijacking. Nothing to see here, move along.

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_rpd
They started so well, but then apparently decided that what the world really
needed was a huffpo clone with infinite scroll. What a waste.

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aaavl2821
I agree with all the other criticisms of the article in the comments, but I
think there's an important point that the article failed to make.

From what I can tell, YCs seed model has proved hugely lucrative to partners
and investors. It is currently seeking to massively expand the capital it
deploys. The difficulty of getting good returns on a venture fund increases
dramatically once fund sizes go from ~$300-400 to $1B, and above that there
are just a handful of funds with enough data to know how they performed

If Dropbox / Airbnb / stripe can support $10-20B+ valuations in the public
markets, that makes the returns math for the new, bigger YC a lot easier. If
not, then maybe there's a ceiling to how big YC can get under its current
model

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deepnotderp
Yes, as a YC founder, I can confirm that if the Dropbox IPO does not go
perfectly, my awesome yc experience so far will become immediately useless
..../s

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rmena123
I think the IPO is coming in late, Dropbox had its prime time a few years
back. I loved it back then, but now not so much and never use anymore.

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mylons
i think the article is missing the point. public markets are dead, and that's
not the metric of a successful venture capitalist.

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IntronExon
Title aside, this article is nothing short of glowing PR for Y Combinator. I’d
say it’s well deserved, but in this form it reeks of an uncritical submarine
style of “journalism.” It reminds me of those ‘50’s interviews with
politicians on the BBC: “So minister, and please forgive me if this is too
harsh, but are you going to do as marvelous a job going forward as you have in
the past?”

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AznHisoka
it's also overly dramatic, trying to pin Y Combinator's future success on just
1 company's IPO.

