
What's so special about Y Combinator? - martinkl
http://martin.kleppmann.com/2011/03/15/whats-so-special-about-y-combinator.html
======
Duff
I attended one of the earlier "Startup School" events a few years ago at
Harvard. Unfortunately, things didn't work out for my startup concept (I ended
up working for the government, of all things), but I found the meeting
inspiring.

Here I was, a twenty something attending a free conference, sitting a few feet
away from and talk to Steve Wozniak. A few minutes later, I'm in the middle of
a fascinating conversation with Chris Sacca, only to head back into the
lecture hall to listen to a really impressive series of speakers with alot of
passion and great ideas.

Honestly, it was an amazing event, and pg managed to assemble a great group of
really approachable and interesting folks on a Saturday afternoon. I found it
inspiring, and while I'm not involved with them at all, it sounds like
YCombinator is an institution that makes a meeting like that happen everyday.

~~~
grinich
If you're still around Boston, I started a similar event at MIT called Startup
Bootcamp. <http://startupbootcamp.mit.edu/>

(Register at the bottom, and you'll hear about the next event this September.)

All of the past talks are on YouTube: <http://www.youtube.com/startupbootcamp>

~~~
necrecious
The last one had some great speakers. Really enjoyed Bob Metcalfe's talk.

------
giberson
It's funny, I so frequently forget that Y Combinator is not just
news.ycombinator.com. Even how I word that makes me chuckle as I realize how
contrary to reality it is. For me YC is simply a content aggregator that with
a remarkable accuracy and consistency delivers content that I'm interested in,
that I find relevant. Oh, it also is some kind of investment firm on the side
I guess, or something--whatever.

Ironically, it seems the core of YC--the essence that make it so valuable is
the same from either Kleppmann's [an entrepreneur emphasis on YC] or my
own[emphasis on news.yc] perspective. It comes down to the community of smart
and intelligent people. More specifically to the openness and sharing of
knowledge and idea's between those people. It seems like it could be all to
easy to want to horde the secrets of one's experiences and success. To keep to
themselves those secrets of wisdom to avoid competition and rivalry. Instead,
we see sharing of the information--fine detailed analysis of mistakes and
success to encourage and help others to achieve or avoid success and pitfalls.
It's like there is a general good will intention for furthering and advancing
the industry as a whole. I really like that.

------
nicholasjbs
It probably sounds wishy-washy and hard to quantify, but I really think the
"goodness" of the people in YC -- both the partners and the vast majority of
the founders they fund -- is a hugely undervalued advantage of the program.

------
francoisdevlin
A fixed point combinator (or fixpoint combinator[1] ) is a higher-order
function that computes a fixed point of other functions. A fixed point of a
function f is a value x such that f(x) = x. For example, 0 and 1 are fixed
points of the function f(x) = x2, because 02 = 0 and 12 = 1. Whereas a fixed-
point of a first-order function (a function on "simple" values such as
integers) is a first-order value, a fixed point of a higher-order function f
is another function p such that f(p) = p. A fixed point combinator, then, is a
function g which produces such a fixed point p for any function f:

    
    
        p = g(f), f(p) = p
    

or, alternatively:

    
    
        f(g(f)) = g(f). 
    

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_point_combinator>

~~~
martinkl
Why did you choose the name "Y Combinator?"

The Y combinator is one of the coolest ideas in computer science. It's also a
metaphor for what we do. It's a program that runs programs; we're a company
that helps start companies.

<http://ycombinator.com/faq.html>

------
bloodcarter
Thanks for sharing this, Martin. I agree. But let me play a devil advocate and
ask you question. Take a look at the history of the biggest startup hits like
Microsoft, Google, Facebook, etc. Do you really think that investor matters in
these cases? Why?

~~~
pg
Investors didn't help Microsoft (because Microsoft didn't have any) but from
what I've heard they did help Google and Facebook.

~~~
rexreed
Microsoft did have one early venture capital investor:
[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/David_Marquar...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/David_Marquardt).
They had VC investment since 1981, which was a full five years before they
went public.

Here's some video on the subject:
[http://msstudios.wmod.llnwd.net/a2294/o21/presspass/BillG/Ma...](http://msstudios.wmod.llnwd.net/a2294/o21/presspass/BillG/Marquardt-
Investment_MBR.wmv%C2%A0)

~~~
pg
Yeah, I knew about August, but that sort of late stage investment is not what
the thread was about.

------
kirinkalia
Martin, you hit on a key point that doesn't get enough attention:

"When we talk to YC, no matter whether we have good news or bad news, chances
are that they’ve seen the situation before, and their pattern-matching will
enable them to make good predictions."

YC created the accelerator model that many others are adapting/imitating. YC's
experience with all kinds of situations gives it yet another advantage over
its young competitors (alumni network and support being the top one IMO).

------
arkitaip
"Y Combinator takes 2–10% of your company’s equity. How do you figure out
whether the value you get from YC is worth the cost?"

I am surprised the figure is that low. For the incredibly amount of contacts,
experience and general help you get I was expecting atleast 20-30%.

~~~
chrismanfrank
YC could probably take 20-30%. I'm guessing most founders would still do it.
But if you took out the top 5% of start-ups from YC, it would be a far less
interesting company. So making it a no-brainer for founders is probably a good
strategy.

~~~
btam
I imagine that the 2-10% figure also helps YC keep its elite status.

Not as many founders would find YC worth applying to if they had to give _at
the minimum_ a fifth of the company's equity.

------
jordo37
Reading articles like this makes it obvious that Y Combinator is a very
special group of people (investors and starters). That being said, I'm always
a little skeptical when one of many groups in a field is supposed to be
superior in every single way. My question therefore would be what comes close
and how close are they?

------
citizenkeys
I'm still looking for more blog entries about the Y Combinator interview
experience for my site: <http://ycuniverse.com/interviewees.php>

If anybody has links to such articles, please forward me the links.

------
vegashacker
_[YC partners are] outspoken, honest, straight-to-the-point and totally
bullshit-free._

 _You can...get encouragement from them in hard times._

I'm wondering if the first ever interferes with the second? E.g., if you
worked hard on something and they tell you it's not good.

~~~
martinkl
Honest criticism is encouraging, at least if you approach it with the right
attitude. Sure, you might feel down for half an hour, but once you digest the
criticism there are two possible responses:

1\. "You have a point, I had a niggling feeling that my stuff wasn't good
anyway, but now I have ideas on how to make it better."; or 2\. "Thanks for
your opinion, but you are wrong, and I'm going to prove it!"

Both are motivating outcomes of honest criticism.

~~~
stcredzero
_Both are motivating outcomes of honest criticism._

I just pointed a few things out to a potential partner and a fellow
entrepreneur. Namely, that he might have good ideas, but that he's not a
programmer and it shows. Some matters of fact from our conversation:

    
    
        - Does not know enough to know what's hard and what's a solved problem
        - Does not have a colleague or advisor he can hash these things out with in
          close collaboration and learn from 
        - Wastes a lot of time with underlings who just tell him "well, if you can 
          draw it out, we can implement it" but don't try to communicate with him further
    

So I just up and told him those things. I told him he needs an equal who
understands the implementation end, and that a good working relationship with
such a person would save him lots of time, prevent costly mistakes, and result
in unexpected synergies.

In a moment, I decided that I want to see how this fellow reacts to getting a
little truth-tap to the head. Unfortunately, I was disappointed, as he
immediately started to puff himself up as a defense mechanism.

Oh well, I guess I'll keep on looking.

------
stcredzero
One thing that hasn't been mentioned -- the philosophical underpinnings of
entrepreneurship surrounding the Y Combinator organization. This is actually a
big _material_ advantage, provided there's also execution.

------
maeon3
What makes YCombinator special is draining away. I've been reading YCombinator
since when most of YCombinator's submissions got 0 to 1 or 3 comments
throughout its life on the front page.

The millions of reddit and digg users are spending more time on this site and
I can see the influence literally increasing every month. By November 2011 the
front page of YCombinator will look the same as digg looked back in 2006 and
2007. Ycombinator will have hundreds of thousands of voters, and the lulz will
get more upvotes then sophisticated discussion.

The only way to stop it will be to forcefully regulate it, a system like they
have over at stackoverflow seems to be working. If YCombinator doesn't
implement something like this. Then YCombinator will have to find a new domain
name, and only tell the constructive users what it is.

~~~
sokoloff
You realize that Martin's post was about the "real" YCombinator, not about the
ancillary news.yc site?

news.yc could be completely overrun by 4chan types and YCombinator itself
would still be massively valuable to founders.

