
Why Combinator? Should You Join Paul Graham's Gang For The Gifted? - carefreeliving
http://onstartups.com/home/tabid/3339/bid/1319/Why-Combinator-Should-You-Join-Paul-Graham-s-Gang-For-The-Gifted.aspx
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pg
The "gifted" is a little misleading. We're pretty explicit that we think
succeeding in a startup depends more on determination than intelligence. Oddly
enough, though, "gang" is on the mark. One of the unexpected consequences of
funding large batches of startups is that they form a fairly tough peer-to-
peer mesh to help one another.

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Alex3917
So, does the gang have a hand signal?

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pg
Probably the finger-wag:

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/socialmoth/405509951>

(Rtm started it.)

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vegai
_shudder_

I just don't get people who use segway without trying to make a joke. Is
walking so hard?

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volida
"Teams vs. Individuals: YC leans strongly towards selecting startups that two
or more founders. I'm a strong advocate of this myself as I believe that
having two or more founders in an early-stage startup significantly improves
the chances of success. By explicitly stating this requirement, YC forces
early-stage entrepreneurs to find co-founders. This is a good thing as if
there's a problem with finding a co-founder, that's an early signal of a
problem (either with the founder or the idea or both), and everyone's better
off knowing that sooner rather than later."

I am trying to understand why he is trying to discourage single founders in
contrast with YC that is not doing that. If someone is determined to commit to
his ideas, then not founding a co-founder will not discourage him. And its
better than leaving your ideas completely.

We know it's hard more than anyone who hasn't experienced it. I just don't
understand the absolute attack towards single founder from his side. He should
know that if someone decided to take the single founder route he is absolute
aware of the effects of the choice.

And if it's hard to be single founder, its better than finding someone who you
are not aware of his real character and passions.

I dont like it that in order to differentiate themselves or not, from the fear
of copying themseleves (some "journalists") and from saying the exact word of
someone, they use some point of reference to later exagerate it. And I am
reffering to the phrase "explicitly..." who is contrary to what YC sais i
think..

I don't really like the writer's attitude attacking his readers -- am I the
only one here?

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staunch
_"I don't really like the writer's attitude attacking his readers -- am I the
only one here?"_

Surely you're being a bit sensitive because this topic hits so close to home.
Try not being so defensive, sometimes the last thing you want to hear is just
what you need.

You may be discouraged, but I don't think he's _trying_ to do that. He just
happens to agree with almost everyone I've heard from on this issue. Feel free
to prove yourself as an exception, no one has said it's impossible.

Maybe collecting a list of single-founder companies would be inspirational for
you? Here's some off the top of my head: Brad Fitzpatrick/LiveJournal, Markus
Frind/PlentyOfFish, Mark Fletcher/ONElist.

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volida
I was honest responding to an honest attack.

I can't believe he wasn't aware and expecting single founders would read the
article. I accept opinions. I don't accept misrepresentations of opinions.

I prefer sounding hard than being silent.

circa 2007 "The ideal company would have two or three founders. We'll consider
those with four or five. We're very reluctant to accept one-person companies,
though we have accepted a couple." <http://ycombinator.com/s2007.html>

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dshah
I must be missing it. To help me understand the error in my ways, can you:

a) identify specifically the part where I attacked?

b) cite where my position on the issue tried to be a statement of fact that
was wrong.

Truth is: I do _believe_ (as do many others) that having more than one founder
increases of success. PG has gone on record as saying he won't fund startups
with just one founder. Neither of these is factually incorrect. I could be
wrong to believe it, but the statement of fact that I believe it is true.

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volida
a)the use of "explicitly": means absolutely--categorically

"there's a problem with finding a co-founder, that's an early signal of a
problem (either with the founder or the idea or both),"

b) the fact that YC states they funded single founders is contrary to what you
refer to

I never said that is not better to have more people.

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dshah
Got it. Fair enough.

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zach
Gang for the gifted? I kinda thought of Y Combinator as a School of Rock for
web entrepreneurs. ("One great website can change the world!")

~~~
bootload
_' School of Rock for web entrepreneurs.'_

I cracked up reading this (after having seen a repeat of it) & also because
pg's post really does puts the 'gifted' quote from the original post into
perspective. You've got to have the 'determination' to build the best damn
product (performance) you can.

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Alex3917
"I think YC leans a bit too heavily towards the 'build it and they will come'
model and for inexperienced entrepreneurs (just about all of the YC founders),
this can distort reality."

MSPW != field of dreams.

What YC actually says is that MSPW is more important than monetization.

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pg
or more precisely, harder

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Alex3917
oops. yay for clear thinking :-)

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e1ven
I do agree that one of the great things that YC brings to the table are early
users, who are willing to try thing sout and point out the problems.

The people who are spending time following YC companies are the ones who are
more likely to give the site a shot- They're also often people who CARE about
UI, Ease of use, and the other features that teams often Need reminding about.

Having 10 e-mails in the morning yelling that the new change makes things
tougher, or that the background color causes eye-bleeding helps to avoid a
Myspace-like situation.

Having the "Right" first users is crucial, and YC helps bring them (As does
Reddit, if you're up to making it there, but that's a tough crowd at times.)

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herdrick
"7. Projects vs. Businesses: Personally, I think YC is... not really concerned
with selecting what may... become "real" companies... I think YC leans a bit
too heavily towards the "build it and they will come" model..."

I'm not sure he understands the YCs' insight that startups with lots of happy
users almost always succeed financially, one way or the other - the only
things that kills them are founder fights, and major blunders, etc.

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dshah
Well, I could argue (and will) that the two are not mutually exclusive.
Startups that think at least a wee bit about how to build a business may earn
themselves more runway and hence have higher chances of ultimately building
something users will love.

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paul
I have never met a YC company that wasn't thinking about how to build a
business.

The key thing to understand is that if problem A is 100 times harder than
problem B, and problem A is critical to success, then you should spend a lot
of time worrying about problem A. In this case, problem A is building
something that people will want to use. If you fail at that, then none of the
other problems matter, because you have failed.

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daliso
I think with Internet based companies, it is kind of counterproductive to
focus on monetization at an early stage. This is because many innovative web
companies tend to change the economics of how people make money in an
industry. The best example of this is Google, that is shaking up the software
industry by practically giving software away but earning revenue through
advertising.

Changing industries requires a lot of industry clout, which I think YC gives
its budding companies, freeing them to concentrate on designing good products
that create value. If the product is really good and creates real value, the
industry will reshape itself somehow to reward the entrepreneurs.

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danielha
Dharmesh is a smart guy and I enjoy his blog entries, but I just don't see
eye-to-eye with him on #7 (Projects vs. Businesses).

We're not business people (most of us); we're just trying to create cool
things and subsequently be freed from the shackles of the nine-to-five life.
The great thing about Internet entrepreneurship is that it's relatively easy
to get off the ground, and subsequently we can create products that are
solutions and not immediately worry about the business model. It doesn't hurt
to keep it in mind, but we don't have to let it weigh us down. I mean, search
wasn't the best business to begin with.

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dshah
Thanks for the compliment. I've struggled with articulating my position on
this issue, and still haven't nailed it yet. Here's another pass:

I completely get the fact that projects are not a bad thing. Most of the best
businesses actually started out as projects.

It makes total sense for me that startups should pursue building something
people want (and make that the focus). However, a subset of these are projects
that seek to build something people want AND that they will pay for. I'd
further argue that within this particular subset of ideas, the optimal choice
might be to build something people will pay for from the get go. In these
cases, it would be sub-optimal to simply strive to build something people
want.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that in some situations, trying to find the
problem that people want solved AND will pay for ends up putting the startup
on the right idea wheresa if they simply tried to build something people want,
they may wind up in the wrong place.

Not all software is best served by creating something that will be subsidized
by another activity (like advertising). I think it's jumping too quickly to
that assumption that I think has the chance of being misguided. Sometimes the
right answer is building something that people will part with money for and
you have to start with that end in mind to really get there.

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staunch
_"I think there's some value to actually thinking about business models
earlier in the process. Simply identifying market opportunity (i.e. how do you
make money)"_

I think at least it's a valuable exercise to imagine that you're not going to
have a free version of your product. Imagine that you're actually _selling_ it
to a real customer. Would you be embarrassed to say it costs money? How would
support work differently? How about uptime? Who would actually pay?

I'm not sure that's necessary in all cases, but it does seem to raise a lot of
interesting questions useful for self-examination.

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ced
I'd like to hear from those who "consciously chose not to apply at all". So
far it seems that if you're going to build a typical web startup, then being
funded by pg is always a net positive... I'm more interested in learning about
the other ways of doing it.

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extantproject
I like the play on words, anyway.

