
The new YC: As it tries to scale from 200 to 2,000 companies - julianpye
http://www.businessinsider.com/sam-altman-paul-buchheit-ali-roghawni-on-revamped-y-combinator-2016-2
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ameyamk
Why does YC needs to grow into 2000 companies/ year program? I feel they
should tackle it like a University. Stanford does not try to grow 10x from 20k
students to 200k students.

Part of the appeal is exclusivity (besides of course its hard to scale).

I'd rather see YC at 200-300 companies a year - and ensuring these companies
continue to grow/ succeed after the batch is over rather than churning out
1000 more.

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akshatpradhan
>Part of the appeal is exclusivity

There are too many complex problems in the world that need to be solved for
the desire of exclusivity to exist.

I think 2000 companies/year is too few. There are so many good problems that
need to be solved and they just need a little bit of midas's touch. This
sounds pretty reasonable to me.

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ThomPete
There are indeed. But is YC really going after those?

As far as I understand they are def interested in research etc. But I have
still to see any real complex or hard problems they are trying to solve. Or am
I missing something?

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elliotec
Do you think it's lack of YC seeking them out or lack of startup founders
tackling these problems?

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ThomPete
I think it's a lack of synergy between the angel model and the price of
solving really big or complex problems.

YC in my understanding is catered at companies who are solving natural next
steps at the right time, not necessarily problems with a 5-10 year horizon.

I am always reminded how Interval Research went from 10 years research to
market horizon to suddenly 3-4 years.

For all the Silicon Valley is good it it seems to be best at creating
relatively obvious solutions for fairly trivial problems.

If more big and complex problems were solved Elon Musk would be the rule not
the exception.

This is what's kind of sad about SV these days.

It might drive the digital economy but one might ask in what direction.

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oldmanjay
The answer is "as many directions as possible"

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julianpye
The first batch of YC founders photo is a bit heartbreaking. Aaron next to Sam
next to pg and Jessica on the left. The latter batches benefited from the
learnings, but this batch must have been so much more personal.

~~~
doctorcroc
Agreed, and the lack of diversity is also a bit heartbreaking. No women, and
no under-represented minorities (as far as I can tell). I'm sure YC has tried
to fix that in present classes, but still funny that the stereotype of silicon
valley is grounded in real life.

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jacquesm
You could only make that claim if you knew who applied to YC that first batch
and was rejected. Do you actually know or is this simply a way of harping on a
subject that is dear to you and is there someone / some group that you feel
got left out on purpose?

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doctorcroc
No, nothing like that - I am removed from any personal feelings.

Just observing facts from the picture. I'm getting down-voted, but I don't
mean any ill will towards anyone. Perhaps no women or minorities applied to be
in the first batch, but then again, that is also an indicator of a social
issue - that more women and blacks and hispanics are not engaged in tech.

I just wish that tech entrepreneurship drew a more diverse crowd, as that
would bring more diverse and necessary solutions for world problems. Not
everything can be fixed from the lens of middle class white and asian men.

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Kurtz79
As important the issue of minorities/gender in tech is, probably people just
do not want it to be brought up in every single topic.

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doctorcroc
That's fair, poor context and insensitive to the original reply on my part.

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rejschaap
It is slightly depressing, but on some level it makes sense to increase
quantity when quality is going down. There are just too many me-too startups
and a lot of time, money and effort is wasted around startups that revolve
around marketing and advertising. Probably on fintech too. Playing the number
games around those can certainly work.

A local start-up incubator is just about finished constructing a second
building with a lot of facilities and laboritories for bio-tech start-ups. I
feel that is an interesting approach and could be interesting for YCR also.

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elliotec
It seems like market saturation of YC companies will dilute their brand.
Better for everyone else I guess.

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andrewchambers
Maybe, but they control who they accept, so if quality drops it is entirely
due to the selection process, not due to the number of accepted companies.

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jacquesm
It could drop too if the applications drop in quality and YC continues to
accept companies into their program. The best way to analyze this is to figure
out if the ratio of big hits to applicants is dropping relative to the ratio
of big hits in a given 6 month period.

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Animats
Are there that many good ideas?

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SwellJoe
How many technology companies are there in the world?

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Scarblac
What percentage of those would be helped by VC investment?

The vast majority of tech companies are better off staying small and being
normal companies.

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tim333
I wonder how demo day/funding will work. It'd be a bit mind numbing for VCs to
watch 2000 presentations.

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dschiptsov
Technological and manpower dark pool operator.)

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timrpeterson
Is the success scaling? My gut says no.

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Findeton
This is great!

