

Y Combinator's 2005 Summer Founders Program: A Complete Dud - kradic
http://web.archive.org/web/20060222012259/http://tech.rufy.com/articles/2005/08/10/y-combinators-2005-summer-founders-program-a-complete-dud

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mhartl
Don't judge Lucas Carlson too harshly for something he wrote almost _three
years ago_ , in the throes of dealing with his own YC rejection. Take a look
at his credits at <http://rufy.com/> and I think it's clear he's an
accomplished developer, author of multiple Ruby gems and the _Ruby Cookbook_
(O'Reilly, July 2006). I don't know Lucas, so I can't speak from experience,
but anyone with his hacking credits (and a physics degree from Reed College to
boot) _has_ to fall into the "smart and gets things done" category.

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sharpshoot
YC's been iterating on this model for 3 years now and are getting even better
at identifying promising ideas and entrepreneurs. I suspect its going to take
one or two more cycles to absolutely nail the model.

In terms if lessons learnt, YC has the most experience of any micro seed fund.

This is its competitive advantage.

~~~
pg
That first batch was actually great. It had both Reddit and Loopt in it, plus
Firecrawl, which morphed into Textpayme, plus Justin and Emmett, who went on
to do Justin.TV after selling Kiko.

Reddit was a merger of 2 startups from that batch, so if you count Loopt as a
success (a fairly safe bet), 4/8 succeeded: Reddit, Infogami, Textpayme, and
Loopt. I'd be delighted if we managed to achieve a 50% success rate ongoing.

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paul
I love reading old opinions and predictions.

 _"During my summer, I created Print Promotion, worked on a top secret project
with Adaptive Path that will soon change the way you feel about blogging, and
am now working with O’Reilly on an amazingly innovative project. Quite
productive for 3 months."_

I wonder what his "top secret" project was?

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subwindow
This is what happens when you confuse technical complexity with product
success. A complex product, or one that takes "more than a weekend to build"
will not necessarily be successful, and a simple product will similarly not
necessarily be successful.

It has much more to do with demand. The wheel isn't terribly complex, nor is
it original. Yet, if I came out today and started selling wheels, I could
probably sell a few thousand. There's a demand for wheels, and so it makes
sense to sell them. I think that in this age we forget this part of the
equation way too often.

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rokhayakebe
Guys, relax.

this guy wrote the post when most people did not know about the YC program.
Give it up to him for knowing about the first funding cycle. I think a few 150
applicants knew about it.Most of people here did not hear about YC or PG until
after their first demo day.

The author's opinion was the result of a rejection. If you read thoroughly,you
will see that he is not dissing YC or PG. He felt that his idea was better
than those funded, and frankly any entrepreneur who truly believes in his idea
would think the same. Ask any YC rejects and they would show you at least 5 YC
funded who they believe have an idea less creative/profitable than theirs.

That is their mistake. Most investors ideas do not mean as much as the team
ability to execute against them, and YC is not different as far as that.

I am certain if you contact the author today, he would laugh and simply say "I
thought I knew it all back then"

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alps
Thanks for posting this.

It kind of confirms why I don't really bother to read blog posts that are just
rants. I wonder what he has to say about Reddit today...

~~~
Agathos
I don't know what he's saying, but personally I'm still not sure why anyone
paid money for it.

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STHayden
I think it's pretty clear that Reddit started development before digg was well
known. So it's hardly a rip off though perhaps not the winner in that battle.

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gscott
It seems this guy was wrong and his own link is dead. If he didn't have enough
faith in his product to continue why would he expect YC to.

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Xichekolas
This was pretty light and fluffy when it was written in _2005_. How is this
relevant now? His main example is how _reddit_ is a failure. Say what you want
about reddit (I don't like it), but it sold for money. Of the stuff that came
out of 2005, it's the one everyone remembers (although I imagine Loopt will be
a household name soon enough with the Verizon deal).

Seriously, where is my down arrow?

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chengmi
Has anyone else noticed that the level of YC bashing upped a notch this time
around?

~~~
kradic
This is from 2005. I posted it to show the crazy things people _used_ to write
about YC in the past.

