
I will miss the old Y Combinator - domino
http://scobleizer.com/2011/01/29/i-will-miss-the-old-y-combinator/
======
patio11
There's always the "before they were famous" angle (important as more YC
companies come in at later stages of maturity than "two guys with a gleam in
their eye"). I think AirBnB, for example, cornered the market on Obama-themed
balanced breakfasts prior to being in YC.

If that doesn't satisfy, particular journalists looking for scrappy upstarts
can still find them - the Internet is a big place. I mean, Andrew Warner
manages to find a new story _every day_ , with fairly little overlap with
other sources of news I follow.

------
il
You know what else makes great stories? Successful companies.

I think it's disingenuous to lament a change in funding models that appears to
be a huge net gain for founders.

Considering many YC startups have been raising additional funding for a while
now, I don't see much changing.

~~~
Confusion
What do you know about Scoble that makes this 'disingenious'? I read nothing
but an honest sentiment. Not everything has a deeper meaning or needs to be
part of a grand consistent whole of thoughts, you know.

~~~
il
Maybe that's not the right word choice. But it's a journalist saying "I don't
like this story because it changes the narrative/ starving founder myth we're
trying to create" doesn't feel right.

------
dotBen
_No longer will we hear stories like we heard from Airbnb’s founders of
surviving off of cereal or “ramen.”_

'ramen profitable' and it's derivatives should be taken as a cutesy fluffy
marketing term and nothing more (like most startups were never actually
started in a garage).

No one should be living literally off Ramen noodles and cereal. It's
incredibly bad for your health and a total lack of investment in your body and
your brain.

I'm not saying YC's small funding encourages this, but nevertheless we should
not be encouraging the promotion of this concept.

~~~
brc
Hey that sort of diet got me through university and freed up funds for that
other important calorie source : beer.

You can actually live on that type of diet for a little while when you're
young and eager. There are far worse things for you to do.

~~~
pnathan
I ate ramen a lot for one semester for so in undergraduate. My mind and body
felt horrible in short order; I never got any sort of nutrition, and I
basically haven't had any since. That was like 6 years ago.

If you need to buy cheap food for a while, ramen is not the answer. Finding
ingredients at the grocery store and cooking them up yourself is the answer. I
suspect that if you _really_ want ramen, you can make it cheaper yourself. And
more healthily ( _).

(_) Except for the salt levels.

~~~
freshbag
Agreed. If you want to have a well performing body, put performance fuel into
it. In other words, good food.

Good food is, unfortunately, highly debatable. Organic or non-organic - I'd
still have to suggest that starting with any fruits and vegetables, for
example, would be a huge step up in the diet!

As a med student, I have to agree - cooking yourself ends up teaching people
more about the food they eat than almost any prepared/prepacked food.

And yes, ramen is also possible to make from a bag of flour, salt, baking
soda, and water. No palm fat, no other stuff. Just takes a bit of skill in
putting together the soup...

------
BrandonM
Is this guy fucking serious?

 _No longer will we hear stories like we heard from Airbnb’s founders of
surviving off of cereal or "ramen."

That bums me out, because struggle and sacrifice makes for great stories._

I'm sorry that you're _bummed out_ at less human suffering. These are people
with friends and families and hopes and dreams and feelings, and you're
treating them like characters in a movie. These are people working their asses
off to make the world a little bit better and hopefully make money doing it.
Mr. Consumer here is upset that their lives are a little better? And his only
reason is that _the stories he hears aren't as nice_? This is disgusting. Fuck
you, get some perspective.

~~~
biot
Speaking of perspective, I wouldn't call living off of cereal or ramen human
suffering. These are people who could probably do one hour of consulting and,
with the money they make, buy more food than someone in the third world sees
in a month. It's human suffering much in the same way that choosing to
flagellate yourself with a cat o' nine tails is.

~~~
BrandonM
Eating a healthy diet is unquestionably better than eating a cereal-and-ramen
diet. Being able to afford a better diet _does_ lessen human suffering, even
if that person isn't a starving child in Sudan. Being bummed out that
someone's life is better, simply because it doesn't make for a good story, is
shitty.

If Mr. Scoble wants a story of struggle and sacrifice, he can kindly live it
himself.

~~~
biot
I understand the point you're making. I was addressing your use of "human
suffering". Staying at the Hilton is unquestionably better than staying at a
Motel 6, but calling a night at the Motel 6 "human suffering" would be
ridiculous and such use cheapens the term.

~~~
BrandonM
I understand what you're saying. The human condition is relative. But I've
lived where I had no spending power, no paycheck for another week, and only a
pack of ramen in the house. I might not have been dying, but I was certainly
suffering. It's just awful to wish that on anyone, especially when he would
never in a million years wish it on himself. He's putting himself above the
people who keep him in work. It's disrespectful to say the least.

------
wooster
As one of those single founders you hear about struggling to make things work
from within their apartment or the local coffee shops: that story is
overrated. It's all about the business, and the $150k investment which was
offered today is an exceptionally good deal.

------
danilocampos
Meta: I want to ask something right now that will sound very flip but I mean
it with no malice and with full earnestness. Seriously – I'm asking because I
want an answer. Cool? Cool.

How has Mr. Scoble convinced so many people to listen to him?

In over six years of following the Valley and tech in general with interest, I
have heard Mr. Scoble's name so many times – but never associated with
anything of substance. I've never read of any dramatic achievements, nor have
I been pointed to any essays of any deep insight or poignancy. While he
frequently comes up in conversation he does not seem to... do anything. Like a
Paris Hilton.

From what I can tell, he worked for Microsoft, then wrote a book in which he
appeared on the cover naked (Hiltonesque!)... and then convinced a bunch of
people to follow him on Twitter and other social media flavors of the moment.
Then Rackspace bought him an enormous tripod.

I hasten to reiterate that I have no specific ill-will toward Mr. Scoble, but
I am... mystified and hope for some insight. Is this a case of wildly
successful self-promotion? Is the success of the self-promotion, itself, the
measure of success from which he derives attention and note? Do people latch
onto him in the hopes of learning similar powers of promotion?

~~~
wheels
Here's the right visual:

<http://atdetroit.net/forum/messages/5843/178783.jpg>

Scoble is the ultra-fan. I wouldn't really call him a rabid self-promoter
(though those are certainly around) -- he just oozes an almost naive
excitement about the technology world and seems to try to be in all corners of
it at once. I think that sort of excitement, almost like the tech world is one
big family of sorts, is, in its own way, contagious.

~~~
klein_waffle
I think this picture says everything you need to know about Scoble.

[http://cache.gawker.com/assets/resources/2007/07/scoble-
ipho...](http://cache.gawker.com/assets/resources/2007/07/scoble-iphone.jpg)

If the tech world is a big family, Scoble is the youngest kid whose incessant
bids for attention have the older ones rolling their eyes.

~~~
regnum
My reaction to that photo is that he is a down-to-earth guy who wears his
passion on his sleeve.

------
JoeAltmaier
I loved those Dickens stories too! Children working in factories! Fishermen
dying for lack of a doctor! Ha Ha!

------
mgkimsal
I'm seeing the word 'loan' in there along with 'investment' - the two aren't
really compatible terms. Who's on the hook for the loan? From the TC page:

"If you’re not an investor, here’s what it means. Yuri and SV Angel just
offered to loan each company $150,000. That loan will convert if/when the
company raises a proper angel or venture capital round at the same valuation
that’s set in that round. Most convertible debt has a valuation ceiling and
also gets a discount on conversion. This debt doesn’t.

It’s the most entrepreneur friendly investment that I can think of, short of
just handing people money as a gift."

So, they're not just handing money over ('investing') - it's a loan, which
would seem to require payback. If the company flops (some do) who is on the
hook? YC itself? The original founders?

~~~
lrm242
It's a convertible note, so it is a loan. I'm 100% positive that there are no
personal guarantees and it is essentially entirely unsecured. Convertible
notes are very common early investment tools when it is very hard to place an
accurate valuation on the company. It significantly reduces the amount of
paperwork involved and it allows the person providing the note a guaranteed
seat at the A round table. Like most loans, it typically carries interest
which accrues as part of the principal and adds to the conversion.

------
robryan
My takeaway from previous ycombinator groups is that anyone onto anything half
decent by the end has had no trouble getting a financing round.

Personally if it was me I don't think it would really change the way I went
about things, would still work out of a house and go it cheap, just might be
able to get an early hire in to push things along even faster without having
to worry about how much equity I was sacrificing to do it at such an early
stage.

------
edawerd
As a founder during the "old YCombinator", back when we had to move to Boston
(YC s08), I can tell Scoble with absolute certainty that while the fear of
running out of money was always on our minds, it wasn't the motivating force
for us working our asses off. It was something greater than that: An innate
entrepreneurial desire to build a company doing something meaningful. Indeed,
even after the economy crashed right after we graduated and money ran out, we
doubled down with our own personal savings to continue fighting.

Yuri's funding isn't gong to change a thing for YC founders, except arm them
with more ammo to build something great

------
erik_landerholm
I was in YCS09 (CarWoo!). The 150k would not of changed anything we did when
it came to being frugal.

We would of still lived in our office (not in an apartment that was our
office, but in our office that was our apartment).

We would of still rented a total crap hole in not the greatest part of town.
It might of helped WePay not have a neighbor who got macheted because we all
wouldn't of had to live in the slums. It might of helped us not live next to
other tenets that were growing weed and getting raided by the cops. The day we
moved out the cops raided them. We had armed police officers in our hallway.
These 'stories', while hilarious are not conducive to a good working
environment.

I'm older then most entrepreneurs YC funds. Tommy is also older then most. A
bit more money up front would of been very helpful and wouldn't of changed our
drive or decision making one bit, except to make us not worry about raising
money until later. And that would of been a good thing. Raising money stole a
fifth to a quarter of our time during YC.

We always knew we would need more money. Right out of YC we raised another
200k. It was very stressful because if that didn't work out we were up the
proverbial creek. Having that 150k up front would of helped ease a lot of
sleepless nights...listening to our neighbors scream and yell as they tried to
hang a sodium light, but I digress.

------
geuis
I know that the hardships of other people usually make the best stories. Hiker
gets his arm caught under a rock and has to cut it off with a pen knife 3 days
later to escape, makes for a gripping story. Moral is, sometimes being the
person in the adventure isn't all its cracked up to be.

When my cofounder and I applied for YC this past round, we had a lot of hopes
in getting accepted (we didn't, unfortunately, but got the interview). Even
though I knew all of the benefits of getting into YC in terms of the
experience and the contacts, I still had a certain amount of trepidation in
terms of finances. I was ready and willing (still am!) to dive into YC and not
look back, but I was also looking at giving up a job that pays well (I make
more money than _anyone_ else in my large extended family), the health
benefits, 401k, stock options, and 2 weeks of vacation each year. I live in
San Francisco, and it isn't cheap. That $17k, split between 2 people, doesn't
go far. I'm a single guy with limited expenses, and it still would have been
tight.

Having met Paul Graham and the YC crew a couple of times, interviewing with
them, and meeting many other people at various YC-funded companies, I feel
confident in saying that I highly doubt the spirit of YC is going to change.
There is a certain character to all of the people I've met that's hard to
define but is definitely there. That isn't going to disappear simply because
an investor is trying something new.

I suspect that there are driven people like me who are in slightly different
situations (family, etc) where they don't feel like they can take the risk if
they get accepted. This stops them from even feeling like applying.

Now knowing that there's another guaranteed round of money to be accessed
after a few months is going to let people on the edge make the decision to
apply. Some will get accepted. It will let people feel like they can work as
hard as possible on a dream and know they have a better chance of being ok
longer. $150k + $17k at a startup of 2-3 people is enough to not only fund the
company, but to also let the founders who need it to take a survivable income
for the first year while they're getting off the ground. Its an extra safety
blanket that lets those founders who need it to take the plunge and to fight a
while longer to succeed.

For the people that get accepted into YC where $17k was enough, those people
now have some extra guaranteed resources to help their businesses grow. That's
the money that lets a 2 person team hire a 3rd after 6 months to let them keep
growing while one of the founders concentrates on angel or VC funding, instead
of hitting a wall because there's too much to do and not enough humans to go
around to do it.

I'll grant Robert that YC may change a little, but it'll only be for the
better.

~~~
brown9-2
Great post, but I feel the need to point out that two weeks of vacation is not
that much of a perk and is actually quite low.

------
spinchange
Those who can't ship, blog.

~~~
josefresco
Those who can't blog, comment.

~~~
spinchange
Turnabout is fair play, but roughly how many words do you think this story and
silly meta-analysis deserve?

I could throw-up a few paragraphs on my wordpress, but I'd rather work on some
code. What do you think?

------
jacquesm
So go and re-create it, we'll see how well you do.

Backseat drivers don't get to vote.

------
pclark
This deal won't change that. YC knows scrappy companies win, and especially
well capitalised _scrappy_ companies.

------
6ren
A great advantage startups have over established companies is they _get
excited over small wins_. And beginnings are small.

The Innovator's Dilemma even suggests established companies spin-out small
startups to work on emerging technologies/markets, for this reason.

------
rmason
Just getting accepted in YCombinator means you're part of an elite group. Even
among these select startups there are those whose original idea doesn't work.

How many fail because they ran out of money trying to execute a pivot? All
this added capital is going to do is increase the success rate. I respect you
Scoble but you're wrong.

------
elgenie
"struggle and sacrifice makes for great stories", but not necessarily great
companies. Tech journalists' ability to phone in the same story they've
written 100 times before shouldn't even register on the radar of things to
consider.

------
gallerytungsten
I somehow suspect Scoble has never been poor. There's nothing glamorous about
it.

------
ericmsimons
Living more comfortably while doing a startup is a great thing though. Better
food = better brainpower. It may not sound as good on paper but the end result
will be the same if not better.

------
adrianwaj
Why are people assuming the 150k is from this batch _onward_?

