
Y Combinator's Hardware Guy Leaves After 14 Months - kgwgk
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-04/y-combinator-s-hardware-guy-leaves-after-14-months
======
sethbannon
TL;DR -- Luke Iseman, YC's hardware focused Partner founded a hardware
startup, which he's now taking through YC as a founder, after having set up a
bunch of deals and processes to help hardware startups as a YC Partner.

Seems like pretty good evidence YC is now great at helping hardware startups
that he's choosing to go through the program himself.

~~~
cellularmitosis
Oh cool, Luke was a Maker personality in Austin for a while. I remember when
he was making his own pedicabs. [http://austinpedicab.org/2008/10/06/austin-
cronicle-intervie...](http://austinpedicab.org/2008/10/06/austin-cronicle-
interviews-luke-iseman/)

~~~
patcon
Austin, eh? I wonder if he's friend or foe with the Kasita guy (ie. Professor
Dumpster)...

------
sama
I counted at least 5 factual errors in the photo caption and first 3
paragraphs.

We also heard that this reporter was 'encouraged' to write this by someone
from a competing accelerator with an obvious agenda. Seems like manufactured
controversy otherwise.

All that said, we like hardware and we like Luke, and we're excited he's in
the new batch! And we're thankful for the work he did to get our hardware
program set up.

~~~
danso
Heh, impressive that a lede photo caption as short and simple as, " _Sam
Altman, president and co-founder of Y Combinator_ ", has an error.

~~~
sama
two errors!

~~~
titanomachy
What's the second, is that a picture of some other person?

~~~
dcposch
* Not a cofounder. YC was created by PG, Jessica Livingstone, and two other ppl who aren't Sam

* Recently changed roles. Michael Siebel runs YC now, while Sam runs the parent organization YC Group

------
sushid
"Sam Altman, president and co-founder of Y Combinator."

Uhh, they clearly didn't do their homework if they thought Altman co-founded
YC.

~~~
birken
Having read basically every news article ever about the startup I was involved
in, they get the most basic, easily checkable facts like: _What year was it
founded? What does the company do? Who is the CEO?_ wrong at least half of the
time.

And they get the more complicated facts wrong much more often, but that is
because they generally directly printing either what the founder tells them or
something they think that is more interesting than what the founder tells them
without any sort of verification.

Basically, almost all articles about startups (and frankly most things in
general) are written to be interesting, not factually correct.

~~~
WalterBright
I learned that when there was a natural gas explosion in the building I worked
in in the 80s (nobody was hurt). I recorded several TV news broadcasts on it,
and every one got the basic facts wrong in different ways. Things like one
called the building a warehouse (it was an office building).

There were no political issues nor agendas nor money at stake, the news
reporters just didn't make any effort to be correct.

I've often wondered what we know about history that is dead wrong.

~~~
zubat
I'm increasingly convinced that looking and thinking too deeply on people
matters(news, history, organizations, relationships) is like staring at the
sun. There's nothing much to see by focusing your gaze on it, it blocks out
stuff more nearby, and you go blind in the process.

Which isn't to say that being a numb automaton is ideal, either, but there is
a degree of balance and good taste required to avoid converting the
information into dangerous thoughts, and it's simpler to restrict quantity of
exposure.

~~~
theoh
I'm not endorsing the following view of the world, but your comment reminds me
of Ken Wilber's division of reality into four quadrants. It's a Cartesian
product of individual vs collective times interior vs exterior.

What you are talking about as "people matters" sounds like "exterior
collective": structural, social things, or "its" as Wilber refers to them.

I'm a bit worried that you might also be writing off most of the "interior
collective" quadrant: the relational, cultural aspects of reality, the "we".

This is New Age fluff, but I guess we have to start somewhere. HN can be
pretty hostile to humanities thinking sometimes, at least Wilber has no
prerequisites.

------
rezashirazian
_Still, hardware is, well, hard. Silicon Valley has produced a raft of world-
changing software startups, from Airbnb (a YC veteran) to Facebook. But it 's
a whole lot easier to beta-test an app than to prototype and then manufacture
a gadget with a bunch of moving parts. Then you have to market the thing to
the masses, who are already enamored of their Apple and Samsung products.
Exhibits A and B: Fitbit, the fitness tracking company, and GoPro, maker of
rugged little cameras. This week, both cut their sales forecasts for the
crucial holiday quarter and watched their shares plunge. (Neither started life
at YC.)_

Fitbit and GoPro's downturn is mostly fueled by mismanagement and poor
decisions than hardware being intrinsically hard.

The hard part of hardware is building something that works well enough and is
in demand. When you have your device on people's wrist or mounted on their
helmet, you have overcome the "hardware is hard" part. (for the most part).

After that it's building on your original success, expanding your market and
creating value for your customers; all of which are true for any other
business, not strictly hardware. For fitbit and GoPro, the latter has proven
more difficult.

~~~
CydeWeys
I don't know abut GoPro, but Fitbit deserves to fail. Their hardware is
_terrible_. The warranty only lasts one year, yet I've had to replace both
Fitbit devices I've had twice within that one year. I'm now Fitbit-less
because the latest, a Charge HR, failed for the third time, and it's now out
of that one year warranty.

To give you an idea of how bad the Charge HR is, its charging plug attaches
with metal prongs, but it plugs into a slim plastic housing that is only glued
to the rest of the device. The obvious result is that the plastic housing
eventually gets pulled off with the plug. That's how two of my three Charge
HRs have died. It'd be like if your laptop were ruined within four months
because the power cable pulled off an essential piece of the laptop housing
rather than detaching cleanly, and now it won't attach in order to charge. The
third Charge HR bricked itself during an unprompted firmware update, which
started randomly and then I guess got interrupted midway through when I moved
my phone too far from the device. It never recovered.

I don't know what the hell they're optimizing for over at Fitbit HQ, but
they're trying to sell $10 throw-away quality devices for >$100. It's
outrageous. I actively discourage everyone I know from ever buying anything
from them, and many other people I know have also completely sworn them off
for the same reason. Their product just _sucks_.

~~~
lnanek2
> they're trying to sell $10 throw-away quality devices for >$100

I can say their software is in the same category from personal experience.
Their Android app was written through minimum cost outsourcing, has no
comments (since the developers didn't speak English well), a half dozen layers
of abstraction when two would work, and is riddled with countless poorly
documented strange edge cases and hacks throughout that make maintainability
and enhancement a disaster.

On the user side, this is why features are rarely added and the software tends
to lock up and crash a lot, and can brick devices during firmware update.
Fixing even trivial bugs or adding basic features like social or counterfeit
detection right takes much more work than it should since you have to navigate
all that and may break something else while trying to do what you are doing.

They hired a few internal people around the time of the IPO, but they
universally don't do much. The tech lead of the team generally came in,
complained about some random thing that wasn't even accurate to make it seem
like he did something, then left at 4PM. He wasn't in the office enough to
know anything about what his team was doing.

A typical internal developer played Clash of Clans all day. When showed logs
of his code not working he called meeting after meeting with management to get
the guy with logs of the failing use case fired. The culture there is that
there's no reason to do work there if you can office politics with your
friends to get out of it.

Even given a reasonable commit adjusting timeouts to match the time taken for
Bluetooth operations to the slowest observed device and fix several long
running file transfers timing out by resetting the timeout each block
transferred, he blew up and removed all timeouts for file transfers (bringing
back the potential lock up issue) and called a half dozen meetings to fight
it.

The culture there is just noxious and actively fights anyone trying to do
work.

~~~
CydeWeys
Wow, thank you for the insider perspective. That's truly horrifying that a $2B
company (previously $10B) that depends heavily on software outsourced so much
of its core competency like that. Talk about being penny wise and pound
foolish. I've worked at two ~$10M companies that used all in-sourced
development (i.e. me and my coworkers) and, while not without their faults,
were significantly higher functioning.

Also, how the fuck do you brick a device by updating it? Wasn't this problem
solved decades ago? You upload the new image and then, only once it's
completely transferred and verified, do you atomically switch over to it. Are
you telling me that they really made it so that the firmware update overwrites
the existing firmware, so that any interruption in the process causes it to go
poof? Ugh. I know that requires double the internal memory, but c'mon, this is
2016. The cost of that is some very tiny insignificant fraction of what an RMA
costs. Never before in my life have I ever irrevocably bricked a device by
updating its firmware.

------
kenferry
"Iseman says his departure was purely about his desire to get back into the
founder's role and build something new. He's already been accepted into the
winter 2017 YC cohort with his new housing startup."

Doesn't sound very acrimonious.

~~~
Cyph0n
Isn't that the definition of a conflict of interest? Or am I reading this
wrong?

~~~
Mango_Diesel
What is the conflict of interest?

Being a partner at YC is certainly a unique qualifier that would basically
guarantee acceptance. There is nothing wrong with that. It is awesome, in
fact.

~~~
Cyph0n
Well, it could also mean that someone else who isn't a YC partner was rejected
to let him in. Of course, I don't know whether or not that is the case, but
this is where a conflict of interest could potentially arise from.

~~~
the_watcher
He was a YC partner. He no longer is. And there's a difference between an
equity partner and other types of partners. But again, YC is incentivized to
let in companies they believe will deliver the most total value to the YC
portfolio, so admitting Luke at the expense of another founder who was better
qualified is directly contrary to their interests. Also, the YC batch sizes
aren't fixed, and they have wiggle room. To avoid the conflict, they could
just admit one additional startup who would have otherwise been cut.

~~~
Cyph0n
That would make sense. Again, I'm not familiar with how the YC selection
process works, so it's just speculation.

But it still seems kind of strange to be honest.

------
dmix
Everything must be a controversy these days in the news world. Including all
of the times they're really not. Like this time.

~~~
anondon
From the title to the tone of the article, I felt like they were going to drop
a bombshell, something like "Luke was fired" or "Luke hates how YC is being
run".

Very poor journalism, Bloomberg.

------
nom
Hardware development requires a lot of spare resources, it doesn't pair well
with startups.

The development cycles are much less predictable compared to software, you
never know how many prototypes you have to burn through until you reach the
production stage. Small changes become hugely expensive once you've finalized
the designs, and even a minuscule error like a tolerance mismatch can cause
hundreds of thousands in damage and ruin a startup almost instantly. I'm
always wary of a HW startup, unless the lead engineer is well known and has
experience.

------
the_watcher
I met Luke while he was working on Edyn (pre-YC). He was really interesting,
and clearly enjoys hacking and tinkering with hardware and physical things
more than anything. It's not surprising to me that he'd get bored after a
working process for supporting hardware startups was established. Interested
to see what he's doing around housing, and somewhat hopeful it won't just be
tiny homes (since while I think they're cool, living in one isn't for
everyone).

------
samstave
WRT goPro...

(I do not know if they already do this);

Should it not be a sound idea to work with companies that make the THINGS that
your users would be on to bundle a device with the things...

Rosignol branded gopro when you buy a pair of skis

[SkateBoard] branded gopro bundle, or a _tony hawk edition_

Water-proof versions bundled with every [insert water product]

Specialized/Brooks branded versions...

Try to get the companies already selling the transport mechanisms the users of
go-pro would be using to boost sales. Lower margins, higher(???) volume?

~~~
analog31
A potential issue is that if someone wants a branded helmet-cam, they can
apply their brand label to a knock-off model for a lot less coin. For the
bundle to be attractive to the consumer, it has to be cheaper than the parts
bought separately. These days, folks do extensive price research before
spending more than a few bucks on anything.

------
louprado
I don't know Luke Iseman's vision for Boxouse. But if the goal is to produce
structures like the ones shown in the link below then I am really glad he made
the decision to focus full time on his company.

[http://www.architecturendesign.net/22-most-beautiful-
houses-...](http://www.architecturendesign.net/22-most-beautiful-houses-made-
from-shipping-containers/)

------
Animats
Hardware may be a bad fit for YC, with its low initial funding and short
deadlines. If you're doing some me-too product, others can do it too, probably
better. If you're doing something hard that takes R&D, it may take more time
and resources than YC provides.

------
patcon
As someone who saw Luke & Heather's Boxouse talk at HOPE conf with some
friends, and were inspired to go at it stealth, I've gotta say I'm so so glad
they're focussing on the housing project. I just got my rental shipping
container dropped off last week, and am working to quickly and non-
destructively insulate it for Canadian winter :)

------
Jugurtha
There's " _silicon_ " in Silicon Valley. The reason it exists is hardware, yet
they seem oblivious to that fact and make it seem that, somehow, SV's pursuit
of hardware is a new path.

------
cdibona
I don want to sound like a jerk, but Trevor Blackwell has always filled the
ycombinatoe hardware 'slot' from my perspective.

------
debt
the position is probably pointless and is why he left.

it's cool that yc experiments with shit like this but didn't work out and now
he's doing something else.

hardware is hard.

------
dnprock
This shows being YC founder is more fun than YC partner.

------
Steeeve
That's a brilliant photo.

------
jabbanobodder
Is it just me or does that picture make him look like a zombie on TWD?

~~~
pen2l
That's... not even him, that's not Luke, that's Sam. For a second they had me
thinking Sam had stepped down from his position at yc. Sam wouldn't do that to
us.

