

Ask PG: Please reply here or write an essay on: - ideas101

1. how you feel after successfully helping/mentoring/funding 80 companies?<p>2. What is the secret of YC's success and the success of YC funded companies?<p>3. How did you came up with YC business model?<p>4. What is the most important thing you think companies/founders get from your program? (i know most of them will say VC connection, demo day, mentoring etc. but is it anything else that we are not seeing?)<p>and finally<p>5. what advise would you give to the people who wants to replicate your model (as there are few clones already) not to make money but to help grow the spirit of entrepreneurship, employment and innovation?<p>Pg, your reply/essay will go long way to help - because I think if there are more YCs then there are more successful startups, more startups will bring more jobs in the market, there will be more innovation and it help directly and in-directly the whole economy (especially to the third world countries who might implement your model to get balls rolling).
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pg
1\. A lot more experienced. Before YC, the only startups I knew about were the
ones started by me and by friends. Now I know which of their qualities were
essential to their success, and which were incidental.

2\. This answer will sound useless, but it's the same reason anyone is good at
anything. There's no single secret. There are about 20 different things we
have to do, from recognizing talent to talking about product ideas to matching
people up with VCs, and we try hard to do them all well.

3\. By accident. When we first started YC, we didn't know what to do, so we
started with a summer program. Most college students regard summer jobs as
disposable anyway, so we figured no one would mind if the experiment was a
disaster and all the companies failed. As it turned out, that batch did
remarkably well.

4\. This one I already did write about: <http://ycombinator.com/about.html>

5\. That it's not as easy as it looks. A lot of people think investing is like
betting on horses: you pick, they race, and if they win you get money.
Actually it is a lot more active than that. And the earlier the stage, the
more work it is. If you want to invest at this stage, you need to have the
same qualities you'd need to be a successful founder.

~~~
ph0rque
follow-up question to #1: which qualities are successful to the startup's
success? I've read essays where you say determination is more important than
intelligence; would you add anything else to that?

~~~
pg
Determination, solid friendship between the founders, flexibility,
intelligence, honesty, design sense, experience, in that order.

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jraines
Ask PG: please make me a sandwich.

Edit: In all seriousness, you can probably find answers to most of these in
his existing essays.

~~~
rms
sudo Ask PG: please make me a sandwich.

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jrockway
Can we "pls" leave the expression "pls" on Reddit and Digg?

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stcredzero
I started with Slashdot, got disillusioned, then went over to Digg, then
Reddit, and now I'm here and have a better appreciation for Slashdot. This
experience prompts me to formulate a law:

When you start wishing social news site X won't become like social news site
Y, it's probably inevitable at that point.

~~~
jrockway
Slashdot went bad differently than Digg and Reddit. Digg and Reddit went bad
by appealing to too many people, and making commenting too easy.

Slashdot is bad because people post the same fucking diatribes over and over.
I guess this happens on Reddit and Digg too, but to a lesser extent. You could
roll Slashdot back to 1999 and it would be the same people with the same views
talking about the same thing. We get your point, enough already :)

Oh well, at least there's still Lambda The Ultimate.

~~~
apgwoz
> Oh well, at least there's still Lambda The Ultimate.

Sssshhhh! The others will hear you.

~~~
nostrademons
L:tU is scary enough that most of the unwashed masses take a look at it and
then go away. They've done a really good job at keeping the bar high.

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immad
Kinda demanding, especially since you are saying the purpose of the
information is to help YC competitors.

~~~
ideas101
YC competitors will fail if they don't have honest soul to help others to
grow. Also YC model looks easy from outside but if you try to know the nity-
gritty of their business model then you will realize that its a hard work and
the passion behind it has to be genuine otherwise there would have been
hundreds of clones all over world. I see YC as a social entrepreneurship than
just a money making machine and hence if Pg can share something that can help
other entrepreneurs and countries then it would be like an adding jewel to his
legacy crown.

~~~
nostrademons
"Benevolent" != "do all the work for your competitors". Besides, if you're not
smart enough to figure out how to improve on the YC model on your own, why
should entrepreneurs come to you for advice?

~~~
euccastro
Because he's smart enough to ask?

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wumi
funny how most commenters strike down the person for asking, yet PG actually
replies to 4/5 questions. why not either a) try to answer the questions or b)
let PG answer them, because he seemed pretty willing.

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menloparkbum
Part of 2) is that YC has made raising (seed) capital like applying to
college, something that most people just coming out of college already know
how to do. Previously it involved meeting rich people and smooth talking them
out of their money, something that very few people just coming out of college
know how to do.

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sbt
Reading the essays will answer the meaningful questions here.

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redorb
probably too self serving for PG, along with all the other reasons

