

Paul Graham's Search for the Next Facebook - rhartsock
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_10/b4218038672660.htm

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marcamillion
I love how pg always has this kinda 'child like joy' smirk on his face for
these press pictures.

Like he is thinking "this is SOO cool...Mom is gonna be soo proud."

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alexophile
I interpreted that look as "You're going to put some really lame headline
above me aren't you?"

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redthrowaway
His prescience knows no bounds.

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onewland
I hate to derail, is that ripped from Greg Proops?

If you're going to steal, he's a great source for material :)

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curiouslurker
Rather short and disappointing article given the headline. I took a long sip
of my coffee, reclined and looked forward to reading something much longer and
better...but alas it wasn't to be!

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thematt
I find it surprising that Heroku was the breakeven point. There have been
other (what I consider) rather high-profile exits, such as Cloudkick, Reddit,
Etherpad, 280 North, etc. These were good companies and were acquired for
significant amounts; it seems like YC would have realized some significant
gains on them.

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nopinsight
The article might have meant YC recouped their past investments in all
startups combined:

"YC broke even on its past investments when Salesforce.com (CRM) bought YC
company Heroku"

Since the sales price is above 200 million, YC's equity would be worth 12+
million, which likely surpassed the total monetary first-seed investments in
every startup they did so far.

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marcamillion
That is kinda staggering given that there are still many stars that are doing
pretty well...that YC is yet to exit. From Dropbox to AirBnB to WePay to Wufoo
to Justin.tv to Posterous to Scribd, etc. All of those I suspect, if they have
an exit (I doubt Wufoo will - mainly because I don't think the founders are
interested), it will be pretty substantial.

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plainOldText
I believe the title is a bit misleading. Nowhere in the article was the name
Facebook mentioned except in title.

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idoh
The people who write the articles are different from the people who write the
headlines.

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MediaBehavior
And the headline stringers probably think, "I've never heard of pg, so my
readers haven't either. I better put 'Apple' or 'Facebook' in this headline."
[/cynicism]

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izendejas
As someone who is looking to apply, even at this stage, having YCombinator as
an option is tremendously invaluable. So on behalf of the dreamers out there,
I say thanks Paul, Jessica and crew. Even if not accepted, just having that
door there gives one more clarity moving forward by removing lots of the
uncertainty.

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mindcrime
_(Think MTV's Real World, but for geeks.)_

Oh, boy... The idea of some TV executives out there, champing at the bit to
create a reality TV show about entrepreneurs is either f!#@ng scary or LOL
funny.

I can just see it now... " _Survivor: YC_ " or " _The Entrepreneur: Paul
Graham Edition_." Even better: " _Entrepreneur Death Match: Paul Graham v.
Steve Case_." And the inevitable " _VC Revenge Stunts, hosted by Sean
Parker_."

" _Mark Zuckerberg Goes Back To College_ " might be entertaining though.

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jarek
It exists and is called Dragons' Den.

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mlinsey
American version is called Shark Tank, and based on the deals the investors
offer, it's aptly named.

Mark Cuban has signed on to be part of the next season!

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rudiger
Mark Cuban had a TV show, _The Benefactor_ [1], with a similar premise.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Benefactor>

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mindcrime
Interesting, I totally missed that somehow. Probably because I don't really
watch TV much. Oh well... you win some, you lose some.

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bfe
I think it's inaccurate about the deal with SV Angel and DST, isn't it SV
Angel and Yuri Milner as an individual?

As for breakeven, I wonder whether that's accurate, but considering the low
percentage of shares YC takes I wouldn't be surprised if lots of successful
but not blockbuster spawn could still leave them without huge returns.

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dasil003
What does YC take? 5% for $20,000? They're getting a return if it sells for
$500,000. Granted there's going to be a lot of dilution 99 times out of 100,
but if most acquisitions are in the $10m-$100m range then they can still take
the dilution and do pretty damn well with their current batting average.

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ericxtang
Anyone know what the "bottlenecks" are in YC? I assume it has to do with the
number of advisors? Also, I wonder if the growth in number means decrease in
quality (or experience) for the entrepreneurs.

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klbarry
The biggest bottle neck is quality applicants, if I remember correctly. I
believe PG mentioned that Y-Combinator could triple in size and not be
severely affected, though.

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hollerith
Although that might be the first bottleneck YC probably cannot remove, the
bottlenecks PG talks of in the OP (such as office space) are the removable,
short-term ones that prevent YC from immediately tripling in size.

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d8niel
Great article.

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barista
Loved this quote from the article: "This is the Harvard, so to speak, of
entrepreneurship" Says something about YC.

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pdaviesa
Shouldn't it be the Stanford of entrepreneurship :)

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barista
Or may be Stanford is YC of CS.

