
Scaling YC: What's the limiting factor? - dfranke

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dfranke
Paul's recent mentions about scaling Y Combinator have prompted me to give
some thought to the matter myself, but the first thing I realized is that I
don't really know what's preventing it from scaling. What's the current
limiting factor?

Amount of money available to invest?

How much attention you can pay to the people you fund?

The number of applications that don't suck?

And given an unlimited supply of the current limiting factor, how much bigger
could you get before running up against one of the other two?

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pg
Right now it's the number of good applications. That number appears to be
increasing fairly rapidly, though. Then it will be our attention.

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Alex3917
So there are basically two factors then:

1) Smart people within YC

2) Smart people applying to YC

So basically you have to find the optimal ratio and then grow both in
proportion. :-)

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binarybana
Without seeing the work going into YC firsthand, I can only speculate on the
limitations of that end.

However, looking further into the lack of quality applicants, I believe
strongly that the failures of the public education system are a direct cause
of this lack of applicants. In fact, I would be willing to wager that most
applicants are some of the few that 'slipped through the cracks' of the public
schooling experience with their minds and ambitions intact. To avoid
infringement: this is all covered in Paul's oldie-but-goodie article, "Why
Nerds are Unpopular."

And then you have the even higher end (less direct) influences. ie: the modern
world diluting the American dream through the 'satisfaction' derived from a
big screen TV and a dozen maxed out credit cards. (anyone feel the urge to
reread Great Gatsby?). But thats more the realm of philosophers and
sociologists.

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Andys
The problem with scaling YC is geography. YC is in USA, and we are not. We
cant or wont drag our co-founders and girlfriends to YC, so Paul will never
get to speak to us or talk to us about our ideas, and we have to waste time
funding our own ideas instead of letting YC do it.

I actually filled out a YC form once and never ended up submitting it because
I knew deep down I didn't want to move to the USA.

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chandrab
The problem scaling YC is definately time, it sometime sucks that we only have
24hrs/day!...I had a few friends that were VCs and they worked like dogs. A
few VCs shuffle you off to a Jr. Associate, which has some negatives, the
biggest being that if you had any experience at all, you knew more about
running a business than they did.

If I was in PG shoes and I had to scale the business, I'd definately recommend
getting some Sr. Operational folks with a like-mind to work very closely with
the portfolio companies.

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staunch
I think PG's essays and YCN can be a huge boost to scaling YC itself. He wrote
of attempting of Huffman coding in the "hardest lessons" essay, perhaps he
could also reference comment IDs as well. Maybe something more forum-like is
necessary though, where topics can be marked "sticky" forever.

If each group of founders leaves behind their answers in a permanent form it
seems like that would help with most of the common questions, leaving only the
tricky new questions to be answered.

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stevej098
Money is never the limiting factor, it's always finding Good people... Cite:
Michael Milken, creator of the junk bond industry.

"Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers" and the others along Sandi Hill Road show
that it can be made to scale, but the process is lossy.

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juwo
see <http://juwo-works.blogspot.com/2007/03/better-business-model-for-
incubators.html>

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AurSaraf
I am Aur Saraf.

YC can be scaled to any size very simply.

So simply, in fact, that had I met the criteria, I'd ask Paul to sponsor me in
setting up YC Israel.

YC can be scaled by both growing and duplication (creating copies that operate
in different locations):

What do you need to run a YC "chapter"? Some of you might reply "Paul Graham".
Well, I appreciate that, but it's wrong. The only resource needed to run a YC
chapter that isn't abundant is _people with the enthusiasm and experience
needed to guide young entrepreneurs_.

But what does YC produce? Exactly that.

Paul, you remarked lately that the reason you run YC is probably that you
don't need money and do want to work with people you like. Well, take any
hacker that has successfully sold a start up and he'd probably want the same.

So young hacker =} YC =} experienced entrepreneur {= YC

When I'll exit my business (or stabilize it and stay within), I'll call Paul
and ask to found YC Israel. For now, I have other work to do :)

Aur Saraf

