

A New Venture Animal - mqt
http://paulgraham.com/ycombinator.html

======
vegashacker
_Very early stage startups are insanely risky._

I hear this almost as much as the "90% of startups fail" piece of wisdom, and
I was a little surprised to see it in a PG essay. I'm not saying it's
necessarily wrong, just that I don't totally understand it.

Risk is "the possibility of suffering harm or loss; danger." So what's risky
about a startup? If you are paying for it yourself, maxing out credit cards,
etc, then the startup _is_ indeed likely to be harmful to you.

But, if you get YC funding, and are the under 30 crowd that PG refers to with
low living expenses, then it's pretty unlikely that you're taking that
approach. Instead, you're simply not saving any money for awhile. So there is
opportunity cost lost, since surely most of the YC founders could make a nice
chunk of change working for the man. But is this really the harm that's
implied by the reference to risk? Especially when you factor in the experience
you gain from a failed startup, it seems pretty questionable to say that
serious harm will likely befall you. It's more like, less savings and a great
experience will likely befall you.

So I wonder if the sentiment is just referring to the harm that may happen to
the startup itself. As in, it's quite likely -- 90% likely! ;) -- that the
startup you create will die. But isn't that kind of like saying it's risky to
scratch off a lotto ticket that someone gives you? It's "risky" for the lotto
ticket I suppose, but not really for you.

~~~
vegashacker
I'll try to answer my own question. I think it's about riskiness from the
point of view of investors. The thing is, I think the wisdom is oft repeated
as risky for the founders (though perhaps not in this essay), which is what
I'm objecting to.

~~~
ph0rque
It's risky in the sense that you might fail, and not get paid (enough) for
your efforts. I calculated my last startup to have paid me about $3/hour (not
discounting the time factor) after all was said and done.

~~~
paul
How much did your school pay your for your efforts there?

~~~
connellybarnes
My grad school pays $25 per hour. I paid nothing for undergrad. This isn't
atypical.

~~~
misterbwong
Not atypical but also not the majority. I don't think it's a stretch to say
most people pay for grad school.

~~~
danteembermage
It depends whether you're counting law school, business school, medical
school, pharmacy school, nursing school, etc. as grad school. Among Hackers
grad school is far more likely to be of the type "studying fractal patterns in
African architecture while teaching two sections of introductory socio-
cultural anthropology" Generally you pay through the nose for the first kind
and they pay you (a little) to do the second kind.

It's amazing how few people know that if your PhD doesn't cost -$12,000 a year
or less you really are not doing something right.

~~~
connellybarnes
I'm not sure how many hackers could physically work in
[law|business|medical|pharmacy|nursing].

My point was that because school systems are hackable, sometimes hackers will
have hacked the signs of the costs involved. For example, my graduate school
costs less than -$12,000 a year, but some peoples' schools may cost more than
$12,000 a year (so they're not "doing something right?"). Big deal. In the
long run, education wins financially and in terms of helping people accomplish
their goals.

One can easily make the argument that startups are education, but obviously
this consists of more than "Web 2.0" and a few other buzzwords thrown together
at random. (I'm not criticizing Paul here, but I am criticizing the lunatic
fringe that seems to grow around Paul.)

------
dfranke
I propose "venture catapult" as a generic term for what YC does.

~~~
ivankirigin
startup trebuchet

~~~
mrtron
startup blowdart

A few puffs of air in the right direction?

~~~
ivankirigin
As long as we're listing weapons, the ideal choice is "startup tactical nuke".

It's the model that has been woefully overlooked for 50 years.

~~~
TheTarquin
Possible, but that would pretty much involve funding the hell out of everyone
in a several mile radius, with long-term funding for people fortunate enough
to be down-wind . . .

------
apathy
pg:

 _But all it would have taken in the beginning would have been for two Google
employees to focus on the wrong things for six months, and the company could
have died._

Actually, it's even more interesting than that. Prior to AdWords (and, more
importantly, the acquisition of Applied Semantics that gave them AdSense),
Google did not have a real source of revenue. At all. Google Appliances were
cute but negligible.

After AdWords and AdSense, they began to replace magazines, the yellow pages,
and 411.

It is difficult to underestimate how important Ad(Words|Sense) has been to
Google's success. And it was the idea of an intern.

~~~
paul
What was the idea of an intern? Ads were part of the plan from very early on.
Also, AdSense predates the Applied Semantics aquisition.

~~~
apathy
_AdSense predates the Applied Semantics acquisition_

That's not what your press release says:
<http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/applied.html>

_What was the idea of an intern?_ The self-service approach to buying AdWords,
IIRC. The mail-order lobster nonsense that led to the streamlining of the
horribly broken logfile/MySQL system when it became popular. I may be confused
-- 'intern' may be the wrong word.

But if you want an example of a 'tipping point' or a critical decision I can't
think of much better than Google and their ad sales mechanism.

~~~
paul
AdSense the product and technology (content targetting) predates the
acquisition, which is why the press release is titled, "New Technologies and
Engineering Team Complement Google's Content Targeted Advertising Programs".
AdSense the trademark may have come from AS, but that's not very relevant.

I'm guessing that the "intern" that you are referring to is Salar:
<http://www.google.com/corporate/execs.html#salar> He was maybe the 10th
employee of Google.

------
skmurphy
How about "Startup Catalyst" You don't provide the raw starting materials but
you help them to combine more rapidly and more effectively. Dictionary
definition: "A substance, usually used in small amounts relative to the
reactants, that modifies and increases the rate of a reaction without being
consumed in the process."

------
noonespecial
_Really we're more of a small, furry steam catapult._

The man just has a way with words! :)

~~~
TheTarquin
Agreed: money quote for the whole article.

It put me in mind of a fur-upholstered mousetrap for some reason. You know,
the kind of thing David Bowie would put in his basement . . .

------
tx
Essays like this one make us, YC-rejects, feel like not being part of
something cool, something new and exciting and much better, while we're stuck
out there dealing with "old kind of animals" and the question _"why haven't
they picked pikluk?"_ keeps creeping into my mind, and it's not a nice
feeling.

I guess it's a natural state of mind of any hacker: to be at the edge, have
the best tools, best equipment, use best operating systems, etc. It applies to
your investors as well. I'd hate to take an offer from a rich farmer or an oil
guy.

Well... enough of YC for today, back to work.

------
tomek77
I launched a start-up two months ago, and I can't agree more with Paul: it has
become ridiculously inexpensive to do so. I considered chasing some VC
funding, but then realized that all I need is a good idea and some time to
focus on it; the VC's wouldn't have helped me with either one. As a matter of
fact, even owning your own computing resources is unnecessary: check-out
Amazon's cloud computing web services (our bill: <$100 / mth)!

~~~
tx
How's that related to you costs? The primary expense has always been the cost
of talent and "cost of sales". Employees time and marketing/advertising. Paul
assumes that programmers will work for free (or for very little) because
they're founders, but doesn't address the other big one. Well, he saves a ton
of money on free YC-backed PR, but even his model breaks down if you need more
than 2-4 programmers to deliver even a prototype, or if your idea/business
depend heavily on graphics designers or rely on complex distribution channels
(even within the web).

In fact if you way back, there was another time when a couple of guys in a
garage could do it all. Gates and Allen did it. Jobs and Woz did it. In
history of personal computing there was always one or two guys who did it
first without bunch of money: nearly every piece of traditional desktop
application has that guy. Equipment and infrastructure costs have never been
prohibitive since the invention of a PC.

As web applications grow the history will repeat itself: instead of two guys
building it you'll need 20, just like it did with desktop software and games.
There are only brief windows of opportunity for a "little guy" and they only
come some major breakthrough in technology comes along.

~~~
tomek77
tx: "The primary expense has always been the cost of talent and "cost of
sales". Employees time and marketing/advertising." The point I am making: it
is not so any more! How much dev time or marketing or technology insight went
into any of these, for example: digg fbook myspace flickr techcrunch? And yet
they´re worth billions of $.

------
imperator
The shortest description of Y Combinator I can think of is a "Venture
Expediter"

~~~
aston
I don't think YC's goal is to get startups closer to VC, or even to expedite
their journey anywhere.

The point is, YC is really smart money in real small amounts. If you need more
money or don't need so much smarts behind it, you go elsewhere on the funding
spectrum.

~~~
pg
Our goal is definitely to get startups that could benefit from VC closer to
it. 9 of 59 startups prior to this winter have raised money from VC funds so
far.

More generally our goal is to get startups closer to later stage investors,
whether angels or VCs. Pretty near 100% of startups are looking for at least
some additional investment.

------
JayGodse
YCombinator is a new kind of animal, in that it offers a lot less money and a
lot more help. In the abstract, I have seen another local company in Ottawa
(www.taraspan.com) do the similar kinds of things.

People often say that the combination of team, market opportunity, and
technology is what it takes. One typical cause for failure of great teams is
that they are pointed at the wrong markets. The other usual cause is that the
"great team" really isn't. I believe that your model, by encouranging early
alphas, and by giving guidance serves to honestly vet the team and the market.

I think you guys are doing great work because you create new deal flows with a
fraction of the money. That, in turn will reduce VC's risks, and lower their
rewards. I'm going to guess that if you guys feed companies into VC deal
flows, VCs will start looking more like banks and less like venture investors.

------
sah
It seems like maybe traditional incubators are closer than VCs to competing in
the same niche as YC. Is there any reason why it would be misleading to look
at YC as an innovation in startup incubation -- namely to move the model a
little bit closer to VC in terms of the independence of the founders?

~~~
pg
I didn't consider old-style incubators because as far as I know there aren't
any left. At least, I can't think of any startups that came out of one.

~~~
motoko
What about PlugAndPlay Tech Center? They have an office in Sunnyvale that
seems successful.

~~~
pg
I'm not sure exactly what they do, but I think it's more like office space
especially tailored for startups.

------
xirium
From the article: Google has such momentum now that it would be hard for
anyone to stop them.

Within 48 hours of this being published, Google anounces layoffs (
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=134967> ) and a new search engine from
Sequoia is covered by TechCrunch (
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=134291> ). In addition, the share price
has fallen from US$747 to US$439 and there has been speculation by television
pundits of it falling to US$350 or less (
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=133966> ).

------
wheels
So, here's a question:

Who's the competition? How did readers who didn't go through Y-Combinator get
off of the ground? How'd you first get in contact with angel investors? Or
incubators or seed funding or whatever...

As much startup rhetoric as seems to be kicking around this site and others,
there seems to be a gap between "Go YC!" and "We just did our A-Round..."

We've been scrambling to get together as many contacts in the ramp up to
quitting our jobs and there are some interesting leads, but before we start
playing the find-funding-or-die game it seems prudent to have as many leads as
possible.

------
basilpeters
Startup funding is NOT easy. There are several reasons why it’s so difficult:
supply, demand, availability of information, fees and experience. There’s a
post on my blog that explains these reasons at:
<http://www.AngelBlog.net/Startup_Fundings_Are_Not_Easy.html>. I hope this
post and the other information on AngelBlog helps you get funded. Basil

------
wisernow
A subversive thought: as it becomes cheaper & cheaper to build start-ups,
prices would fall too. Granted, start-ups are not interchangeable commodities,
but given that so many are being created, that ought to impact pricing (aka
valuations). Asymptotically, this could lead to a start-up being valued "at
cost" (or below it in a serious downturn).

As I said, just a subversive thought. I am sure it doesn't apply to any of us
here ;-)

------
andypayne
I think this sentence doesn't really make sense:

"As you work your way forward in the venture funding process, the ratio of
help to money increases, because earlier stage companies have different
needs."

Isn't one of the points of the essay the fact that, as a company progresses,
the amount of help from a VC decreases relative to the amount of money
received?

~~~
pg
By forward I meant earlier. Several people have misunderstood this; maybe I
should rephrase it.

------
khush
I think you are doing a great thing by writing such essays. We are a Bangalore
India based startup, and I have been reading your essays for the past couple
of years (from before we started our Internet company). Keep it up!

------
kleevr
When I read this I also thought about the differences in the physics of the
'very big' and the 'very small'.

Though, I prefer the cogency of your analogy. Good read.

------
paidTroll
Please consider that the era of cheap energy is over (www.theoildrum.com). And
the cheap energy is one of the main inputs into economy (including startups).

------
slakin
Maybe I'm dumb. I don't understand why anyone would give up spit for such a
small amount of money. That early and the money offered is so small. Forget
about the % and the stock and all that. From the amounts I read about I could
do contract design work for a couple months and earn that much. Yikes. I mean,
even if one of, say, two founders took a 6 mo contract working somewhere, and
slso pounded code late at night, and the other founder all day and night, the
two could do it all. In fact, that's exactly what happened here. And it
provided still other advantages. Nor do I see how you can make anything happen
for such a small amount of money. You can't even buy some software tools, a
fax machine, let alone a CPA to spit out one tax return or a single patent
application. Even a phone line and broadband is >$100/mo. Takeout food and
heat, that's all you're going to get. Who needs that kind of money? I say just
work your asses off 24/7 like we did, then you're not wasting time begging
people to listen to your idea, either. These days even with a demo their eyes
just glaze over. Investors don't have a clue. Just make it work and start
selling them. That's what we did.

~~~
pg
Either that or you didn't read the essay. Its whole point is that money is not
the important ingredient in early stage investing.

~~~
slakin
Yeah, I read the article. Maybe it said something you didn't want it to say.

