

Ignore Y Combinator at Your Own Risk - SwellJoe
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2009/04/28/ignore-y-combinator-at-your-own-risk.aspx

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landist
Couple of thoughts:

1\. Maybe a bit fluffy, but since most mainstream readers don't know about Y
Combinator, the first cycle of articles are going to trend positive.

2\. I think the Y Combinator ecosystem (the program, demo days, Hacker News)
itself is going to prove as disruptive (if not more) as the companies they
fund. A disruptive "Ivy League of Startup Schools" is starting to form that I
believe will have huge ripple effects on our economy.

3\. I agree, mainstream media doesn't understand how much hackers are our
era's Robber Barons (or Industrial Statesmen, take your pick). Expect a
handful of IPO's and at least one billionaire graduate within the next ten
years. I expect Y Combinator graduates and their related companies will have
billions of dollars of impact on our economy over this period of time.

4\. The traditional University model of education is probably as much at risk
by ignoring YC as is big Fortune 500 companies. "The average debt for
graduating college seniors who borrow to finance their undergraduate degree is
just under $20,000." vs. the avg. YC funded company probably gets funded to
the order of $15k - $20k.

"In 2003, workers with bachelor's degrees earned a median of $49,900. Those
who'd completed several years of college with no degree had median earnings of
$35,700, while those with a high school diploma averaged $30,800."

Don't get me wrong, I understand that not every high school graduate can
attend YC or some similar program. But I think our educational system needs to
create some alternative tracks for education that are shorter in time frame,
more entrepreneurial in nature, and more technically inclined. If we simply
diverted 1% of college freshman into such programs, this would translated into
over 20,000 individuals. Can you imagine the impact on society of 20k freshman
attending some Y Combinator-esque hacker / entrepreneurial program every year?

[http://money.cnn.com/2005/10/17/pf/college/college_costs/ind...](http://money.cnn.com/2005/10/17/pf/college/college_costs/index.htm)

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xiaoma
>"I agree, mainstream media doesn't understand how much hackers are our era's
Robber Barons (or Industrial Statesmen, take your pick). Expect a handful of
IPO's and at least one billionaire graduate within the next ten years. I
expect Y Combinator graduates and their related companies will have billions
of dollars of impact on our economy over this period of time."

I don't think that applies to the guys at the Fool, especially the Rule
Breakers. David Gardner got the following he has by investing in AOL in '95,
Yahoo! in '96, Amazon.com in '97, Ebay in '98 _and telling the world about his
picks before he bought them_. He's been far ahead of the curve for a long,
long time. More recently he's had a number of 5-bagger plus investments in a
variety of tech fields.

He's utterly crushed the market over a long haul, done it publicly, and done
it almost exclusively in technology.

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chaosmachine
Amusingly, the first comment on the story is by some guy confused by the
author's use of the word "hacker".

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jayjaybee
i dont think a lot of regular people realize how hackers control the internet

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jfarmer
Our Gibsons will never be safe!

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blang
Angelina Jolie is too busy adopting kids these days to hack out Gibsons.

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ivankirigin

      "Graham clearly wants to drink some big-cap milkshakes."

His own words, I'm sure.

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irrelative
You know you've made the big leagues when people write fluff pieces like this
about you. Congrats guys!

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danhak
Not a fluff piece so much as a layman's introduction to YC.

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ryanwaggoner
This is some solid press for YC, but I don't really understand the title...who
is putting themselves at risk by ignoring YC?

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Maciek416
I think the author might be referring to the "big companies [who] are cutting
back and letting talent go". There seem to be repeated suggestions that YC
alumni will nibble away or topple the Fortune 500's, uh, fortunes. With a lot
of these startups creating new markets of their own I'm not sure I necessarily
agree with that zero-sumesque view, but I wouldn't be surprised if they cause
some interesting disruptions.

