|
I think there's also a theme around young founders, the ability to work as a team when the going gets tough, hubris, and the fame that comes with being in YC. During YC, you're in a very controlled environment - everyone around you is working hard, you have a deadline, you don't have money, and you just focus on building, etc. Once you leave YC, suddenly, a few things happen (I've seen this with exactly 2 start-ups so apologies for extrapolating): 1. You suddenly have a lot more money, and simultaneously lose the very guided structure you had at YC 2. A lot of YC founders are young, haven't worked in teams with different personality types, etc before and they have to learn how to manage people and each other 3. Because growth is the only thing they've been taught to look for at YC, at the first sign of any slowdown in growth (which could be natural and acceptable, or due to some other reason), they start freaking out and churning. This further exacerbates point 2 and they start stressing out their team and each other 4. There's a bit of a personality cult around YC founders right now - I recently attended a YC party in an apartment in a fancy high-rise in SF and it's amazing how many hanger-ons that were there fawning over the founders. It was a very SF start-up version of a celebrity night-club in LA/NYC. This unfortunately builds on the narrative of infallible YC founders who are building great billion dollar companies, etc I guess where I'm going with this is that in addition to just growth, folks need to be taught how to work in teams, how to gear up to build a longer term, sustainable company, and to appreciate that they can and will make mistakes, but they need to handle that with grace and maturity. |
Lol... I think your YMMV on what you encounter here, maybe I just know the boring founders that could care less about social status. In fact I think the ones who care about social status are by and large the ones who don't actually get accepted.