YC’s purpose is not to educate. It is to acquire, at dirt cheap valuations, slices of every single startup in Silicon Valley, this guaranteeing a few big winners while the vast majority of these fruit fly startups fail (and are a waste of time for their founders). A bit exploitative, really.
I think education is a core part of their mission. That is why they run startup school for free and provide almost all of their lectures online for anyone to have for free. Sure, startup school can lead to deal flow for them, but I don't think that's the main purpose.
> It is to acquire, at dirt cheap valuations, slices of every single startup in Silicon Valley, this guaranteeing a few big winners
I think that's a fair assessment. But is that so wrong? They provide value in return. Besides the actual cash, they also provide guidance and connections. So they're not just taking their slice for nothing.
> the vast majority of these fruit fly startups fail (and are a waste of time for their founders
Even a failed startup is not a waste of time. At the very least we learned that the market isn't ready for that product by that team at that time. Hopefully the founders also learned a lot about business and maybe even technology along the way.
I'd much rather hire someone who started a failed startup than someone who worked for BigCo for a couple of years.
> A bit exploitative, really.
To be exploitative, there would need to be an information asymmetry. I'd say YC is pretty transparent as far as what their share will be and what they will give you. I don't see how it could be exploitative given that the startup can see the terms of the deal well in advance.
It's ultimately a selection bias for both. If you're in the top X percent to get accepted to Harvard Business School, you're also the type of person to have a higher chance of success in general. Same for YC.
The post is calling into question which network can best help a given candidate (who would have presumably been accepted by both) achieve their goals.
Byrne’s argument isn’t that YC is a better HBS, it’s that it’s a better Harvard. You need a Bachelor’s and normally at least two years work experience to get into HBS, but not Harvard or YC. They both work primarily on selection, not treatment although there is a real treatment effect. And YC both pays you money to go there and has an explicit right to some of the products of your future success whereas Harvard doesn’t have any rights to anything but tuition fees though they get plenty of donations from alumni.