[jannotti]

I mean, he had to learn to read too. If not for that, he'd never have founded viaweb!

True, but not very interesting.

I happen to think both were fairly innovative. Both viaweb and YC were at the forefront of a newish idea that seems pretty obvious in retrospect: Server based applications, and startup incubators. Both existed before to some extent, but pg recognized their value pretty quickly, and did them both well enough to make an impact. (I'd learn toward more credit incubators and less for server-based apps, but whatever.)

[alqwlsq]

I think you are rewriting history. Viaweb was selling shovels (enable small businesses to generate websites) Ycombinator is selling shovels (enable people to launch startups, initially for an outrageously low investment).

Selling shovels was one of the fundamental concepts during the first bubble, nothing new.

Webshops were nothing new either.

His innovation was turning startups into movement, largely using this website and blog about it so tirelessly (always using the term "startup") that he is credited with the concept.

[jannotti]

Viaweb was founded in 1995 and sold in 1998. It WAS part of the first bubble. And no, people were not routinely writing web server based "applications" in 1995. They were, at best, making some early websites. Also nobody was thinking of pages as screens in an app powered by server based software. OpenMarket, I suppose. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Market

But they were only founded in 1994.

[mdonahoe]

YC (and other VC) doesn’t seem like selling shovels to me.

If you’re selling shovels, you can succeed without any of your customers ever finding gold again. You happily sell shovels even if you knew the customers could never find gold.

When you’re buying percentages of multiple companies, you need somebody to succeed for you to succeed.