[satvikpendem]

> its hard to imagine that the founders built them for any reason other than to make money

...Yes? It's a company, the sole purpose is for the founders to make money from their products, which a VC like YC would also want. At least it's better than companies which don't make money (or profit, rather), like many in the 2010s.

[AnimalMuppet]

YC used to be about "There's a need that I care about. Let's see if I can build a company to fill that need." That's massively different from "I want to build a company that makes money. What can it do?"

How is it massively different? In one case you care about the need; in the other case you care about money. From those different motivations flow different actions, which lead to different kinds of companies (and even different kinds of comments on HN).