[startupsfail]

YC is a one-trick-pony. If you have a simple product, it can guide you to get users, investors and to scale it up.

But don’t expect anything else. It would not help, if you are outside of that scenario. It easily can screw you, by using any product ideas that you’ve refined and sharing these freely with a relevant startup in the batch.

[debacle]

> by using any product ideas that you’ve refined and sharing these freely with a relevant startup in the batch.

Do you have an example of this happening in the past?

[startupsfail]

Yes. Took the idea, website, etc, down to the name. Planted on a team of “founders”, who grabbed 10M from VCs. They took it to some place in Texas to die.

Was pretty annoying to watch, because it was quite clear that the idea was too early to try productizing YC-style at the time. It was essentially “code understanding” with early transformers, buck in 2017. But YC tried turning this into a product, while it was time to do foundational research.

[satvikpendem]

You're saying you were in YC and then they took your idea, website etc and gave it to another YC team? Or were you unrelated to anyone in YC?

[startupsfail]

YC application, interview and then noticed a company in that batch popping out with what took half a year to distill on the product side of the project.

Again, the lesson - it is important to understand that YC is specializing on a particular way of bringing up a startup.

[satvikpendem]

That doesn't really mean anything, speaking as someone who also interviewed for YC recently. It could just be a confluence of ideas, or that your product isn't really that unique. It doesn't mean they're "stealing" ideas, and even if they are, so what? It's gonna happen as soon as you go to market, so you're gonna have to deal with it sometime. More likely, though, is that no one will actually give a shit about your product and you have to beg them to care, which is what YC themselves say.

[startupsfail]

Possible. But batches are relatively small. When you see a copycat appearing in the same batch of your interview (and interview was a not a direct reject, there were follow up calls).

There is a difference between “an idea” versus investment of a few months of prototyping and market research that goes into distilling an approach to a product.

You can simply multiply going salary of the professional that us doing it onto the time spent. And then get a rough estimate of the value of that IP.

When a startup goes to a VC there is inevitably a transfer of that IP to the VC. And the transfer is unidirectional, until a partner invests their capital and time.

[ldjkfkdsjnv]

One trick pony? They have created 5-10% of all unicorns in existence

[officialchicken]

Be honest about winner's bias... there are a lot of dead horses in their graveyard too.

[vikramkr]

They lose less money on the losers than they make on the winners. The whole game is about maximizing the number of wins, not necessarily percentage.

[coffeebeqn]

That’s literally the VC business model?

[dehrmann]

This can still be true with the original point. There might be a certain type of startup they're very good a nurturing, but not others.

[jabradoodle]

Source?

[7e]

Huh? The founders created these companies. YC just convinced these founders to give away a big share of their companies for almost nothing, in return for cult lulz. Accelerators are exploitative.

[asah]

strong language, but there's a mathematical proof against:

- company X raises at $Y valuation before YC

- company X raises at $Z valuation after YC

- if Z / Y > YC dilution then YC is a good value

Z/Y > dilution in virtually all cases.

Sorry, but life isn't fair.