| >First, I would not consider Loopt a success.
>how can a person be a great startup advisor without significant successes under his belt? What is your definition of significant success? Let's say it's an exit over 100M or an IPO? By your own realization that kind of success in startups requires luck. So does that preclude anyone who didn't get an exit over 100M from being a great startup advisor? If so, we should rule Paul Graham out, right? Was Bill Campbell a bad startup advisor in '94 because Go went bankrupt? Heck even Ben Horowitz barely escaped having his company go bankrupt because of the dot com bust. Yet, for all of these guys, their success at being great startup advisors is self evident from the success of the companies they have advised. Loopt may not have had a mega-exit, but how many companies do you know who were able to get exclusive deals from every major wireless carrier in a country? I know of 0. I think even Apple took longer to get there than Loopt. But that's just one example out of various things they did right, and I am sure many mistakes they made and learned from on their way to the exit. >Second, can you give examples of startups he helped succeed? Based on my personal experience, I would imagine every YC startup since Sam has been a partner at YC would say he has helped them in their successes. The CEO of Stripe was quoted in the article. My company is far from being successful in the same sense as Stripe yet, but I have called Sam on sundays, when he was on vacation, and I think once when he was in another country and he has helped us be successful in each of those instances. > "If your financial advisor is so great, where is his yacht?" Here: http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/13/yc-pg-2014-update/ Obviously this is the combined result of help from all the YC partners and hard work from the startup teams, but do you think Sam would be president of YC if his contribution was not significant? [And yes, I know most of these returns are unrealized but YC has probably made a majority of their investments in the last 5 years, and the lifespan of most VC funds is 10 years] |