I remember listening to your office hours at TC Disrupt, when you were talking to the guy from Omniplaces. You said: "This is commercialized research? Ouch. It’s often a solution in search of a problem..." (Of course, that was part of a broader commentary about how the startup shouldn't be competing with Google in search, which I don't necessarily disagree with.)
But I think that's what he's talking about. Sun, Google, Cisco, Akamai, VMWare, and a variety of other technology companies came fairly directly out of commercialized university research in systems, databases, networking, virtualization. Are there YC companies that are commercialized university research? Such companies at the very least seem very different from companies like Airbnb which seem like they evolved from a consumer problem rather than innovative technology. What's more, it seems like basing investing decisions on current consumer behavior and problems seems much more sensible than doing so based on technology, which is what Blank seems to be arguing and what you seemed to be arguing at Disrupt.
http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/12/tc-disrupt-office-hours-wit...
We wouldn't have arrived where we are today without building what we built, so I hesitate to call it a mistake, but PG was right in the end :)
Maybe some of them should. Sure, the direct experience of most of the YC partners is web-centric, but they're connected enough in SV that YC might be a big benefit, especially if any of those teams are amenable to a 3-month build cycle.
That said, I don't believe you can make the point the other way round. whereas social start-ups can have an easier going there is also more competition. On the other hand the next apple might face different problems.
I think Steve Blank has in mind the level of ambition of the stealth fighter program.
Such a venture would involve putting in many orders of magnitude more money than YC invests in a single startup.
Today's equivalent would be investing in a new Intel corporation.
Last time I checked, YC sponsored much smaller ventures such as bed-and-breakfast exchanges and online backup systems.
So why would you be involved at all in such ventures, let alone aware of the trend?
Honestly, the comments on this thread are such an embarrassment.
My vote is for updating the HN guidelines to discourage submissions behind login walls.
The title tells me nothing, and I should probably use a search engine to check what's actually going on.
And if it turns out Zuckerberg simply got married, I just wasted my time researching celebrity gossip.
Congratulations to them both as well.
You don't know them, I'm fairly confident. I don't know them. Almost no one here knows them. The single and only reason this has any relevance is because of Facebook, IPOs, from which a natural discussion is pre-nups, etc. Or are we to all pretend that we're pals?
I don't understand some of the materialistic comments (prenups etc.) on this thread. Zuck marrying his long time love is a beautiful blessing. PG, I'd met Zuck after you had invited him to your startup school 2007 and since then have interacted with him. He also kept his word on followups he'd announced during his talk then. He is such a humble person despite all his successes. I'm so happy for him.
Congratulating on his FB or Twitter would be more effective :)
Luckily it turned out to be a good-looking effect, and I got a good grade by passing it off as intentional.
http://nvcaccess.nvca.org/index.php/topics/research-and-tren...
Thus it also isn't true that the cause of higher valuations is that VCs have more money. Valuations are certainly higher, but I think the reason is that founders are increasingly getting the upper hand over investors. Which is why in addition to getting higher valuations, founders are increasingly able to retain board control.
(at least thats how I read it)
I'm not saying this is the case. I don't know. If were going to write about this topic, I'd start by looking at the world and seeing what's actually happening.
I'm curious in a broader sense what you (or anyone else who is experiencing it first hand) makes of the "bubble question." I'm sure it's unlikely but it would be great to have such people on the record with general predictions about the coming months and years.
The way big exits cause more money to be invested by VCs is not that capital is freed up thereby, but rather that news of them makes more people want to start or invest in VC funds. But that process is much slower.
Even with the salaries being 20-40% higher, the initial costs for a startup are still at a historically low level, so more startups are being funded. As more players enter the ecosystem, they start competing for talent, hence driving the wages up even further.
Also from that article: "The dollars raised this year may equal or surpass 2011 levels – but the number of funds managing that capital will almost certainly be less. "
It may be true a lot of follow-on Sand Hill Series B and C guys are struggling, but a lot of them haven't generated returns in forever and should have been out of business years ago. Won't they just get replaced?
And don't founders tend to get the upper hand when capital is easiest to come by and optimism is at its highest?
I see no sign of the trend he describes. And if it were happening I'd see it. But I don't find myself telling startups preparing for Demo Day "you guys are building important technology, so you'll have an uphill battle with investors, but you other guys have a social startup, so you'll have it easy."