Recent YC founder here. I disagree with the premise that boring ideas are inherently bad. Stripe is a B2B company that adds an API on top of existing infrastructure. Airbnb is a basic CRUD app.
I also disagree that YC is not funding interesting ideas. Our batch had quite a few. Someone was making a rapid cargo ship. Someone else was making a fully distributed cell network.
The only real copycat ideas were the ones duplicating successful startups for international markets. In my opinion these were obviously good investments.
The social climber phenomenon was real. I think anything that becomes elite will attract them. I’d say, I was impressed that half the batch did not fit this profile.
My sense was that YC actually went out of its way to fund more interesting ideas. I’m sure my startup would not have gotten in, based on our traction and backgrounds, if our idea wasn’t out-of-the-box. (We are bottomless.com, a smart coffee subscription that uses a WiFi scale to ship at the perfect time).
I’d even venture to say that there appeared to be a negative correlation between interestingness and outcome in our batch. It’s possible YC should fund more boring companies, not fewer.
The author didn't say anything about "interesting" vs. "boring" companies or ideas. He said YC should curtail funding of dev tools/SaaS startups, because the traction they appear to have is misleading. They're selling to each other, revenue moving in a circle, without demonstrating value creation outside of the sphere of similarly-situated startups. Not explicitly stated, but he's also implying it's a portfolio risk for YC.
It's a myth imho that it's just so easy to sell your saas/devtool product to other YC companies (in your batch or otherwise), and that it somehow guarantees you early traction. It may have been true in the Stripe days when there were much smaller batches, but now being in YC means being bombarded with pitches from your batchmates (and then from each new batch as an alumni). Highly effective growth channels tend to quickly get over-saturated, and this one is no different.
Companies in YC are maniacally focused on their own goals and generally don't have the time and energy to adopt products just as a favor. They also tend to have NIH syndrome. They'll try it and give you feedback, but getting them to really use it is still very hard and requires that you're truly solving a problem.
I think a lot of companies start YC with this idea that they'll just sell to other YC companies, then quickly change their minds when they see how hard it actually is. Other early stage startups are not great customers for most b2b companies.
This is a point Peter Thiel brings up regularly on a larger scale, i.e. the circular, narrow nature of modern innovation, where instead of improving the physical world around us, we're way too heavily invested in this self-perpetuating "world of bits" that increasingly reduces total innovation in the world.
Thank you for sharing this. I've been slowing down turning my idea into a startup because it isn't much more than a CRUD app for a specific market. My interest has been diminishing because in my day job I work with growth companies that are built upon revolutionary technology, leading me to falsely conclude that a CRUD app isn't good enough anymore.
I needed the reminder that the technology isn't what's important, rather solving a problem that people will pay money for is what matters.
> I’d even venture to say that there appeared to be a negative correlation between interestingness and outcome in our batch. It’s possible YC should fund more boring companies, not fewer.
Obviously the interesting companies are being funded as a loss leader to maintain YC's image against the fact that startups are now mainstream and the fundamentals of the economy are unavoidably entrepreneurial.
The scale can be zeroed out with anything up to 2kg. If your grinder is reasonably lightweight, this would work fine. Most people keep the coffee on the scale, then dump some into the grinder every few days.
I also disagree that YC is not funding interesting ideas. Our batch had quite a few. Someone was making a rapid cargo ship. Someone else was making a fully distributed cell network.
The only real copycat ideas were the ones duplicating successful startups for international markets. In my opinion these were obviously good investments.
The social climber phenomenon was real. I think anything that becomes elite will attract them. I’d say, I was impressed that half the batch did not fit this profile.
My sense was that YC actually went out of its way to fund more interesting ideas. I’m sure my startup would not have gotten in, based on our traction and backgrounds, if our idea wasn’t out-of-the-box. (We are bottomless.com, a smart coffee subscription that uses a WiFi scale to ship at the perfect time).
I’d even venture to say that there appeared to be a negative correlation between interestingness and outcome in our batch. It’s possible YC should fund more boring companies, not fewer.