Really love the new site and how it highlights founders so well.
Only minor tweak I'd make is for the desktop viewport size - make it so you can also click the company names instead of needing to precisely scroll for the images to show up for that company. With notched mouse wheels it's all too easy to skip one even with a regular scroll. Or increase the scroll distance.
Also might suggest using a gradient mask to fade out the company logos as you scroll the primary text block up. Some of them get very close to the text and the one-by-one removal feels a tad distracting.
And really minor but kept finding myself trying to click the photos to see things larger. Would be nice if they could come up in a media viewer with a small caption, and let me arrow key or swipe through.
I think the items in the carousel are just too wide. There's usually some side margin showing more of the previous and next items.
I turned my phone to landscape and the scroll "sensitivity" no longer felt wrong, but then a new bug was revealed. It chooses to put focus on the right-most item in the carousel. Now the animation doesn't play for the first item.
I don’t think it’s dark, but I’ve been told that my similar attitude can rub some people the wrong way. I’m not a jerk about it, but I always show up prepared to get to where I think we need to be. If that rubs people the wrong way so be it.
EDIT
The downvotes are interesting. Do people think the world will just give them things? I'm reminded of a quote I keep nearby from a book I read many years ago.
“His mother had often said, When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action. She had emphasized the corollary of this axiom even more vehemently: when you desired a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it.”
I think your edit shows why people are reading your comment in a different light than yours.
When you see that quote, you apparently focus on the "if I want X to happen, I need to create the circumstances that will lead to it".
When I read that quote, I immediately think of a long list of people who choose actions with complete disregard to the consequences of those actions. Mass unemployment? Destroy local communities? Poison the environment? Surveillance states? Hey, as long as they got what they wanted...
> Do people think the world will just give them things?
No. But just that more and more people are more and more fed up of collectively paying/enduring the consequences of the ambition of a few people that do. not. care. about. their. fellow. humans. neither. the. planet.
> When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action.
Indeed. And if you act "regardless of whatever obstacles are in the way", without discernement, that tells something about you that you may, or may not realise.
You added this part. In my mind I add discernment to do right by others among other things.
Unfortunately when we distill things down to quips nuance is lost. Maybe it's my optimism, but I tend to read things charitably. Nothing I've ever accomplished has been without obstacles, some that were seemingly impossible to pass at the time.
"Without discernment" is implied in "regardless of whatever obstacles are in the way". Many of us would consider excessively exploiting others to be an obstacle.
There is at least one obvious company in the list where the founder does not advertise the slightest discernment in his public discourse (about the tech, about the business and about the impact on society).
We do not have to be charitable with people that have such financial and industrial (hence political) power over our lives, and that do not display obvious and verifiable signs of charity upon the human kind either.
This is followed by a series of before and after pictures. YC offers not money but personal transformation. Their standard offer of $500,000 for 7% is not mentioned on the homepage, maybe because it would invite comparison ... when you see numbers like this your first thought is: I wonder what other accelators offer? The before and after pictures are something no other accelator can compete with.
Its been years since I felt urged to congratulate someone for their "webdesign", but this is really good. No boring glossy landing picture, but a distinct claim, and the the before / whoisit / after Element is unique, in a good way.
Am I the only one who thinks that the Coinbase [1] picture has been AI generated, or at least heavily AI-altered?
The movie posters behind look like garbage, and what's wrong with that Return of the Jedi poster? Why is there a random blob and a broken face at the top instead of Darth Vader?
And why is there a random Google+ logo on the left?
And why does Fred Ehrsam have a huge thumb and silky smooth legs?
Yep, I would like to see the success/failure ratio. That would give me a good idea whether this VC funding fantasy is a number game, intentional success or just plain old luck.
some of the design interactions are really polished. the section written with the quotes from founders is really cool. the hover effect with the before and after of the YC partners is a great touch too!
A minor piece of feedback, though: might be just me, not sure if anyone else has this pavlovian conditioning, but seeing the black banner/bar on top with the YC logo/color below and HN background color immediately makes me think someone passed away.
Turning a builder into a formidable founder, which via the PG quote is someone who seems they will always get what they want is in its self a death. A builder... a truth-seeking creator dies. Devoured by someone who gets what they want, a superego. There should be a black bar at the top.
The carousel is way too fast to be able to read the texts. I’ve made the same mistake as a developer when I already know each text by heart, but actual users can’t read them fast enough.
Clean design. I like how it puts founders front and center instead of just listing company logos.
One suggestion: adding a quick filter by batch year or industry would make it easier to browse. Sometimes I want to see what's new in a specific space like AI or dev tools.
Interesting how all the examples at the top are in the form of "It started here, now it's worth $xB". At least we've stopped pretending it was for anything else but money, and the power that comes with it.
I noticed a photo of the Kalshi founders on the new homepage. I remember when Kalshi launched I thought it was so bad, and that those founders must be the very bottom of their class... they're billionaires now!
Is there a way to see all the inactive companies? Some have great names and addresses. I wonder if there's a way to efficiently use them - even keeping all the paperwork intact.. like buying a shell company and saving a lot of the overheads and registering/signups.
Brands are resurrected in fashion all the time with new designers, CEOs and owners while keeping the name, heritage (codes/motifs/archive,) goodwill and stores intact.
You could even have the ex-founders sit on a steering committee or advisory board for the switcheroo mob who could be their new bosses.
With all the unemployment around, startup musical chairs could be a solution. Isn't founders' equity the only valuable thing left in the startup world? No chance in getting rich as an employee - and with AI, who is/will not be replaceable? Also, finding the right people from the get-go is another significant challenge, and users of course.
Why don't those inactive companies share their failure stories to find some value-add? It's 2026: they could be mere hours away from an IPO horizon :)
Seems that the "it's a numbers game" thesis delivered.
(I know the previous deal was different but just to get an estimate ...)
500k to each of 5,000+ startups = 2.5 billion
in exchange of
7% of 1.3 trillion = 91 billion
~36x return.
It's even better than that as they invest, on average, less than 500k and get, on average, more than 7% equity. (But they also get diluted, so, who knows).
Of note, that 1.3 trillion follows a comically long tailed distribution.
OpenAI is 500B.
Stripe+Doordash+Airbnb+Coinbase+Reddit+Scale is 400B.
You dont get 7% of a company, you get 7% of outstanding sharez. So its shares held * stock price. Usually there are less stocks issued at the initial stages with more coming in later as more investors are added. I dont think YC maintains 7% across all their investments.
Impressive! Seeing all the before and after photos is a nice touch.
With regards to the actual web page, white text on light background (partners part) makes it nice easily readable.
Crazy talented people. Crazy good products. I really like the redesign, I am a bit old now, but I can see how inspiring it might be for people coming into tech.
There’s something that bothers me about reducing achievement to stock price and exit valuations. Yet, it is sobering to witness the machinery laid bare.
The whole aesthetic of startup success—those triumphant IPO bell-ringing moments—celebrates money, not wisdom or authentic progress. I’m aware this is the dominant framework, but that doesn’t make it feel less hollow. Welcome to Heartbreak.
I’m not against big exits / valuations and showing the numbers. But… what would have added a bit of interest would have been real metrics. For example I believe AirBnB has 2 billion guest nights. Showing that instead of the ipo value is more impressive to people who want to deliver value rather than capture value.
Real world metrics would feel slightly more on brand than valuations
They should show real real world metrics, like the effect of short term rentals on the housing market, or how much of the food delivery fees go to the middleman.
> The whole aesthetic of startup success—those triumphant IPO bell-ringing moments—celebrates money, not wisdom or authentic progress.
Didn't see anything about ethics either, which, again, is not necessarily what a VC firm is about. It's actually kind of refreshing--the website clearly conveys YC's focus: It's about being "formidable" and "intensive work" and "urgency" and "fast." The editing on this site is impressive. They have boiled away everything down to the core of what the firm believes in, and it's "work hard make lots of money fast". Not something I'd personally be interested in being part of, but the site's wording is remarkable in its honesty, and I clearly know after reading it that the YC experience would not be my cup of tea!
Wisdom and authentic progress are hard to measure. They are also not the goals enterprises pursue. Enterprises go for the money, but the money is normally paid by satisfied customers; this side effect is what makes enterprises viable and useful. (In case of VC money, customers even don't have to pay for sustainably for some time.)
An IPO or a large acquisition is like a graduation event for school students. A diploma or a SAT certificate also do not certify wisdom, or even progress. They certify a certain degree of success, and a transition into "adult life". Or think about this as of an orbital insertion event for a spacecraft. Not an end goal, but a precondition for a serious progress.
If you seek wisdom, a VC firm like YCombinator is likely not the most appropriate tool for your quest. (An attempt to found a business may bring some wisdom, as usual, at a cost.)
Visiting HN brings me back when to when I just started my career as a entrepreneur, I look forward to the nostalgic design it has. Have been familiar w/ YC's & HN design since 2008.
New YC page looks great – but it just doesn't feel "yc" to me.
The company features on the front page was a great opportunity to point out their positive impacts on the world. Instead, they focus on $BBB. Nice new site though.
That thing hasn't been updated in years, and could really use some love. If they don't want to do it themselves, just open source the sub-site and I'm sure a bunch of tech founders will happily do it for them (if only to be able to say they contributed to YC itself).
The implication that OpenAI is a YC company in the same sense as the other listed companies is somewhere between misleading and dishonest. Even more distasteful to show founding teams for all the others, then just Sam for OpenAI.
What stood out to me more than how impressive the carousel of companies was, was the order of them. Wild that they have OpenAI and Stripe second and third to Airbnb.
Not sure formidable founders getting whatever they want whatever the obstacle (sure market obstacles but what about laws, morality, etc) is a good thing to be honest.
Sometimes folks need to be stopped. Sometimes those walls are there for a reason.
And after IPO, maybe a founder should consider the good of the world instead of what you think you want next for yourself and just bashing down more walls.
Yeh I don't think there's much value in a credo if it celebrates Altman. He's a terrible idol to have. He compared Trump to Hitler in 2016, then donated $1M to his inauguration and tweeted about being in an "NPC trap" when he criticized him. Took about six weeks after the election to flip. Testified to Congress that AI regulation is "essential," then lobbied against California's safety bill when it actually showed up. His own board fired him for lying to them for years. His safety team leads quit in protest saying safety took a backseat to shiny products. Multiple former colleagues, including the people who left to start Anthropic, describe psychological abuse and manipulation. Claims a $65k salary while sitting on a billion-dollar fortune built through conflicts of interest. He's not a good guy. He's a guy who says whatever serves him in the moment and has left a trail of people warning us about exactly that.
The "before" pictures occasionally hint at what might be optimism and individuality.
The "after" pictures display a uniformly grim corporate homogeneity.
Maybe this is because the "before" pictures are unguarded, taken before the kool-aid sank in. But they still show people who queued up to drink that kool-aid.
> Sam was part of YC's inaugural batch in S05 and founded OpenAI as YC Research in 2015
Notice how they omit any mention of Loopt, and almost try to imply that he's famous for founding OpenAI, when the trajectory was really Loopt -> YC President -> other stuff -> OpenAI, and Loopt was a failure that was acquired for barely more than it raised in VC money, and spent its waning days as a seedy gay hookup app.
Sam's success was preordained, and failure, for him (and his VC backers), was never an option.
Were OpenAI in a batch though? If not, I think maybe OpenAI deserves a mention but after companies that were actually in a batch.
Typography looks great though, animations are smooth, /formidable founder' is original and it's nice seeing Jared Friedman - he was super friendly and acted as a company champion when I applied in 2016.
I don't think a "fair" ranking of companies with a nexus to YC is really the goal of the page. YC invested in OpenAI; their logo goes on the page. Also, hard to argue that the founders of OpenAI lacked YC credentials. :)
‘Nexus’ is vague. The page is specifically asking founders to participate in YC’s program and showing founders that participated in YC’s program. Altman’s company Loopt failed - Altman went on to work on OpenAI and YC Research allegedly pledged money: we get it, but that’s not the typical YC founder experience, and it wasn’t Sam’s experience with Loopt.
In addition YC Research didn’t send their pledged funds to OpenAI:
It's fine they include openai, they can be very proud of sam. What I found a bit weird is that the reddit founder picture shows only two people. History is written by the winners I guess.
Yeah, I took a glance at the source and thought the list of scripts was insane too. Even if all of that code is needed (and I doubt it is) combining them a bit would save a whole lot of requests. It's almost like every function got its own file.
That also struck me as a pretty weird quote to highlight. Someone who "seems like they’ll get what they want" sounds more like a bully more than a persuader or value creator.
Back when they started in the 2000s, most traditional VCs didn't recognize that high impact individuals can easily pivot or define product categories, and only concentrated on financial engineering (DCF go brrrrrr).
YC often also mentors founders on pivots (I'd say at least a third of all startups that make it to demo day were mentored into some sort of a pivot).
YC also needs to pivot it's marketing to compete with a16z Speedrun and PeakXV Surge, both of which really center on the founder first approach or Operators-turned-Angels - which I assume this marketing shift is about.
Interesting. I once talked to an investor (not YC) and they asked me what I would do if the product failed. I said one thing I can do is pivot. And they literally responded with "we don't invest in founders who think about pivoting"
> YC also needs to pivot it's marketing to compete with a16z Speedrun and PeakXV Surge
Maybe. A write up about the new design would be cool I think
> YC has always been founder first.
Internally yes there is a "founder community". But publicly I would argue it was product-first.
It doesn't seem unlikely to me that YC coined or at least popularized 'the pivot' in the context of changing business / startup directions. The first mention of using the word in that sense is in this comment [1] which explicitly mentions the usage by YC, while it only gets used when talking about pivot tables or more traditional uses of the word before that.
Edit: The "Lean Startup" blog series [2], which was quite influential, mentions 'the pivot' a little earlier than the post above, and really seems to coin it, so I guess that's the source (edit again: wrong :D).
> I said one thing I can do is pivot. And they literally responded with "we don't invest in founders who think about pivoting"
I'd say it depends on a VC's investment thesis as well as the stage your startup is at.
For the former, some wouldn't like your answer because it implies a lack of conviction (why should I invest in something the founder doesn't trust). Others wouldn't because it adds a degree of uncertainty (if this B2C reels company pivots into MLOps tooling how can I do due dilligence on my investment).
For the latter, seed/pre-seed that is open to pivoting isn't necessarily a negative flag because they are barely generating revenue as is and are trying to find PMF, but a Series B startup suddenly taking about a pivot might imply they aren't doing so hot.
> A write up about the new design would be cool I think
It's a lot deeper than an apparent lack of conviction. Mentioning the possibility of a pivot completely changes the dynamic of the investment. 'No pivot' is asking "please invest in this startup; here's why it's a good idea". 'Pivot possible' is asking "please invest in me; I will find a way to get you a return on investment regardless of the means". Asking someone to invest in you as a person requires a certain level of egoistic thinking. Is the ego warranted? Maybe, but the investor won't know unless they build an extremely close rapport with you. Something like YC does with a 3-month on-premise bootcamp is that exact opportunity for investors to build a close rapport, so investing in people makes sense for YC. But a lot of investors are investing without building that rapport, so investing purely on the merits of business ideas makes more sense for them.
Depends who you're marketing to. Do they need to follow what others did or should they stay in their own niche? Because I'm not hanging out on a16z forum because they make fancy marketing materials, I'm one of the thousands of people who bought into the YC brand which was build over decades. Would be stupid to become one with the crowd of sleeky VCs.
As European I'm quite happy I didn't see YC involvement with the current administration, and if they stay a bit clear of the AI supergau I'm sure they'll be fine.
It's been reported that the ratio of mentors to founders had become quite bad. Seems quality has gone down since they tried to scale something that doesn't scale
For a diffuse view of some details... Thiel was an early partner. Milner, who has Putin connections, was an early member of the YC fund. The current YC CEO was an early Palantir employee, has been involved in SF politics, organizes efforts toward adopting the Yarvin concept of "patchwork"/"network states" (a dismantling of democracy to be replaced with corporate-owned sovereign territories populated by a hierarchy of immobilized underclasses; their plan is to begin with national park land), has led a boycott in protest of a claim that Israel committed war crimes, has tweeted a death threat at 12 elected officials in SF. YC also invested in Flock.
That’s the easiest one because it made national news and he made a public statement apologizing for it saying there’s “no place, no excuse and no reason for this type of speech and charged language in the discourse.” I had the number of targets wrong it looks like it was only 7 officials. Several of them filed police reports against him for it. His public threat also prompted others to deliver physical notes of death threats toward the same officials.
Only minor tweak I'd make is for the desktop viewport size - make it so you can also click the company names instead of needing to precisely scroll for the images to show up for that company. With notched mouse wheels it's all too easy to skip one even with a regular scroll. Or increase the scroll distance.
Also might suggest using a gradient mask to fade out the company logos as you scroll the primary text block up. Some of them get very close to the text and the one-by-one removal feels a tad distracting.
And really minor but kept finding myself trying to click the photos to see things larger. Would be nice if they could come up in a media viewer with a small caption, and let me arrow key or swipe through.
I turned my phone to landscape and the scroll "sensitivity" no longer felt wrong, but then a new bug was revealed. It chooses to put focus on the right-most item in the carousel. Now the animation doesn't play for the first item.
This is rather dark actually. True, too. Props to Y Combinator for not trying to sugarcoat things!
EDIT
The downvotes are interesting. Do people think the world will just give them things? I'm reminded of a quote I keep nearby from a book I read many years ago.
“His mother had often said, When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action. She had emphasized the corollary of this axiom even more vehemently: when you desired a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Memory
When you see that quote, you apparently focus on the "if I want X to happen, I need to create the circumstances that will lead to it".
When I read that quote, I immediately think of a long list of people who choose actions with complete disregard to the consequences of those actions. Mass unemployment? Destroy local communities? Poison the environment? Surveillance states? Hey, as long as they got what they wanted...
When you reduce it to that tagline, what other people want or need is an obstacle.
No. But just that more and more people are more and more fed up of collectively paying/enduring the consequences of the ambition of a few people that do. not. care. about. their. fellow. humans. neither. the. planet.
> When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action.
Indeed. And if you act "regardless of whatever obstacles are in the way", without discernement, that tells something about you that you may, or may not realise.
You added this part. In my mind I add discernment to do right by others among other things.
Unfortunately when we distill things down to quips nuance is lost. Maybe it's my optimism, but I tend to read things charitably. Nothing I've ever accomplished has been without obstacles, some that were seemingly impossible to pass at the time.
We do not have to be charitable with people that have such financial and industrial (hence political) power over our lives, and that do not display obvious and verifiable signs of charity upon the human kind either.
This is followed by a series of before and after pictures. YC offers not money but personal transformation. Their standard offer of $500,000 for 7% is not mentioned on the homepage, maybe because it would invite comparison ... when you see numbers like this your first thought is: I wonder what other accelators offer? The before and after pictures are something no other accelator can compete with.
The movie posters behind look like garbage, and what's wrong with that Return of the Jedi poster? Why is there a random blob and a broken face at the top instead of Darth Vader?
And why is there a random Google+ logo on the left?
And why does Fred Ehrsam have a huge thumb and silky smooth legs?
[1] https://bookface-static.ycombinator.com/assets/ycdc/beforevs...
in each batch only 2 - 3 startups really work out and make it big.
A minor piece of feedback, though: might be just me, not sure if anyone else has this pavlovian conditioning, but seeing the black banner/bar on top with the YC logo/color below and HN background color immediately makes me think someone passed away.
/s
Shout out to the risk takers.
A real lesson in frugality.
One suggestion: adding a quick filter by batch year or industry would make it easier to browse. Sometimes I want to see what's new in a specific space like AI or dev tools.
At least we got some decent side discussions in the small spaces during the interim
Brands are resurrected in fashion all the time with new designers, CEOs and owners while keeping the name, heritage (codes/motifs/archive,) goodwill and stores intact.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentino_(fashion_house) is 70% owned by the Qatari royal family.
You could even have the ex-founders sit on a steering committee or advisory board for the switcheroo mob who could be their new bosses.
With all the unemployment around, startup musical chairs could be a solution. Isn't founders' equity the only valuable thing left in the startup world? No chance in getting rich as an employee - and with AI, who is/will not be replaceable? Also, finding the right people from the get-go is another significant challenge, and users of course.
Why don't those inactive companies share their failure stories to find some value-add? It's 2026: they could be mere hours away from an IPO horizon :)
(I know the previous deal was different but just to get an estimate ...)
500k to each of 5,000+ startups = 2.5 billion
in exchange of
7% of 1.3 trillion = 91 billion
~36x return.
It's even better than that as they invest, on average, less than 500k and get, on average, more than 7% equity. (But they also get diluted, so, who knows).
Of note, that 1.3 trillion follows a comically long tailed distribution.
OpenAI is 500B.
Stripe+Doordash+Airbnb+Coinbase+Reddit+Scale is 400B.
The remainder is 5,000+ companies.
The whole aesthetic of startup success—those triumphant IPO bell-ringing moments—celebrates money, not wisdom or authentic progress. I’m aware this is the dominant framework, but that doesn’t make it feel less hollow. Welcome to Heartbreak.
Real world metrics would feel slightly more on brand than valuations
Didn't see anything about ethics either, which, again, is not necessarily what a VC firm is about. It's actually kind of refreshing--the website clearly conveys YC's focus: It's about being "formidable" and "intensive work" and "urgency" and "fast." The editing on this site is impressive. They have boiled away everything down to the core of what the firm believes in, and it's "work hard make lots of money fast". Not something I'd personally be interested in being part of, but the site's wording is remarkable in its honesty, and I clearly know after reading it that the YC experience would not be my cup of tea!
An IPO or a large acquisition is like a graduation event for school students. A diploma or a SAT certificate also do not certify wisdom, or even progress. They certify a certain degree of success, and a transition into "adult life". Or think about this as of an orbital insertion event for a spacecraft. Not an end goal, but a precondition for a serious progress.
If you seek wisdom, a VC firm like YCombinator is likely not the most appropriate tool for your quest. (An attempt to found a business may bring some wisdom, as usual, at a cost.)
Right?
New YC page looks great – but it just doesn't feel "yc" to me.
...even if those obstacles are reality, the law or basic morality.
That thing hasn't been updated in years, and could really use some love. If they don't want to do it themselves, just open source the sub-site and I'm sure a bunch of tech founders will happily do it for them (if only to be able to say they contributed to YC itself).
Yeah, especially laws and regulations.
"YC turns builders into formidable founders" - and then a bs faux-definition of formidable.
Sometimes folks need to be stopped. Sometimes those walls are there for a reason.
And after IPO, maybe a founder should consider the good of the world instead of what you think you want next for yourself and just bashing down more walls.
But I dunno… I’m just a rando.
The "after" pictures display a uniformly grim corporate homogeneity.
Maybe this is because the "before" pictures are unguarded, taken before the kool-aid sank in. But they still show people who queued up to drink that kool-aid.
It's a "no" from me.
Obstacles are also any legal constraints that will break and pay later in fines, like Airbnb.
Notice how they omit any mention of Loopt, and almost try to imply that he's famous for founding OpenAI, when the trajectory was really Loopt -> YC President -> other stuff -> OpenAI, and Loopt was a failure that was acquired for barely more than it raised in VC money, and spent its waning days as a seedy gay hookup app.
Sam's success was preordained, and failure, for him (and his VC backers), was never an option.
I get that the subtext isn’t dishonest, but cmon, you know what you’re doing
Typography looks great though, animations are smooth, /formidable founder' is original and it's nice seeing Jared Friedman - he was super friendly and acted as a company champion when I applied in 2016.
In addition YC Research didn’t send their pledged funds to OpenAI:
https://archive.ph/20230518211335/https://techcrunch.com/202...
> According to federal tax filings, at least one of the named donors, YC Research, never gave a single dollar
Dictator is another name.
Isn't there something better to aspire to?
But that’s just how the world is. Capitalism is optimized for the bullies to be on top.
That’s exactly why Trump is the most powerful man of the most powerful country.
I hope it changes someday.
Back when they started in the 2000s, most traditional VCs didn't recognize that high impact individuals can easily pivot or define product categories, and only concentrated on financial engineering (DCF go brrrrrr).
YC often also mentors founders on pivots (I'd say at least a third of all startups that make it to demo day were mentored into some sort of a pivot).
YC also needs to pivot it's marketing to compete with a16z Speedrun and PeakXV Surge, both of which really center on the founder first approach or Operators-turned-Angels - which I assume this marketing shift is about.
Interesting. I once talked to an investor (not YC) and they asked me what I would do if the product failed. I said one thing I can do is pivot. And they literally responded with "we don't invest in founders who think about pivoting"
> YC also needs to pivot it's marketing to compete with a16z Speedrun and PeakXV Surge
Maybe. A write up about the new design would be cool I think
> YC has always been founder first.
Internally yes there is a "founder community". But publicly I would argue it was product-first.
It doesn't seem unlikely to me that YC coined or at least popularized 'the pivot' in the context of changing business / startup directions. The first mention of using the word in that sense is in this comment [1] which explicitly mentions the usage by YC, while it only gets used when talking about pivot tables or more traditional uses of the word before that.
Edit: The "Lean Startup" blog series [2], which was quite influential, mentions 'the pivot' a little earlier than the post above, and really seems to coin it, so I guess that's the source (edit again: wrong :D).
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=806601
[2] https://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2009/06/pivot-dont-jum...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=699611 (July 2009)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=676514 (June 2009)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=562739 (April 2009)
All 3 of those posts were by YC founders, so the term was obviously in circulation by then. The last of them includes a (broken) likn to this article: https://web.archive.org/web/20090703130211/https://redeye.fi....
Edit: that one was discussed here, but the comments didn't say the p-word:
Yogi Berra wisdom for startups - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=537331 - March 2009 (9 comments)
I'd say it depends on a VC's investment thesis as well as the stage your startup is at.
For the former, some wouldn't like your answer because it implies a lack of conviction (why should I invest in something the founder doesn't trust). Others wouldn't because it adds a degree of uncertainty (if this B2C reels company pivots into MLOps tooling how can I do due dilligence on my investment).
For the latter, seed/pre-seed that is open to pivoting isn't necessarily a negative flag because they are barely generating revenue as is and are trying to find PMF, but a Series B startup suddenly taking about a pivot might imply they aren't doing so hot.
> A write up about the new design would be cool I think
We ain't the LPs. We don't deserve an answer.
Depends who you're marketing to. Do they need to follow what others did or should they stay in their own niche? Because I'm not hanging out on a16z forum because they make fancy marketing materials, I'm one of the thousands of people who bought into the YC brand which was build over decades. Would be stupid to become one with the crowd of sleeky VCs.
As European I'm quite happy I didn't see YC involvement with the current administration, and if they stay a bit clear of the AI supergau I'm sure they'll be fine.
It's been reported that the ratio of mentors to founders had become quite bad. Seems quality has gone down since they tried to scale something that doesn't scale
https://sfstandard.com/2024/01/30/garry-tan-vulgar-tweet-pro...
You could have found that with less typing than it took to ask me for it. There’s an NYT article too.
Which other one are you suspicious of? These are all public knowledge and well documented.
You can CTRL+F his name. He's right there.
Love this quote