HN Explorer

Y Combinator vs. TechStars Application

26 points by oldgregg ↗ HN
I thought this was interesting:

"protip: 2 dudes talking is not a pitch video. show me, don't tell me." @davidcohen 5:16 PM Mar 17th

vs.

"In the video please introduce yourselves, explain what you're doing and why, and tell us anything else you want to about the founders or the project. The video should contain nothing except the founders talking. No screenshots or postproduction wizardry please;" http://ycombinator.com/video.html

15 comments

[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 66.2 ms ] thread
faramarz
At the risk of making judgment out of context, I think it's pretty obvious which of the two wants to Invest in the founders as much as the idea.
jacoblyles
There's room for more than one investment strategy; there's not a "correct" one. YCombinator invests in the top 1% of developers regardless of ideas. I can see how it might be smart to invest instead in the top 10% of developers with the biggest ideas.

Unfortunately the data on this kind of thing is rather small. The only way to be sure which is better is to run two funds side by side with different strategies.

edit: It should be remembered that Viaweb had not only great developers (the functional stuff in Viaweb is cool!) but also a pretty big idea. Viaweb is really a bad example for "ideas don't matter".

ryanhuff
"YCombinator invests in the top 1% of developers regardless of ideas"

Interesting stat, which is obviously an opinion.

Here's a strongly held opinion of mine: top 1% developers != top 1% of business people.

necrecious
I think it is great that there are funds pursuing different strategies. What's even better is that they are fairly transparent about their data so we can use the data to find better strategies.
zck
>It should be remembered that Viaweb had not only great developers (the functional stuff in Viaweb is cool!) but also a pretty big idea. Viaweb is really a bad example for "ideas don't matter".

Except the initial idea was "put art galleries on the web", called Artix. It morphed into Viaweb later. It's actually a very good example for "ideas don't matter".

jacquesm
Classic pivot.

I wonder how many startups actually stick to their first idea, and never deviate from that.

chrischen
I think the techstars app has fewer questions concerning the founders And it seemed to lean more towards the idea.
oldgregg
Maybe. But TechStars has been defined by their focus on community building which would suggest otherwise. Smart founders usually have smart ideas so it's easy to overplay the distinction. It might be more insightful if you could look at how many companies radically changed their idea during the program.
migpwr
I'm applying for Capital Factory, a similar program, and the big recommendation everyone's making is "Tell a story".
justin
You should do this whenever you are talking to anyone about anything (because they might actually listen), but especially when you want to get a message across (such as "you should invest in my company because __").
ryanhuff
Comparing a tweet to a more verbose instruction is hardly fair.
Roridge
It is impossible to tell if a developer is "good" from a short video of them talking, unless they can prove that P != NP in 1 minute (and even that wouldn't do it for me).

All it tells anyone is if the person in the video seems like their kind of person.

Whether you are investing in the idea or not first impressions count.

jchonphoenix
P v NP is completely unrelated to this thread. If someone proved P != NP (by which you mean NP is not a proper subset of P) in 1 minute it would prove he is an extremely smart theorist. Not necessarily a good developer. It would also prove they are extremely bright.

Your point is understood but your comment seems to trivialize the problem of P v NP and also shows a misconception about the foundations of Computer Science and the difference between CS and Software Development.

Roridge
As you correctly pointed out "P v NP is completely unrelated to this thread" so I'm not sure why you decided to elaborate on it.

However, seeing as you did I should point out that I did not trivialise it, I mention it juxtaposed to the topic in an oxymoronic context which highlights the point I was making (you know, the one you said you understood). To reiterate "It is impossible to tell if a developer is "good" from a short video of them talking..."

Last time I checked Math and Psychology were the foundations of Computer Science, and Software Development was very closely related to Computer Science. One might even suggest you needed one to perform the other.

TrevorBurnham
It's true that the two programs want different kinds of videos, but I wouldn't read into this too much. Both claim that they care more about the founders than about the idea; the reason they ask so much about the idea is that they want you to show that you're capable of generating and fleshing out a good idea.

I imagine that watching hundreds of short videos per cycle is very exhausting, and over time both groups became especially frustrated with a particular category of video. For YC, this category was "overproduced demo hype videos." For TechStars, it was "three guys muttering into the camera." That they decided to disallow those categories is, I think, just a historical happenstance.