Priceless! It also puts a human perspective to Y Combinator. I get sweaty palms just by thinking of applying (although I will - again) this year, let alone actually making it. These pics show me you're actually humans instead of, well, deities. It makes me a bit less anxious of applying, if only a little bit.
Amazing to see this, thanks for posting. Exciting to see how much they've grown through hard work and to see how much their vision expanded.
YC is now regarded as the harvard of tech startups. It's great that YC's original vision to put founders first is still instilled in YC today, even further than then as they have more resources and alumni.
Wow. It seems like so long ago yet I remember every moment of these photos. Especially the one taken the night we decided to start YC (we actually didn't come up with the name till later on). I think that was a tear of joy/excitement in my eye.
YC is incredible. If you're on the fence about applying - do it! The worst thing that can happen is that you'll go through an incredibly exciting process of applying, get a polite rejection, and reapply the next time around. The best thing that can happen is that it will change your perspective and your life in a very fundamental way. If you look at it that way, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
I wanted to apply just for the experience this season, but there's absolutely no way I could move to SF. I started filling out the app, but don't want to waste their time if there's no way I can attend.
About a quarter of the founders in the Summer 2010 batch weren't even US residents, but we thought it was worth moving to the Bay Area for the three months of YC.
Interestingly (and anecdotally) I think more people came from abroad than from the East Coast.
I remember reading about YC as it started, hooked I was to paulgraham.com's essays. A link to "Beating the Averages" I forwarded by mail is what made a couple friends of mine who had just started a company decide to build sites with Zope and Plone instead of more mundane technologies. It had a deep impact on the Brazilian Python community.
This is awesome. I love that its only a few pictures, with descriptions. The stories behind YC and all of its companies (and co-founders) are incredible.
Also Simmery and Memamp. According to my notes, Infogami ended up merging with Reddit as well as one persome from Memamp. Firecrawl became TextPayMe which was acquired by Amazon. Kiko sold on eBay after Google Calendar launched. Details here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AkkhSN3vaY4jdF9...
Yep. Steve & I asked Chris (from memamp) to join the team not long after we moved in with him at the end of the summer. We acquired infogami in January of 2006.
It is unbelievably amazing that YC went from literally a gleam in jl's (and pg's) eye to something that is a clear leader in not only incubators but entrepreneurial thought as well. A case of clearly superior vision getting its due. Such vision to success proportionality is not so common, I think.
> Such vision to success proportionality is not so common, I think
I'm not sure of what you mean, but I would argue that vision is everything, and that vision well executed has to bring success.
When we say that execution is hard, we really mean that execution that implements a vision is hard. Execution without vision is really easy (it's entropy).
Vision is harder, because it's not just an idea (a wish), but a deep insight into the future and how to get there.
Those pictures of young YC remind me of Burano — an island next to Venice that stayed in a kind of "pristine" state: Venice before Venice.
You're somewhat right, vision is crucial. However, it is a necessary but not sufficient condition for success, that's what I meant. Classic (somewhat cliche) example is the early Xerox vision, but I see this everyday youthful energy and vision (and I'm not talking about myself :-) being squashed by various factors in large corporations. In startups the vision to success black box is simpler, but is by no means a linear relationship.
> A case of clearly superior vision getting its due
PG & Company have clearly done a "bang up job", as they say in the UK, but... is it genuinely a 'vision'? I don't know them and their plans well enough to say, but it seems that there is some hill climbing going on there too. "Of course what we decided to start was a lot less ambitious than YC is now."
I think the operational details naturally were arrived at by hill climbing (or descent), as you suggest. However, I suggest that you read pg's early essays, most of the basic vision that went into YC, the no-nonsense "make something that people want" approach is there. That's why YC was successful, if they didn't start from such an initial condition they would have been just another incubator and there are hundreds of them.
I want to know who the "VoIP Offensive Linemen" are. Actually, a lot of the nicknames on that board are pretty funny, and for the most part would make great band names.
Haha one of the lineman is me, although I was only 6' 250 lbs at the time. A co-founder also was one. He was about 6'3 280 lbs. The third co-founder was actually a running back and wrestler, so he was only 5'8 165 lbs or so.
The last paragraph feels like a zen koan. Is a "good investor" not one that finds start-ups which will succeed (and thus make him money)? How do you try to be a "good investor" without trying to find start-ups which will succeed? How far away am I from enlightment?
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 123 ms ] threadGot him on my wall staring down at me now. More intimidating than I thought. I feel the urge to yell back at him.
YC is now regarded as the harvard of tech startups. It's great that YC's original vision to put founders first is still instilled in YC today, even further than then as they have more resources and alumni.
Interestingly (and anecdotally) I think more people came from abroad than from the East Coast.
I remember reading about YC as it started, hooked I was to paulgraham.com's essays. A link to "Beating the Averages" I forwarded by mail is what made a couple friends of mine who had just started a company decide to build sites with Zope and Plone instead of more mundane technologies. It had a deep impact on the Brazilian Python community.
"This is a missing a few people..."
I'm not sure of what you mean, but I would argue that vision is everything, and that vision well executed has to bring success.
When we say that execution is hard, we really mean that execution that implements a vision is hard. Execution without vision is really easy (it's entropy).
Vision is harder, because it's not just an idea (a wish), but a deep insight into the future and how to get there.
Those pictures of young YC remind me of Burano — an island next to Venice that stayed in a kind of "pristine" state: Venice before Venice.
PG & Company have clearly done a "bang up job", as they say in the UK, but... is it genuinely a 'vision'? I don't know them and their plans well enough to say, but it seems that there is some hill climbing going on there too. "Of course what we decided to start was a lot less ambitious than YC is now."
I didn't play in college, though. Just old man flag leagues during the fall and winter. angilly did and #3 wrestled but no football.
But by the time interviews rolled around we were all close to finishing grad school, so our glory days were in the rearview.
Seriously, ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer.