HN Explorer

Ask PG: What % of a failed YCstartup employees are rehired by other YCstartups?

11 points by malandrew ↗ HN
Emilio Castilla and others have studied the movement of employees among the VC firms in Silicon Valley vs. Route 128 (http://www.stanford.edu/group/esrg/siliconvalley/docs/siliconvalleyedge.pdf)

Has anyone at YC or outside looked at the movement of employees and founders from failed YC startups to other YC startups? While no one in YC wants any of their peers to fail, I would imagine that the failed startups provide an ample base of talent from where other startups can hire from. Do you guys have any numbers on how much talent "stays in the family"?

4 comments

[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 17.9 ms ] thread
amorphid
if you don't get an answer, that sounds like something you could brute force by gathering a list of YC startups and looking up the founders on LinkedIn.
malandrew
LinkedIn actually had pretty poor info when it comes to startups and the people who work at them. The professional social network for startups works well enough that many people have never felt a need to exploit LinkedIn connections for their next gig. It's often salespeople who most appreciate what LinkedIn has to offer. LinkedIn has always been surprisingly bad at capturing the professional network value in asymmetrical relationships. Great professionals and influencers (which YC founders are likely to be) are those that avoid LinkedIn the most because it's a distraction.
kellco
That's an interesting question. The other things I'd like to know is, "Why did those startups fail? Was there anything the founders/employees could have done to save it? What did they learn from their experiences."

If it's a marketplace, marketing, or product problem then ok. But if the team fell apart, if there were internal conflicts, or if someone didn't pull their weight...then those might not be good candidates to bring on board to other startups no matter how smart they are. What bothers me about some teams are, there are people that you can tell have no initiative, they do the minimum of what's required, and they don't double check to make sure that everything works and invariably something minor comes up to trip up the project that could have been prevented. I hope I never get those people on my team, if I do they need to go.

Another thing I'd also like to know is, "How many of those people from failed YC startups founded another startup or did they just go back to a job or to being an employee at another startup?"

malandrew
Those are basically the same types of questions I have as well. I reckon there is a lot to be learned from the YC network of startups. It's a great space for a grad student at Stanford's or Berkeley's iSchools to investigate.