Really hard to read the article and conclude that "YC forced them to pivot". Sounds like things weren't working and YC was honest with them.
From the same article:
> We went back to PG, and he told us to stop worrying about Demo Day. With the right idea, we’d be working on the company for the next five-plus years. It was foolish to sacrifice the quality of the company to optimize for the next five weeks."
Seems like a good long-term view and very reasonable way to look at things... definitely not crazy "pivot-right-now-or-die" pressure.
...except every 5 weeks is do-or-die with starving startups. Sounds like PG had some inside info on whether they would get funding. Otherwise that would have been the most foolish advice.
They were told their original idea wouldn't work, and they were put in a highly stressful situation of having to come up with a new idea under a short deadline, with high expectations. It doesn't matter if PG was nice about it, there was an enormous amount of pressure put on them to do something to be worthy of their position, pushed along with the implied message that that's what founders do - they can make magic from thin air, instantly. The cult of the founder. It's no surprise that this made him stressed and unhappy. I wonder how many people have been through the same situation, with YC and beyond, but will not speak out.
Agreed that there's a ton of pressure and that can lead to unhappiness, stress, or worse. Doing startups isn't for everyone. Doing YC isn't for everyone. Doing YC with an idea that isn't working must be extremely unpleasant.
But pressure is the nature of startups whether you're in YC or not. And while YC knows a lot about good, bad, ugly startups and how to potentially fix things, it's fundamentally the founders' company and they have to make the decisions and execute. I don't think that's "founder worship" - it's just reality. Default state of the company is "dead". Good ideas and good execution are the only things that change that. It's not YC's company. They're there to help.
Anyways, we likely agree that the mental health downside of doing startups is poorly understood or appreciated so maybe let's leave it at that.
From the same article:
> We went back to PG, and he told us to stop worrying about Demo Day. With the right idea, we’d be working on the company for the next five-plus years. It was foolish to sacrifice the quality of the company to optimize for the next five weeks."
Seems like a good long-term view and very reasonable way to look at things... definitely not crazy "pivot-right-now-or-die" pressure.