If you define "success" as market valuation, assume that market valuation grows with time for successful companies and YC select companies with a bias for companies that are not successful yet... The fact that most successful companies come from older batches is just a description of their business model right?
Fair point! I'm sure there will be some run off successes among the current crop as well, but so far, my sensibilities tell me that there has been a drop in quality—and in general the appetite for risk taking within the YC has gone down substantially.
Without the data of course it is hard to tell with 100% confidence.
My sensibilities are very different from yours. I see some crazy risk biotech getting selected, not mention some crypto stuff that a lot of people claims to have near zero value. Even the regular software ones seems as risky as always.
My impression is: same quality, same risk level, more companies.
In my point of view, theres a cultural ocidental tradition to fight uncertainty at any cost.
This lead us all to a very good economical and technological progress so far, but in a lot of cases i see this fight going too far, where we have pseudo-objective schemes of validation that are completely worthless and while they look a whole lot more 'scientific' their results are no better than rolling a dice.
We need to be aware that people validating this kind of stuff are using patterns based on their former experience to validate better what they are judging.
We need to pay attention and learn with their experience, but also be aware that their denial doesnt necessarily mean you wont make it, because its actually impossible for them to tell you this for sure.
They can only try to calculate who have better chances to succed. And a LOT of people that will actually succed wont get squared up in those patterns, because they are based in past events that are unlikely to repeat (paradigm shifts are pretty hard to predict for instance, because a lot of them come from 'black swan' kind of events).
So you maybe you have a bussiness plan so risky they will calculate that you are likely to fail, they are probably very good to understand the percentage of your sucess/fail rate.. but they hardly can understand your human value to deliver that dream, because this is most in the uncertainty arena.
Maybe some of them will follow their 'gut feeling' and do a very good bet.. but this is beyond what can be extimated, calculated or measured and we need to be very aware of that.
Theres no better teacher than persistence, but one that can learn with its mistakes. And this human-gold value along with others hardly will get detected over some pattern-based human radars.
So my main point is, in the end is up to you to create the means to succeed, and a lot of them have to do with human qualities where most of them cant be measured that way.
Occidental? If anything this is an issue in the Orient, not the Occident. Japan has excellent schools, plenty of money and a very hard working population, but struggle to create startups because the willing to take risks is so low.
I was thinking more in the line of classical philosophy. You have cartesianism and classical geometry shaped line of thinking on one side and taoist, confucionist, budhist line of thinking on the other.
Modern Japan is reshaped orient with ocidental cultural values, so sorry to use terms that can be misleading because i've failed to give a clear context of what i mean.
And you are right in the sense that some cultures are better than others to face uncertainty with a tenacious spirit.
the US culture is also good at this (despite the mixing of both), but my criticism is more target in the sense we need more awareness of uncertainty and where our tools of measure are limited and cannot reach.
People facing the uncertainty with a brave spirit can be deceived to think people judging them can measure them correctly and that some judgements are final.
Its pretty hard to be the one facing uncertainty, and to be judged by things the other side might not have to right tools to do it right.
Not forgeting, in the context we are talking about, a HN board would probably be the best to understand and to predict a lot of things correctly. But my guess is that we need more awareness and understand more a kind of philosophy that in my point of view, is more advanced to undertand problems that are beyond mesure and pratical reason.
So you can say 9/10 times they get it wrong but 1/10 is worth it for them.
So if YC gets it wrong, that’s their loss. There is no rule that says to build a great product and a great company you need YC or insane VC money.
So kudos to you sticking out and building a great product.