One thing that gets lost in this is that YC had money to begin with.
It's like saying that Kylie Jenner is a self-made billionaire.
Which isn't a criticism of PG or Jessica or YC. They had money because Paul had built a company and sold it. It was money worked for.
But to say that "YC worked because of PG and Jessica and that's it" is rather disingenuous. Money grants you time to invest towards the long-term and to make mistakes. You can have a family atmosphere that invests in/bets on people if you have enough money to sustain yourself for a while. And you can equally afford to experiment on new models when you need less from outside parties.
I think it is just implied that anyone trying to start a seed funding organization has money, because it is very hard to provide funding with no money. And yet despite many trying to replicate YC, probably often with more money at the start, nobody has come close.
I don’t think the argument was that it was just Paul and Jessica, just that they are the limiting factors.
This is the same as saying "Elon Musk is successful because he started with $100m".
While that's true, it's at most a necessary condition, not close to a sufficient one. In particular, there's at least another billionaire who's been funding his own rocket company (probably burning much more money than SpaceX) with no evidence of success.
Same with YC vs other incubators & VCs. There's a lot of them with money. Few succeed.
Sure, a second startup always has better odds than the first one, because it comes with a built-in runway.
But also, because it's helmed by people who have successfully built a startup and exited with a pile of cash.
I don't have any examples of second startups which crashed and burned handy; I'm sure they exist. What is too commonplace to mention is first startups which start with a huge war chest and squander it.
What's disingenuous is comparing someone who exited with a big pile, and turned it into a huge pile, with someone who inherited vast wealth. No, it's not like saying anything about Kylie Jenner, at all.
This is a very important point. Having the flexibility that wealth allows can unlock many creative and ambitious opportunities.
I've had a lot of friends talk about ambitious company ideas, giving Tesla/SpaceX as examples. What they're missing is that what made those companies great/ambitious at the time is also what made them very risky. Having buy in from a billionaire (Elon Musk) isn't the only thing that made those ideas succeed, but it certainly helped.
This is an absurd criticism. YC “had” money for the same reasons it’s a great institution: the ingenuity and character of its founders (PG, RTM, TB, JG). Money is created and how to create money is the same nature of problem as how to create something people want or find highly useful (and then requiring that they indebt themselves to you for it).
It's like saying that Kylie Jenner is a self-made billionaire.
Which isn't a criticism of PG or Jessica or YC. They had money because Paul had built a company and sold it. It was money worked for.
But to say that "YC worked because of PG and Jessica and that's it" is rather disingenuous. Money grants you time to invest towards the long-term and to make mistakes. You can have a family atmosphere that invests in/bets on people if you have enough money to sustain yourself for a while. And you can equally afford to experiment on new models when you need less from outside parties.
Again, this isn't a criticism.