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Ycombinator gone shit?
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I’m not trying to be rude about it, but I find them incredibly disconnected from reality these days. I never understood why everyone looked at them as such a startup pillar. I think in general though, Im liking startup advice-givers less because you really just need to experiment yourself and see what works for your product. Things I find incredibly distasteful about them:
They have an AI startup school. What? If the majority of the startups have original LLMs or models that they develop in house with ML engineers, OK sure. But if they’re all wrappers… that is absurd to me.
Several of their AI wrapper companies have blatantly freeloaded off open source. Some seemed to try to cover it up. It makes their due diligence look very embarrassing.
Paul Graham is blatantly against solo founders and most of them still seem to agree. Totally detached from reality with that one imo.
As a C# dev myself, I’ve heard story after story of them constantly trashing C#. Makes me not take their technical opinions very seriously. No opinion matters more than your customers’.
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Imo you’re not missing anything but
1). Hype trains and trend following. 2). Good ole startups selling to startups like indie hackers often do.
Building your company around LLM platforms that you don’t own is so freaking risky for a business to do. I wouldn’t want to be them. A lot of them go into the “survive off VC money for years” route and I find it very distasteful.
I love C# from the bottom of my heart, learned to program primarily hacking on C# projects, friends with some really high up folks from Xamarin's glory days, etc. etc....
I would not build a startup aiming for unicorn status in C#. It's not that you can't, Roblox is a .NET shop for example. But there's a ton of cultural baggage around C#, hiring is harder, there's less energy in the open source space.
So much about building a startup is hard, why make things even potentially harder?
And honestly, similar for solo founders.
I'm a solo founder, it's really fucking hard, and honestly I'm only doing because I could afford bootstrapping my startup until I reached enough traction that most people would look past the solo founder red flag: and now that's going to let keep more of my company.
If you're a VC, someone moving relatively slowly so they can keep more of the company is the last thing you ever want, a massive red flag, and that's not how I frame it them.
In general people assume if you're a solo founder it's due to a defect, since even with multiple people it's a slog that breaks people: so why couldn't you couldn't convince a single person to join you? Are you a bad partner? Is your idea not good enough? Who's there daily to hold you accountable?
You need to be doing exceptionally well for people to look past that.
Overall I agree YC is picking some real stinkers that do indicate they're a bit disconnected from reality, but those two things are an example of how YC is optimizing for something other than just being successful.
Solo founder doing 1M ARR with a C# stack is probably just about as doable as dual founder using Next+TS, but YC is looking for a Dropbox. It's hard to build a Dropbox if you're not taking every easy way out available to you, like a more mainstream tech stack, and having a passionate 2nd employee (and hopefully friend) that costs $0 upfront.
There is nothing wrong with AI wrappers in fact the biggest opportunity in AI is in the application layer (the apps built on llms) think of it like the internet and many companies built their startup relying on the internet. Billion dollar companies already built on llms that they do not own. Check cursor, lovable etc. They are Billion dollar companies that does not own any ai model they just use public llms
llm wrappers are the future really
The real challenge is building a moat around your startup which can be network effect , first mover advantage or a unique competitive edge that you have
the market will correct itself. keep building real solutions to real problems, with or without AI. the fundamentals still matter more than the buzzwords
The market has gone to shit already, from now on society will only go downhill and we will go broke
That’s basically every VC right now man. There was a NY times article on this just yesterday.
This is why bootstrapping is being suggested more.
Take care of your business because these guys have their heads in the clouds.
Been shit. And I actually think history will recall the YC times as a net negative for humanity.
Yeah, I’ve been feeling the same. It’s like everyone’s just jumping on the AI bandwagon without really knowing why right?
They are! I thought Im the only one who is annoyed with the whole situation. 100% of YC credibility and authority evaporated within 1 month. Also, crazy vulgar videos are posted on Linkedin official page as if its new normal to pitch your startup. Just disgusting
Broke: Invest in a carefully hand-picked selection of products that aim to solve real business problems.
Woke: Invest in every 21-year-old Asian dude-bro that has gone to a fancy school and added the letters "AI" to their company name.
It seems like they’re betting on garbage AI wrappers but I think the play is selecting great founders capable of building great products. Feels like this is just a phase (because even the great founders are focused on the AI rush).
AI is new snake oil these days , with so many promises just like web3 n blockchain .
YC’s always played the numbers game — fund a ton, hope a few hit unicorn scale — but right now the funnel’s stuffed with AI because that’s where the investor FOMO is
The problem isn’t “AI” itself, it’s the meta-startups — tools for other AI startups — which almost never have sustainable markets outside the hype cycle
Feels a lot like the crypto/NFT boom: too much capital chasing too few real problems
Traditional SaaS isn’t dead, it’s just not sexy to VCs in this moment
If you’re bootstrapping or building for profit instead of valuation, solving boring, non-AI problems for specific industries is probably a safer long play than jumping on the hype hamster wheel
The NoFluffWisdom Newsletter has blunt breakdowns on spotting hype bubbles vs. durable SaaS opportunities worth a peek!
ask this in ycsearch.tech
thats why u broke
They are pouring money to see what will work out and survive. They want AI to succeed so they trying different startups. even they lose in 99% the 1% win will cover all the loses
I'd say 50/50
no my b2b ai sass startup will be different and a unicorn i promise
100% correct, they started promoting more on my LinkedIn feed, these crap ai startups, same old b.s ai wrappers, with their stupid demos. They probably spend all yc money just creating these cool demos.
it’s at a point where I have to hold myself back from commenting how stupid these ideas are.
I just saw one today, guess what it does? extracts text from pdf files.. I mean really? and YC funded this crop
I applied 3 times when I was just starting, stating all the facts about how my product has a massive potential, and my 20y tech experience actually will help me build it. 2nd and 3rd time, I already had the product built, and I don’t mean mvp
I didn’t even get an interview…
and in my 3rd video, I told them it’ll be my last attempt
let them fund their crapy ai wrappers
I have often talked about the AI bubble in my personal conversation irl. It might just burst soon.
Nobody knows what's gonna work, what's gonna stick in this AI era.
Its a wild goose chase for that unicorn.
It always has been
You need to do that.
They've went all on in "AI" slop to the point they seem just another hype agency. Garry Tan is also insufferable and under him they seem to have really taken a nose dive in terms of quality.
It's the market hype like in .com bubble. There is too much money in the VC world and they have to shovel it somewhere.
I like the analogy to the .com bubble. Silicon Valley has an almost dogmatic belief in AI (Technological Determinism). It's no longer rooted in facts but in culture and social pressure. VCs and tech companies pour virtually endless amounts of money into AI because they firmly believe it's the endgame of capitalism, even though there are no signs the technology will live up to the expectation.
I will never be mad at young dropouts grifting and gaming the vc world for a quick buck.
What annoys me is the clear script and clear auto suggestion tricks the partners play to control the startup market. Paul's regular..."oh AI is good, AI is not that important today...this is a strong indicator, that is important again today...listen to us we know more than anyone"
The fact that batches are becoming younger and younger also means that these cringe launch videos and other annoying marketing tactics aren't going anywhere anytime soon.
You mean hYpeCombinator who is in pump and dump business is doing what they always do: playing hand of bigger VC firms with latest "fancy word from nerds"? Just like they did with social media, cloud native, big data and now LLM? Yep, same shit but sideways.
VCs do realise LLMs are force multiplier just like others before it and it could produce good result, unfortunately in our day and age this also means one who repeats slogans (cloud, ai, whatever is hot today) gets more VC attention.
It’s a good move by ycombinator to generate AI hype by backing smaller startups, even when they already hold strong positions in the top AI startups