Comment by fakedang
1 year ago
I don't know, I would argue that YC might be the best place for Open Source and Dev Tools, because you start along with a large cohort of former and current YC startups who will be willing to try out your product. Plus the YC partners actually have experience in working with successful companies in this space, so that's actually equity that they would deserve.
That being said, dev tools is one of the sectors they have stopped funding, seemingly.
I actually agree with you that YC is a good value for their founders. That network and experience are worth their weight in gold.
I am just different; I don't want gold. I want:
* Sufficient money for my needs and no more.
* To change the industry towards professional standards. [1] [2]
[1]: https://gavinhoward.com/2023/11/how-to-fund-foss-save-it-fro...
[2]: https://gavinhoward.com/2022/10/we-must-professionalize-prog...
I was in one of the recent batches and they definitely didn't stop funding devtools. In fact, it felt like we were encouraged to pivot into the devtools space by some of the group partners.
For good reason: most of the dev tools companies have been commercial duds. Lots of traction/GitHub stars maybe, but none of those amounted to real sales.
There's often good money to be made in dev tools, but it's not always VC-level money.