Comment by ls-a

1 day ago

I found the switch of focus from startups/businesses to founders/CEOs particularly strange. Looks like a political campaign to me.

23 comments

ls-a

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alephnerd  1 day ago

YC has always been founder first.

Back when they started in the 2000s, most traditional VCs didn't recognize that high impact individuals can easily pivot or define product categories, and only concentrated on financial engineering (DCF go brrrrrr).

YC often also mentors founders on pivots (I'd say at least a third of all startups that make it to demo day were mentored into some sort of a pivot).

YC also needs to pivot it's marketing to compete with a16z Speedrun and PeakXV Surge, both of which really center on the founder first approach or Operators-turned-Angels - which I assume this marketing shift is about.

  • ls-a  1 day ago

    > YC often also mentors founders on pivots

    Interesting. I once talked to an investor (not YC) and they asked me what I would do if the product failed. I said one thing I can do is pivot. And they literally responded with "we don't invest in founders who think about pivoting"

    > YC also needs to pivot it's marketing to compete with a16z Speedrun and PeakXV Surge

    Maybe. A write up about the new design would be cool I think

    > YC has always been founder first.

    Internally yes there is a "founder community". But publicly I would argue it was product-first.

    • throwaway89201  1 day ago

      > YC often also mentors founders on pivots

      It doesn't seem unlikely to me that YC coined or at least popularized 'the pivot' in the context of changing business / startup directions. The first mention of using the word in that sense is in this comment [1] which explicitly mentions the usage by YC, while it only gets used when talking about pivot tables or more traditional uses of the word before that.

      Edit: The "Lean Startup" blog series [2], which was quite influential, mentions 'the pivot' a little earlier than the post above, and really seems to coin it, so I guess that's the source (edit again: wrong :D).

      [1] https://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2009/06/pivot-dont-jum...

      1 reply →

    • alephnerd  21 hours ago

      > I said one thing I can do is pivot. And they literally responded with "we don't invest in founders who think about pivoting"

      I'd say it depends on a VC's investment thesis as well as the stage your startup is at.

      For the former, some wouldn't like your answer because it implies a lack of conviction (why should I invest in something the founder doesn't trust). Others wouldn't because it adds a degree of uncertainty (if this B2C reels company pivots into MLOps tooling how can I do due dilligence on my investment).

      For the latter, seed/pre-seed that is open to pivoting isn't necessarily a negative flag because they are barely generating revenue as is and are trying to find PMF, but a Series B startup suddenly taking about a pivot might imply they aren't doing so hot.

      > A write up about the new design would be cool I think

      We ain't the LPs. We don't deserve an answer.

      1 reply →

  • bflesch  21 hours ago

    > YC also needs to pivot it's marketing

    Depends who you're marketing to. Do they need to follow what others did or should they stay in their own niche? Because I'm not hanging out on a16z forum because they make fancy marketing materials, I'm one of the thousands of people who bought into the YC brand which was build over decades. Would be stupid to become one with the crowd of sleeky VCs.

    As European I'm quite happy I didn't see YC involvement with the current administration, and if they stay a bit clear of the AI supergau I'm sure they'll be fine.

  • verdverm  1 day ago

    > YC also needs to pivot

    It's been reported that the ratio of mentors to founders had become quite bad. Seems quality has gone down since they tried to scale something that doesn't scale

ls-a  1 day ago

I'm pretty sure the designer used political campaigns as inspiration