Re:Y Combinator Gets Hardcore About Hardware
by dang on Wednesday August 19, 2015 @11:59PM
(#10089960)
> I don't see these products as all that compelling.
Much the same reactions pop up after every batch [1], including the "sign of YC decline" comment elsewhere in this thread. Maybe they're right, but we won't know for a few years.
There's one big factor here for sure though: nascent things seem trivial, so it's easy to dismiss them. That's the null hypothesis about dismissals—most are fully explained by it. It's also the #1 problem of early-stage investing. pg has written about this a ton, most memorably (to me) at [2].
Little things are easy to belittle. Their value is hard to see, their triviality is obvious, and the vast majority turn out worthless anyhow. If your goal is to be right as often as possible, it's a sure bet. But startup investing is all about detecting that hard-to-see value, and for that it would be a bad sign if these reactions didn't pop up after every batch.
I do wish the HN discussions could be a little more varied, though; at our worst (or maybe our median) we mostly emit versions of "No wireless, less space than a nomad, lame." But this may not be possible. Dismissals have statistics if not economics on their side, "wait and see" is not a compelling message board argument, and the discussions invariably have incomplete information—launch stories don't come with the complete vision and plans of the startup nor the thought process behind the investment.
The habit of looking for ways that things could work instead of reasons they probably won't is too rare to hold its own in a public discussion. That's sad, though, because it's so intimately related to the creative process, and if there's one thing I could change about HN's culture it would certainly be to enrich it with more of that.
Much the same reactions pop up after every batch [1], including the "sign of YC decline" comment elsewhere in this thread. Maybe they're right, but we won't know for a few years.
There's one big factor here for sure though: nascent things seem trivial, so it's easy to dismiss them. That's the null hypothesis about dismissals—most are fully explained by it. It's also the #1 problem of early-stage investing. pg has written about this a ton, most memorably (to me) at [2].
Little things are easy to belittle. Their value is hard to see, their triviality is obvious, and the vast majority turn out worthless anyhow. If your goal is to be right as often as possible, it's a sure bet. But startup investing is all about detecting that hard-to-see value, and for that it would be a bad sign if these reactions didn't pop up after every batch.
I do wish the HN discussions could be a little more varied, though; at our worst (or maybe our median) we mostly emit versions of "No wireless, less space than a nomad, lame." But this may not be possible. Dismissals have statistics if not economics on their side, "wait and see" is not a compelling message board argument, and the discussions invariably have incomplete information—launch stories don't come with the complete vision and plans of the startup nor the thought process behind the investment.
The habit of looking for ways that things could work instead of reasons they probably won't is too rare to hold its own in a public discussion. That's sad, though, because it's so intimately related to the creative process, and if there's one thing I could change about HN's culture it would certainly be to enrich it with more of that.
1. https://twitter.com/sama/status/595993931906551808
2. http://www.paulgraham.com/altair.html