Re:Michael Seibel, CEO of YC, is doing an AMA
by brudgers on Friday March 17, 2017 @05:49PM
(#13898276)
I'm not sure. What I was trying to think about was 'what is a nascent Mozilla?' and the conclusion I came to is that it would have to look more like a fully formed organization or a commercial entity than something that would be obviously nascent and non-profit.
Thinking a bit more, big software related non-profits appear to be spin-offs from industry (Eclipse Foundation, Linux Foundation) or academia (Apache Foundation also from NCSA). In each case, the software came first as was the case with Mozilla and the funding followed because corporations found they had an interest in the software's continued development.
On the other hand, OpenAI might be a counter example where the money is coming to support research so that's a possible case where YC has funded a 'non-profit' at scale...though the model was recruitment rather than application.
Everyone has to pay for marketing, and I'll give you the part about growth.
But is this because something inherent in a nonprofit stops it from growing? Is it that there are fewer nonprofits to sample wins from? Or is that venture capital is simply not structured to consider the upside of funding anything other than a bet on a huge exit?