I also fundamentally disagree with the idea that you have to like something because of its process even if you dislike the outcome. Ironically I think that was what put YC apart in the first place. Every other incubator would talk about their fancy offices, lawyers and contacts but then wouldn't produce many notable startups. And by that measure YC probably never would have happened, or at least didn't deserve support.
It's something I think about whenever there is a development with some really popular company. That if the company had adopted the mindset of those rooting for it it probably wouldn't have been successful in the first place.
As for the rest, I'm not sure I follow the argument. I do not agree with the notion that every company that succeeds but has gone through YC would have succeeded without YC. I also don't agree with the notion that only companies that are going to succeed either way go through YC either. Empirically the latter is more easily falsifiable but I think both are false.
My question is what solution are you advocating? Abolish YC? Outlaw starting businesses? I don't see your solution.
To me the solution to the problem isn’t the front-end, that is attacking YC and startups and entrepreneurship. Rather, I would generally support deep and effective estate taxes, wealth taxes if they could be found to be effective, attacks on tax avoidance behavior, etc. (e.g. I don’t have solutions, but I’m disgusted by the behaviors and advantages reported on by ProPublica recently here https://www.propublica.org/article/the-great-inheritors-how-... but I also think there are great fortunes in the UK, France, Germany, the Nordics, so not sure anyone has quite figured it out).
At the same time, I think that economic growth is the central and defining anti-poverty tool in history. Other countries envy our ability to grow the pie even as we have challenges in fairly distributing that pie. I’d rather find solutions to the problems of distribution without attacking growth.
On OpenSea, I’m not following the argument exactly. I assume you think all art, particularly mass market art is a sort of mass delusional petite bourgeoisie / opioid of the masses pursuit foisted on them by a conspiratorial monied class? Or, more likely, it’s just all a big, experimental community of purists and artists and hucksters and beyond alike that are trying something new and interesting and potentially quite generative and innovative. I have no idea if in five years OpenSea will be huge or dead or somewhere in-between but I’d admire that they have built, created, strove.
On Airbnb, I have quite a bit more ambivalence but overall my vision of the world has a lot more density and urbanism. It’s good for people, it’s good for the environment, etc. If I had a magic wand in, say, San Francisco, the city would have housing for 3-4 times as many people, a much much more robust public transit system, etc, and the problems of gentrification would be addressed primarily through a massive uptick in housing stock and density not by the relatively limited effects of (the practically banned in SF) Airbnb.
Is there a way to enjoy the benefits of AirBnB without those pathologies? Governments, either locally or nationally, could issue AirBnB rental licenses, limit the supply to prevent gross gentrification, and tax the income and use it to subsidise housing costs elsewhere in the affected locations.
If I have a property, I can choose to let someone stay at my property for money. AirBnB facilitates this. This makes my property valuable as a result. The homeowners benefit as do people who need a place to stay. This is progress and occurs any time anyone creates a product or technology that creates value. What pathologies? Homes rightly appreciating in value due to a new revenue stream opened up for homeowners?
'Renting' in its essence does not involve doing anything: it does not mine resources, manufacture use objects, or provide a service. Rich people buy up scarce assets and then charge a fee for their use. The return has no correlate in any socially useful activity - it is 'profiteering'. AirBnb means it is often more profitable to buy properties and rent them to rich international tourists rather than to locals. This creates the further, perverse effect of pricing out residents from their own cities. Given than I am a democrat and think societies should be run by and for the people, I think this is obviously remiss.
So if someone doesn't have enough accumulated capital or credit to buy a property to live in, tough luck. You can't legally rent from someone. I guess rely on charity or sleep on the streets? Seems unreasonable.
I think that ceteris paribus the lower housing rents are the better. How to help bring that about is an interesting policy question. I suspect that socialisation is the best option, but increasing the stock and rent controls could work.
If we return to the specific case of AirBnb and my original suggestion, the aim would be twofold:
1. Limit AirBnb rentals to reorientate the housing stock away from rich international tourists to locals.
2. Tax AirBnb rentals to subsidise local housing.
I would point out that Barcelona has already done (1).
Jessica, PG, Geoff, PB, Michael, Jared, Sama and all the other partners have all done very very well by creating/working on YC, but there is a particular underlying ethos of support. Of just a human connection with founders who build. HN in its earliest days had that too, but I don't see any of that on this thread.
The article has a certain ambivalence about the nature of startups themselves (and perhaps, under that, capitalism itself), but Y Combinator has had a profoundly positive effect on my life personally, the lives of hundreds of people I know, the startup and venture ecosystem, and -- whether or not this is "changing the world" -- the economy more broadly.
There are people here who are shitting on the companies YC has helped, in their earliest stages, push forward. Would some of them have succeeded without YC, absolutely. But that doesn't change the fundamental fact that no other small collection of people in history has been instrumental to creating so much enterprise value from scratch -- and thus economic wellbeing more broadly (with, maybe, the exception of Sequoia) other than a few founders of the very biggest tech companies (which YC companies will eventually join the ranks of).
Maybe, you say, that's all just signaling or selection effects. Perhaps you don't learn anything at Harvard or YC; it's just about getting in. Maybe. But when that list includes Airbnb, Doordash, Coinbase, Gitlab, Dropbox, PagerDuty, Stripe, Instacart, Brex, Cruise, Faire, Reddit, Zapier, Gusto, Rippling, Flexport, Segment, Checkr, Webflow, Lob, Opeansea, Sift, Astranis, Twitch, Ironclad, just to mention the ones I can pull off the top of my head, I think it says something about the method, the process, and the support mattering.
And look I'm a founder who didn't succeed with the company I built during YC but that has more to do with my NOT listening to and focusing on the lessons that the partners were trying to impart than any failure on their part.
Now, I'm not without criticisms and suggestions but damn if I'm not rooting for YC and every company in every batch at Alumni Demo Day.