Re:Ask HN: Copying Y Combinator - If there's a right way, wh...
by gruseom on Friday July 17, 2009 @08:39PM
(#711125)
One difference that deserves more attention is that YC comes out of hacker culture while the clones don't; they've been started by people who have had business success but are not hackers, who tend to look at YC as a business model and not as the cultural experiment it also is. As I imagine it, the founding insight behind YC isn't so much "let's make a bunch of seed-stage investments" as "let's hack the economy". That, to me, is a fundamental difference. It's also precisely the sort of thing that most non-hackers would overlook.
Does this matter? My guess it is it matters a lot, because identifying good hackers and advising them are two of the most important things that YC does. These skills are not common. YC have them because they are hackers themselves. This also lends a dog-whistle aspect to the whole endeavor. To anyone who's part of the culture or has the mindset, PG's essays and various other things about YC are instantly recognizable and act as a beacon. This feeling of "they're one of us" is precisely what I miss in the clones.
With obvious exceptions, the economic fate of hackers has traditionally been in the hands of people who are not like them and do not understand them. A seed-stage micro-investment mentoring fund started by the one type is not likely to work out the same as a similar-looking fund started by the other. If this were gardening, good hackers might be weird-looking plants that are commonly mistaken for weeds. An unskilled gardener is likely to make two mistakes: either rooting them out (i.e. passing them over in favor of other, perhaps more businessy-looking species) or applying the wrong fertilizer etc. so they fail to thrive (i.e. not knowing how to work with them or help them grow).
One thing that follows from what I'm saying comes close to a prediction: if the essence of YC has more to do with a new investment model, then copies of that investment model should follow a similar course. But if it has more to do with amplifying the economic value of hackers, then you'd need to look for copies of that, and as far as I know there aren't any.
Incidentally, most hackers probably wouldn't be interested in starting a clone. They'd want to find their own angle instead. I wonder whether Marc Andreesen's new fund isn't closer to YC in spirit.
Does this matter? My guess it is it matters a lot, because identifying good hackers and advising them are two of the most important things that YC does. These skills are not common. YC have them because they are hackers themselves. This also lends a dog-whistle aspect to the whole endeavor. To anyone who's part of the culture or has the mindset, PG's essays and various other things about YC are instantly recognizable and act as a beacon. This feeling of "they're one of us" is precisely what I miss in the clones.
With obvious exceptions, the economic fate of hackers has traditionally been in the hands of people who are not like them and do not understand them. A seed-stage micro-investment mentoring fund started by the one type is not likely to work out the same as a similar-looking fund started by the other. If this were gardening, good hackers might be weird-looking plants that are commonly mistaken for weeds. An unskilled gardener is likely to make two mistakes: either rooting them out (i.e. passing them over in favor of other, perhaps more businessy-looking species) or applying the wrong fertilizer etc. so they fail to thrive (i.e. not knowing how to work with them or help them grow).
One thing that follows from what I'm saying comes close to a prediction: if the essence of YC has more to do with a new investment model, then copies of that investment model should follow a similar course. But if it has more to do with amplifying the economic value of hackers, then you'd need to look for copies of that, and as far as I know there aren't any.
Incidentally, most hackers probably wouldn't be interested in starting a clone. They'd want to find their own angle instead. I wonder whether Marc Andreesen's new fund isn't closer to YC in spirit.