newaccount4434

I somewhat recently learned about the propaganda from the FBI in the 60's and 70's to discourage hitchhiking. (possibly a covert assault on civil rights protesters hitching to rallies) It's easy to be scared of failure, suffering or what can go wrong... but not everyone is excited about what could go right.

Ultimately, I believe a big reason why hitchhiking is not very prevalent is that both the cost of air travel and vehicle ownership has gone down significantly over time. (adjusted for inflation)

Listen to the AirBnB story on the podcast "How I built this". Before YC, nobody wanted to invest in AirBnB and the company wasn't profitable. YC is how founders find ideas (in the case of Reddit) or refine them. (in the case of AirBnB) In the end, the short time offered in YC allows founders to create the minimum viable product and start to or continue to gain users. The fact that so many companies gain some form of investment shows that YC is a success! Some companies may eventually fail, but YC is a success.