I noticed that too. I think the article brought up a good (and real) point that YC does use these young founders as fodder to find gold, but the author definitely does mischaracterize YC’s viewpoint on generating startup ideas. At least from what I’ve read from YC on the topic.
I noticed that too. I think the article brought up a good (and real) point that YC does use these young founders as fodder to find gold, but the author definitely does mischaracterize YC’s viewpoint on generating startup ideas. At least from what I’ve read from YC on the topic.
Paul Graham founder of YC: "Why do so many founders build things no one wants? Because they begin by trying to think of startup ideas. That m.o. is doubly dangerous: it doesn't merely yield few good ideas; it yields bad ideas that sound plausible enough to fool you into working on them."
That whole essay is a brainstorming process. Look, did Paul Graham go for a long walk and came up with Airbnb? Did he sit under the shower for an hour and thought of Dropbox? Did he do all the things he mentions in the essay and came up with Stripe?
No of course not. Because he lacks imagination. Not because he has a disability; we all lack imagination. All those ideas came to him from the outside; from random chance encounters. One minute Stripe was nowhere on his radar, the next minutes it was a lightbulb moment.
That’s the inconsistency I’m describing. You can only engineer good ideas as much as having a good idea generator. All the thinking about real problems and what users want is merely a selection criteria for those ideas, not the source of the ideas.
Why do you describe YC founders as "fodder to find gold", when they're getting 125K liquid money for equity that has almost zero present value? They're ENABLING the founders to dig for gold while still being able to afford rent and food. Without seed investments the founders would be digging for gold with their own money, drinking soylent every meal.
I noticed that too. I think the article brought up a good (and real) point that YC does use these young founders as fodder to find gold, but the author definitely does mischaracterize YC’s viewpoint on generating startup ideas. At least from what I’ve read from YC on the topic.
Check out the transcript for https://www.ycombinator.com/library/8g-how-to-get-startup-ideas
It's perfectly consistent with what I wrote.
Paul Graham founder of YC: "Why do so many founders build things no one wants? Because they begin by trying to think of startup ideas. That m.o. is doubly dangerous: it doesn't merely yield few good ideas; it yields bad ideas that sound plausible enough to fool you into working on them."
https://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html
That whole essay is a brainstorming process. Look, did Paul Graham go for a long walk and came up with Airbnb? Did he sit under the shower for an hour and thought of Dropbox? Did he do all the things he mentions in the essay and came up with Stripe?
No of course not. Because he lacks imagination. Not because he has a disability; we all lack imagination. All those ideas came to him from the outside; from random chance encounters. One minute Stripe was nowhere on his radar, the next minutes it was a lightbulb moment.
That’s the inconsistency I’m describing. You can only engineer good ideas as much as having a good idea generator. All the thinking about real problems and what users want is merely a selection criteria for those ideas, not the source of the ideas.
Why do you describe YC founders as "fodder to find gold", when they're getting 125K liquid money for equity that has almost zero present value? They're ENABLING the founders to dig for gold while still being able to afford rent and food. Without seed investments the founders would be digging for gold with their own money, drinking soylent every meal.