What's so special about Y Combinator?

I attended one of the earlier "Startup School" events a few years ago at Harvard. Unfortunately, things didn't work out for my startup concept (I ended up working for the government, of all things), but I found the meeting inspiring.<p>Here I was, a twenty something attending a free conference, sitting a few feet away from and talk to Steve Wozniak. A few minutes later, I'm in the middle of a fascinating conversation with Chris Sacca, only to head back into the lecture hall to listen to a really impressive series of speakers with alot of passion and great ideas.<p>Honestly, it was an amazing event, and pg managed to assemble a great group of really approachable and interesting folks on a Saturday afternoon. I found it inspiring, and while I'm not involved with them at all, it sounds like YCombinator is an institution that makes a meeting like that happen everyday.

It's funny, I so frequently forget that Y Combinator is not just news.ycombinator.com. Even how I word that makes me chuckle as I realize how contrary to reality it is. For me YC is simply a content aggregator that with a remarkable accuracy and consistency delivers content that I'm interested in, that I find relevant. Oh, it also is some kind of investment firm on the side I guess, or something--whatever.<p>Ironically, it seems the core of YC--the essence that make it so valuable is the same from either Kleppmann's [an entrepreneur emphasis on YC] or my own[emphasis on news.yc] perspective. It comes down to the community of smart and intelligent people. More specifically to the openness and sharing of knowledge and idea's between those people. It seems like it could be all to easy to want to horde the secrets of one's experiences and success. To keep to themselves those secrets of wisdom to avoid competition and rivalry. Instead, we see sharing of the information--fine detailed analysis of mistakes and success to encourage and help others to achieve or avoid success and pitfalls. It's like there is a general good will intention for furthering and advancing the industry as a whole. I really like that.

It probably sounds wishy-washy and hard to quantify, but I really think the "goodness" of the people in YC -- both the partners and the vast majority of the founders they fund -- is a hugely undervalued advantage of the program.

A fixed point combinator (or fixpoint combinator[1] ) is a higher-order function that computes a fixed point of other functions. A fixed point of a function f is a value x such that f(x) = x. For example, 0 and 1 are fixed points of the function f(x) = x2, because 02 = 0 and 12 = 1. Whereas a fixed-point of a first-order function (a function on "simple" values such as integers) is a first-order value, a fixed point of a higher-order function f is another function p such that f(p) = p. A fixed point combinator, then, is a function g which produces such a fixed point p for any function f:<p><pre><code> p = g(f), f(p) = p </code></pre> or, alternatively:<p><pre><code> f(g(f)) = g(f). </code></pre> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_point_combinator" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_point_combinator</a>

Thanks for sharing this, Martin. I agree. But let me play a devil advocate and ask you question. Take a look at the history of the biggest startup hits like Microsoft, Google, Facebook, etc. Do you really think that investor matters in these cases? Why?

Martin, you hit on a key point that doesn't get enough attention:<p>"When we talk to YC, no matter whether we have good news or bad news, chances are that they’ve seen the situation before, and their pattern-matching will enable them to make good predictions."<p>YC created the accelerator model that many others are adapting/imitating. YC's experience with all kinds of situations gives it yet another advantage over its young competitors (alumni network and support being the top one IMO).

"Y Combinator takes 2–10% of your company’s equity. How do you figure out whether the value you get from YC is worth the cost?"<p>I am surprised the figure is that low. For the incredibly amount of contacts, experience and general help you get I was expecting atleast 20-30%.

Reading articles like this makes it obvious that Y Combinator is a very special group of people (investors and starters). That being said, I'm always a little skeptical when one of many groups in a field is supposed to be superior in every single way. My question therefore would be what comes close and how close are they?

I'm still looking for more blog entries about the Y Combinator interview experience for my site: <a href="http://ycuniverse.com/interviewees.php" rel="nofollow">http://ycuniverse.com/interviewees.php</a><p>If anybody has links to such articles, please forward me the links.

<i>[YC partners are] outspoken, honest, straight-to-the-point and totally bullshit-free.</i><p><i>You can...get encouragement from them in hard times.</i><p>I'm wondering if the first ever interferes with the second? E.g., if you worked hard on something and they tell you it's not good.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned -- the philosophical underpinnings of entrepreneurship surrounding the Y Combinator organization. This is actually a big <i>material</i> advantage, provided there's also execution.

What makes YCombinator special is draining away. I've been reading YCombinator since when most of YCombinator's submissions got 0 to 1 or 3 comments throughout its life on the front page.<p>The millions of reddit and digg users are spending more time on this site and I can see the influence literally increasing every month. By November 2011 the front page of YCombinator will look the same as digg looked back in 2006 and 2007. Ycombinator will have hundreds of thousands of voters, and the lulz will get more upvotes then sophisticated discussion.<p>The only way to stop it will be to forcefully regulate it, a system like they have over at stackoverflow seems to be working. If YCombinator doesn't implement something like this. Then YCombinator will have to find a new domain name, and only tell the constructive users what it is.