My pessimism in startups is how much its been gamified. Ycombinator has essentially created a class of people who are now chasing their achievements (unicorn status, Series A, B, C etc...) and the startup is only a means to that end.<p>This leads to a rat race by which instead of making the best product to solve the problem they originally intended, they try to market their company as best as possible to VCs.<p>The idea was always build something impactful and make it as profitable as possible via fulfilling your company's mission. You can see the ramifications already in the last 2-3 rounds of startups, all of them looking for easy money "uber for X" "AI for Y"...