Frighteningly Unambitious Startup Ideas

"If I were Paul Graham, these types of companies simply would not satisfy me (despite what look to be very lucrative payoffs)."<p>That's hilarious, because I'm the one who wrote all the summaries of the startups that she's judging them by. I deliberately express startup ideas as x for y whenever possible because that's the most efficient way to describe a startup in a few words. Airbnb, for example, was in its day "eBay for space."<p>On Demo Day we accompany each startup's name with a brief summary of what they're doing. The goal of these summaries is not to convey the full breadth of a startup's eventual ambitions, or even what they're currently doing, but just to help investors watching 65 presentations remember which company is doing what. TechCrunch reused these descriptions, as reporters often do. And now this woman has read the summaries printed in TechCrunch and is treating them as if that were all there was to know about the startup. It's like a game of Telephone (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_whispers" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_whispers</a>).<p>My standard advice to startups presenting to investors is that it's better to start with an overly narrow description of what you do, so that investors at least know what you're talking about, and then expand from there.<p>See <a href="http://paulgraham.com/investors.html" rel="nofollow">http://paulgraham.com/investors.html</a>, particularly items 1 and 14.<p>It's surprising to me that someone who wasn't even at Demo Day would feel confident enough to judge the startups' originality based on the 3-5 word summaries we use on the schedule to help investors keep them straight in their heads.<p>I was about to say that it's also surprising that people would upvote such a post. But on reflection it's not that surprising.

Paul Graham said don't attack the problem head on. Make a beachhead. Supposedly these seemingly dull ideas are beachheads.<p>That was covered in a previous HN discussion about a similar article questioning YC startup ideas in practice.<p>But something like Dropbox seems to have a hard time scaling out, exploring other ideas, and that's with a founder who wants to build a big company like Apple.<p>Even if you start with a beachhead, it should be one that can grow. Apple started with a PC, to grow they made more and better PCs. Microsoft/Gates started with BASIC then pivoted drastically to an idea that could grow, an OS for PCs. What will Dropbox grow or pivot to in order to be an Apple size company? Hard to imagine backups for teams or iCloud but OS independent will be the ticket.

X for Y, where X = "Airbnb" and Y = "Large existing market poorly served by technology", is in fact a good shorthand for "frighteningly ambitious".<p>Literally. Airbnb is a frighteningly ambitious company. It is explosively generating value and we don't know how it's going to play out long term. It could end up with us living in caves with dogs watching out for the Terminators.<p>It is hard for me to take the rest of the article seriously after it suggests that "Airbnbing" auto mechanics is unambitious. It's possible that <i>most</i> Americans have routine car service done at dealerships where they're being routinely fleeced, and that the current crappy system of servicing vehicles is driving talent either out of the businesses or to those giant dealership shops. Have you ever tried to find a reliable mechanic? I drive an old Audi. It's painful.

The reason why I think that it is difficult to say a frighteningly ambitious startup idea is actually something that is expected to come through YC, is that the funding that YC provides is miniscule, and will cover hardly an annual salary for a single, accomplished person who has a lot of domain knowledge in a field they may want to disrupt.<p>As someone in the medical space who is 37, married with 2 kids - My salary is more than the funding of YC - and I would not be able to take ~150K and divide it among multiple founders -- let alone have that funding cover, you know, actual startup expenses.<p>I feel I am in this catch-22 limbo area -- too old and too ambitious of an idea to fit the YC mold.<p>Personally, I see YC as being fairly myopic in the type of people they fund, and it is frustrating because I think YC is incredible!<p>Sure, there are tons of opportunities for nifty apps that serve a silo of a need (even if that silo is infinitely deep) -- but the idea I have to revolutionize the hospital space can't feasibly be built on 150K - unless I take that funding whilst retaining my full time job to pay for me and have that 150K go directly to the product.

Even Twitter wouldn't sound ambitious if you say "we are group SMS for the world".<p>To better understand how ambitious a startup is, assume that its adoption is 100%. If everyone is using it, does it change lives? If everyone chats on Twitter, does it impact politics? If everyone is on Facebook, do you reconnect with old friends? Etc. Dropbox is in that category too.<p>With used cars purchases, I can see how everyone would use the site, and still not have any meaningful impact. Cheaper cars. More efficient market. But still, in the end, cheaper cars. Am I missing something?

Those who disparage "X for Y" descriptions misunderstand their use. When you have only a few minutes (or seconds) to pitch your idea, being <i>X for Y</i> or <i>the X of Y</i> is an effective way to give people the gist and pique their interest. Only then does it make sense to go into more detail and explain the full scope of your ambitions.

I had the exact same reaction when reading coverage of the demo day. Hopefully the ideas seem underwhelming because of the last part of Paul Graham's essay. In the "tactics" section he says, "If you want to take on a problem as big as the ones I've discussed, don't make a direct frontal attack on it." Maybe these YCombinator startups actually do have ambitious ideas, but they're starting out with something small and seemingly unimportant. Maybe in five years some of these companies will be reinventing education and communication.

Ideas change. Apple didn't start with iPhone or iPad. They started with the Apple I, which was just a circuit board. Microsoft didn't start with Windows 7. They started with BASIC for the Altair. Paypal didn't start with online payments. They started as money transfer between PDAs.<p>As for the criticism about "X for Y", the problem is not with them, but with the rest of us. Most people (smart or not) have a hard time grasping completely original ideas, and they don't have the time to dive deep into it. "X for Y" is simply a low bandwidth way of transferring a core idea. It's the MVP of communicating your vision. If you have to take more than a sentence to convey your idea/startup, you're going to have a hard hard uphill battle. But chances are, you don't have a clear understanding of what problem you're solving.

"With the press these companies are getting, I expect they will make investors and founding teams a hefty profit, but they certainly do not speak to me as signs of brilliant, innovative thinking."<p>This is something I've seen several times, I don't believe anyone has shown that 'press coverage' was a causative agent in a successful exit. I believe 'delivering a useful product' (which happens to generate press coverage as a side effect) is the missing piece here.<p>You want a brain dead stupid IOs App I would buy that is derivative? Instapaper for Printers. Which is to say I would love an App where I could launch it on my iPad and then 'print' to it across the network from my Mac or Windows machine. I don't care if it dropped the printout into iBooks or created its own 'space' (I could imagine a designer would have fun with the old 20th century printout distribution bins). But basically there are times when I wish I could print something out and then read it on the road later. It was a capability discussed for the old Plastic Logic Reader that never saw the light of day.<p>And yes, I still do 'listings' when I'm studying old code or dumping a bunch of numbers and charts.

A problem I see with many of these ideas is what I would call the profitability mirage. The general belief is that the flow is: $founder-&#62;getStartup()-&#62;iterate()-&#62;getUsers()-&#62;monetize(), with a AcquiredException thrown somewhere in one of those method calls.<p>The problem is that so many of these startup ideas (that don't happily see an AcquiredException before monetize() is called) will fail at the monetize step because there is steep competition in many of these markets right now, and the burgeoning startup mentality means that someone else is probably doing exactly what you do, slightly better or worse, but they're at a point in their business cycle that they don't need to call monetize() just yet. Thus, you may have a mass exodus of users at precisely the point where you try and bring your ARPU above zero.

I'm not sure what the value of this post is? Would you honestly expect every company or even every demo day to contain a frighteningly ambitious idea? And if they were frighteningly, scarily ambitious, would TC really hype them? The sane response seems to be to write them off instead as far too ambitious.<p>I guess I just don't get what the skepticism here brings to the table? I'm open to input about that.

&#62; I feel confident in assuming Steve Jobs didn’t pitch OS X by saying “It’s like Windows for Apple Computers.”<p>Um, maybe not, but Bill Gates definitely pitched Windows as like a Mac, but for IBM compatible PCs. Seems like a bad example.

This was exactly my thoughts when reading the demo-day list. I wonder how pg reconciles this? Seems like an emerging strategic weakness for YC.

I think this is another in a long series of articles that mistakes the press coverage for the vision. When journalists say "we're x for y" that's their way of conveying the information <i>in a way that makes sense to us</i>, by relating it to something we already understand (at least usually: I've seen TechCrunch use increasingly esoteric examples for "x" of late).<p>In some cases the companies themselves use that line in their pitch. This isn't surprising, given that it's such a fast and powerful way to give people a rough idea of what you're doing and how short each presentation at YC demo day is.<p>But that doesn't change the fact that in either case, this is just <i>shorthand</i> and isn't reflective of the grand vision of any of these companies.

Myspace for Harvard students.

The “we’re X for Y” is awesome because it is a simple, powerful positioning. That's also why it can be misunderstood so easily.<p>The same model is used in pitching screenplays and movies. Alien, famously, was pitched as "Jaws in space". It works because it sticks, but doesn't define the field (the plot etc) too much. Similarly, startups using the “we’re X for Y” are giving themselves a quick mental positioning in the mind of the listener, but without carving an exact niche. It is easier to work up or broaden from defining the idea ('the beachhead') that way.<p>The way to misunderstand it is think that they mean to do exactly that. "What, they're taking a giant shark onto a spaceship?"

There was a TC post encouraging startups to pitch their slogan in a concise format which did not follow the x for y pattern. In a few more words they mostly avoided the problem you are presenting here.<p><a href="http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/30/startups-give-us-your-best-one-sentence-pitch/" rel="nofollow">http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/30/startups-give-us-your-best-...</a><p>I thought that most of them did quite well even if some ideas were unambitious even when presented in this manner.

The problem is press coverage. The press needs to be able to write a story. In order to write that story, they have to understand (quickly) what they are writing about and deliver it to readers in a way they can understand (quickly). So if someone demo's a way for doctors to track medical records and an algorithm that uses all of this data to improve point of care diagnostics, what do you call that in a headline? Google for Doctors?<p>The reason why I bring the medical example up is because there is a team here that has a frighteningly ambitious start up (not idea yet). Medigram is a stacked team that is going after the medical industry in a way that no one else wants to. Starting with a messaging app that complies with regulators, they are planting the seed of trust with the medical industry. When they move up to records, they get data. When they get data, they use that math heavy team to solve the ambitious idea of making diagnosis more accurate. Then who knows? A tiny pill that you can swallow that transmits blood test data back to a central server and diagnose your issues instantly? I don't know, but they had to start somewhere.

Unambitious startup ideas can be conjured up by a small team and sold to a big company later with hardly any up front dollars. If you want ambitious you should look outside the realm of 100% tech startups. Specifically, you should look in the food/tech realm - but don't look at the worthless calorie counters.<p>Disclaimer: I work for a struggling startup in the food/tech realm.

Cool article! I think a broader question raised is one I have thought about a lot: what is the optimum trade-off between narrow clarity of function/purpose and broad ambition/expansiveness/spread of features? On the one hand: we obviously admire and use things that are ambitious and full-featured (google, facebook, etc. etc. etc.) On the other hand though: HS points out that the narrowed "X for Y" model makes a better YC pitch... but more importantly, it might make a better consumer pitch. E.g. sometimes I wonder why I don't use wolfram alpha more often... and I think one of the answers is that I don't quite know what it does. It possibly covers TOO much area and I might- at a moment of quick snap judgement- pick the far more limited service with the easily comprehensible/memorable single feature claim... Thoughts?

The hard ones don't get press for years. Look at upvertr, sure it could be described as git + electronic software + parts sourcing, but it will take them a while to build this to the point where everyone will see how amazing and useful it is.

I fail to see why companies that make money would fail to satisfy an investor?<p>Is there something about the YC model that makes companies that go on to turn modest profits not generate returns for the investor?<p>A business like Wal-Mart wouldn't satisfy you as an investor? I wouldn't have any problems taking 8% of Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart didn't invent anything new, they just did it a little bit better than their competitors. Techcrunch 1969: "Wal-Mart: Sears for people who like to pay less"<p>Impressive algorithms don't make money, businesses that satisfy customers do. You're not going to 'change the world' unless your customers are happy.

Let's just imagine the one-liner of the big companies today: - Google: Yahoo with PageRank - Facebook: Friendster for colleges - Dropbox: Files sharing made easy - Yelp: User reviews for restaurants<p>All ideas seem small and narrow at the start. It is true that you should recognize the possible direction the startup could go, but as PG said before, it is important to first make something that a group of users really really love. From there, you start growing into something bigger. The main point is that you may not know what it will grow and evolve to when you first start the company.

Don't forget that Airbnb once pitched themselves as "EBay for space", just as Your Mechanic now dub themselves the "Airbnb for car repair"<p>What once seemed like a niche, unambitious company now is frighteningly ambitious.

Be aware, you've linked directly to the home page of your tumblr instead of linking to the post itself. Your HN submission will become very confusing after you make another tumblr post.

"If I were Paul Graham, these types of companies simply would not satisfy me (despite what look to be very lucrative payoffs)"<p>There's a difference in investing in companies expecting some kind of a return and throwing money at really ambitious ideas in the hope that one of those gets really successful. I cannot see how investing carefully and getting returns (ie. making money) is not satisfying.

This is delirious. The OP should have just read pg's essay on how to apply to Y Combinator. He clearly explains there (and here again) why the X for Y representation helps in getting a foothold.<p>Also, what does OP expect founders to do? Declare their complete vision beforehand to impress the audience. The purpose of a vision is not to get popular with the tech press, but to guide the founders.

A wise man once said "Nothing is original. There is nothing new under the Sun. It's never what you do but how it's done".<p>While I agree that saying "My Product X is like Y on steroids" is somewhat unoriginal and maybe even uninspiring, the simple fact is that every idea is pretty much an evolution of a previous idea.<p>That being said, I'm not to sure what the point of the article was :)

I think the idea of describing a startup as "like X for Y" is OK for some but in general I agree that it comes across as not being particularly innovative. I think it makes sense to give prospects a frame of reference for an offering but there are other ways of doing it aside from defining your entire company in comparison to another one.

We've been told countless times that the only thing VC's will fund is ideas that are already being done. The reason's given are so when the entire niche fails they can point and say "see, everyone else failed, its not our fault." The reason nothing innovative is ever done is because no one is willing to take the risks.

it's be good if somebody with powers could change the link to the permalink instead of the base blog url: <a href="http://ardenthoughts.tumblr.com/post/20053064127/frighteningly-un-ambitious-startup-ideas" rel="nofollow">http://ardenthoughts.tumblr.com/post/20053064127/frightening...</a>

I don't think anyone can realistically expect to find a google-scale diamond in the rough at every single YC batch. "Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas" I suppose is about a process of collective unconscious iteration that would yield such a diamond every 5 or 10 years.

FTA: I feel confident in assuming Steve Jobs didn’t pitch OS X by saying “It’s like Windows for Apple Computers.”<p>True, although Windows was originally pitched as "it's like the Macintosh OS for IBM PC-compatibles."

I dont think PG's essay had anything to do with his investment thesis or rather its the not the most important thing he looks for.<p>The ideas he backs are basically about the team.

the only problem with this post is that Google was like Yahoo but that search actually worked, Microsoft was like IBM (the software bits) but software for the masses. There are a lot of counterexamples where starting with something existing provides a beachhead for the ambitious.

If you can't pitch your business as x for y you haven't boiled down your idea enough yet.

I'll take being "Siri on Steroids".

Well everybody has an opinion, and a choice to tread on a path that feels "right". For a moment you might think these ideas are unambitious, but when you dig-deep you'll discover a lot of gems underneath. One wouldn't expect a frightening execution, speak or quality within six months of a startup.<p>That's probably a picture only big daddies like Apple can show to the world. For example on another thread you can already see DuckDuckGo revealing their ambitious face after a perceivable unambitious journey of two years!<p>Also another thing that probably we all miss is that the next big thing might not necessarily be anything from the ones ever listed - ambitious or unambitious. None of the big names like Facebook or Google or Apple were frighteningly ambitious ideas to the world until they kicked butts of everyone.<p>On second part: Suggestions on choosing a worthwhile domain name is really nice, but looking at how much has been squatted out there, there doesn't seem much of a choice or harm with the current trend of choosing twin word names.<p>There are fewer cheap options at disposal of entrepreneurs and so it is for the rest of the world.