The Aha Moments That Made Y Combinator Possible

This article states that YC is now valued at $13.7 billion. Actually, the cited source credits pg recently saying that is the current valuation of all of the YC startups, not of YC itself.<p>[edited for clarity]

<i>Was Viaweb First?</i><p><a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/first.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.paulgraham.com&#x2F;first.html</a><p><a href="http://ycombinator.com/viaweb" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;ycombinator.com&#x2F;viaweb</a>

I&#x27;m not sure exactly how to say it, but the article didn&#x27;t <i>really</i> take us through the thought process of pg as he &quot;made yc possible&quot;.<p>Two things I&#x27;m interested in hearing more about:<p>1) What was the thinking behind viaweb? yc? How did pg arrive at the decision? Was it as simple as the insights that were mentioned? Were alternatives considered? (Before I started <a href="http://www.collegeanswerz.com/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.collegeanswerz.com&#x2F;</a>, I had a list of hundreds of ideas that I went through before deciding on a website with better college reviews.) If so, what made viaweb&#x2F;yc better than the alternatives? What aspects of viaweb&#x2F;yc were forseen, and which just happened because of luck?<p>2) What was pg thinking he&#x27;d do with his life before viaweb? yc? Before viaweb, it says that he was basically flip flopping between consulting and art. What did he think he&#x27;d do with his life at this point? Any plans? What was he feeling? Excited? Anxious? Bored? What about the 7 years between viaweb and yc? Thoughts and plans about what he&#x27;d do with his life?<p>I know this stuff isn&#x27;t directly related to viaweb and yc, but it&#x27;s useful to know thought processes, rather than just touching on the main insights. You can&#x27;t really learn from insights. You <i>can</i> learn from thought processes.

&quot;Unix, the open-source operating system.&quot; - Really? This mistake speaks very seriously about the author of the article.

&gt; <i>&quot;Then, with enough money saved, [pg] would quit the job and devote his time to his real love—art and painting—until the money ran out, and then he would scramble for another job.&quot;</i><p>PG, is that what you do between YC batches? When will we get to see some of your paintings? :)

Did pg really invent backend web development?

I am disappointed by this article. It made such a big deal about PG hating to work with Windows, and reduced the innovation of web applications to a way to not work in Windows.<p>Really?<p>Clearly the whole point was to get away from developing desktop applications, and realizing the single-source, rapid development nature of web apps.<p>Please don&#x27;t tell me that developing client apps on Windows was so much worse then doing it on Linux. Its bullshit. Overfocusing on this aspect of the story feels like platform fanboyism, misses the real point, and just overall kind of cheapens PG&#x27;s stellar image.

<i>Over the years, evolving in its own way, Y Combinator has continued to grow at an astounding rate. It is valued now at $13.7 billion, with the clear potential for further growth.</i><p>Ignoring the mistake of valuing YC at $13.7B instead of its companies, here&#x27;s a crazy idea: I wonder when we&#x27;ll see YC go for an IPO?

From the comments, it often seems that there are a lot of HN readers who really like Windows as an OS.<p>Is it true that &quot;distaste for Windows&quot; was a motivating factor behind Viaweb?<p>For me, Windows was an enormous itch. I scratched it with UNIX. Thank you, Redmond, for the motivation.