This comment has also been made pretty much every batch.
Trotting out companies that were picked before the growth strategy was implemented as evidence that the growth strategy is a good idea doesn't make sense.
Dropbox and Airbnb were massively successfully with in 2-3 years. What are the big successes from 2013 to the present?
Dropbox and Airbnb were massively successfully with in 2-3 years.
That's debatable. They both went a long time struggling to get growth and big funding in the first few years, and (particularly for Airbnb) it was more like year 4 when they became mainstream hits.
What are the big successes from 2013 to the present?
Magic, Myo & Teespring are some of the more promising ones.
And if you take it back to 2012 you have Crowdtilt, Instacart and Coinbase.
And going right back through the batches you have dozens of companies that are doing very well - servicing big markets, generating big revenues, employing many people, making good returns for investors - but you don't know them because they're not mass market brands.
And as for Zenefits; yes they deserve criticism, but they're still a formidable company with big revenues and a strong leadership team and I'd expect them to survive and do very well long term.
But the main point remains: it's the easiest thing in the world to scoff at a bunch of nascent companies presenting themselves to the world for the first time after a few months' work.
And you will always be about 95%-100% right when you judge a whole batch of startups as trivial and doomed to failure or mediocrity.
But that says precisely nothing about the effectiveness of YC's strategy.
YC has been actively seeking to grow as fast as it could since 2009-2010, and was funding over 70 companies in a batch as early as 2012, then they scaled back in 2013 after experiencing growing pains.
Plenty of well-known companies have come through in that time eg, Pebble, Stripe, Firebase, Parse, Crowdtilt, Coinbase, Instacart.
Cruise went through YC in 2014, after the time you (inaccurately) assert was the beginning of the "growth strategy".
BTW when Criuse first hit HN, commenters were generally nonplussed or critical [1], just as they had been with Justin.tv (some dude with a camera on his head??) and then Twitch (watching other people play video games??).
From the dude with a camera on his head to Twitch's $1Bn exit took 8 years, and even at year 7 people didn't think it was a winner [2].
I would love to start a multi-billion dollar startup like Zenefits and have the career that Parker Conrad has. He is LOLing all the way to the bank and his cushy consultant/VC job.
The number of people in the NY media establishment getting paid a reasonable wage to write stuff that people aren't reading is a few orders of magnitude smaller than it was even five years ago, and in another five years it will be zero.
Uh no. While revenues and thus hiring have certainly dropped, it is by no means on a few orders of magnitude. I'd be surprised if it were even on a single order of magnitude. Even the newspaper I worked at that is in much more dire straights compared to 10 years ago is about a third its size.
Besides new online outlets, legacy companies are still chugging along. Starting wage for a reporter at the New York Times is around $70K last I heard (too lazy to look up the union site)
I think you misread my comment. I wasn't saying that the entire NY media establishment is approaching zero employees. I was strictly speaking of the classic "guy who gets paid to write stuff that nobody reads because it's good for the community/country/brand/whatever, while people on some other beat bring in the eyeballs and pay the bills." That's the population that's shrinking really fast.
We have alot of tools to show off my progress (I've mentioned elsewhere in the thread), none of it seems to resonate. Basically facts don't resonate, and this seems like a "soft" skill issue.
Because of our baby, i'm often up at crazy hours, the guys joke regularly about my 4am Slack comments on the business and that I must not sleep at all. This makes it even more baffling that my commitment is being questioned.
For better or worse this sets you up for a lot of pain over life. If it's all about putting up with BS to make money, go work for an investment bank, hedge fund or High Frequency Trading firm. :-)
They say their contribution is making sales. It's a similar issue where, do I know at, say 2:37pm on a Wednesday, they are talking to a customer? I don't, but I trust that they are. My issue is getting them to trust that I'm doing the same.
No amount Slack comment content/timestamps, github commits content/timestamps, website features that get added seem to be able to clue them in to level of effort.
They are making sales, on the phone, emailing. Its hard to argue about because of the few measurables (10 total sales in 3 months). Just like me, they claim they are pulling their own weight. The problem is I believe them and they don't believe me.
I can point out involvement on Slack, where I am super engaged to everyone who posts and in contrast, they respond haphazardly if at all, but this gets petty.
This comment has also been made pretty much every batch.
Trotting out companies that were picked before the growth strategy was implemented as evidence that the growth strategy is a good idea doesn't make sense.
Dropbox and Airbnb were massively successfully with in 2-3 years. What are the big successes from 2013 to the present?