[HN Gopher] The YC Founder Directory
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The YC Founder Directory
Author : sandslash
Score : 174 points
Date : 2023-01-05 16:00 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ycombinator.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ycombinator.com)
| tcgv wrote:
| Nice tool.
|
| I searched entries for my University and the data needs some
| cleansing:
|
| - Universidade de Sao Paulo [11]
|
| - Universidade de Sao Paulo (USP) [8]
|
| - University of Sao Paulo [4]
|
| - Escola Politecnica da Universidade de Sao Paulo [3]
|
| All of these refer to the same University. The last one is one of
| the University's engineering schools.
| newuser94303 wrote:
| Lots like this University of Calgary 9 The University of
| Calgary 4
| greggarious wrote:
| Sounds like the kind of thing someone at Waterloo could
| stretch out for a summer coop ;-)
|
| (Imagine the end of term meeting. "What did you do at
| ycombinator? Regex? Tell me about _that_.")
| aliqot wrote:
| That's a little scary. Any way to opt out of being included in
| that? I'm probably not the target market for YC, but if I were,
| this would run me off. I don't want to be known, I just want
| people to enjoy the stuff I make and for that enjoyment to be
| quantified in USD.
| rdl wrote:
| They emailed months ago asking if people wanted to opt out; it
| was a concern but I suspect the vast majority of people both
| want to be in it AND are already trivially googleable as being
| in YC.
| benatkin wrote:
| > That's a little scary.
|
| It's an awful lot like AngelList.
|
| > Any way to opt out of being included in that?
|
| I think there probably is. It might even be opt-in. How do you
| get people to opt in? Have them check their information is
| correct and remind them to until it's launched.
| capableweb wrote:
| It is opt-in:
|
| > We're also enabling any YC company to opt into having their
| YC application video, written application answers, and Demo
| Day video public on the YC Startup Directory
| SpeedilyDamage wrote:
| It's almost certainly opt-out for founders, I would be very
| surprised if they individually went back and got permission
| from every founder for the past decade before creating
| this.
|
| I see someone I _know_ would have said no if asked, for
| example, as their time at YC was pretty awful and resulted
| in what they consider to be shameful failure.
| benatkin wrote:
| Yeah, that sounds right, and I don't agree with making it
| opt-out. I think it should be opt-in and like you am now
| almost completely certain that it isn't.
| antipotoad wrote:
| Maybe it's a lack of imagination, but I can't think of
| why any kind of YC experience should be shameful,
| provided lessons were learned and no one ended up in
| jail.
|
| That said, I still agree it should be opt-in.
| SpeedilyDamage wrote:
| He had to drop out due to still-unresolved mental health
| issues, and the source of his shame is mostly that he
| didn't deal with those issues earlier, and still isn't
| dealing with them now.
| aliqot wrote:
| I'm mainly concerned about the listing of me as a person at
| all, not the materials.
| capableweb wrote:
| But if you chose to incorporate and run a company in the
| US as YC requires, and participate in their program,
| you'd be "public" regardless, in various forms.
| ignoramous wrote:
| There's _being in public_ , and there's being _put on a
| pedestal_ (:
| quartesixte wrote:
| As far as I can see, choosing to become a founder in YC
| and succeeding at it requires a bit of desire for the
| limelight.
| benatkin wrote:
| Not necessarily. With young startups, the only available
| position for a role is often "Founder". A developer could
| simply want to work on a project and see where it goes,
| and the only way would be to become a founder.
| [deleted]
| alexgrover wrote:
| If you're not the target market, why do you care?
| maest wrote:
| First they came for the YC founders, and I did not speak
| out...
| nkotov wrote:
| There is an option for YC founders to not be publicly listed.
| cameroncooper wrote:
| Founders can opt-out, though it looks like there's little
| control on what information is shared publicly.
| paxys wrote:
| Why is it scary? There is an option to opt out, but marketing
| and networking are two of the main reasons people join YC in
| the first place. No founder is saying no to this.
| greggarious wrote:
| >Why is it scary? There is an option to opt out, but
| marketing and networking are two of the main reasons people
| join YC in the first place. No founder is saying no to this.
|
| Probably because in an age of targeting phish paired with
| browsers that strain to run whatever JavaScript or whatever
| you hurl at them, the founders are rightfully concerned
| someone who'd be stopped by the secretary can slam their
| inbox because they misticked some box.
|
| (But what do I know? I'm a venture socialist slamming lattes
| in the museum when everyone else is at work.)
| johnmaguire wrote:
| I think there might be a disconnect here. The Founder
| Directory doesn't appear to offer a way to contact founders
| (besides social media links.)
| neilv wrote:
| > _For prospective founders who are looking for inspiring
| leaders, here is a way to discover founders who have had
| experiences that reflect your own and learn more about their
| founder journey._
|
| I'd guess a directory of 10,000 YC alumni could be awesome, if
| you're a new YC founder doing B2B sales cold calls.
|
| (YC might connect their _current /recent_ startups to each other.
| But this could help you put shoe to the pavement, and knock on
| many more YC alumni doors, where you have the name of a likely
| well-placed person, and a small "in" with them. Unless that's
| frowned-upon.)
| majani wrote:
| Interesting trends that pop out at first glance:
|
| 1. Seems like YC is all aboard the B2B SaaS train. This is funny
| because early last decade B2B SaaS was known as mostly a
| lifestyle business category, while investors focused on consumer
| facing tech and big ticket enterprise products
|
| 2. It appears that the big tech employee track and the startup
| track are one and the same now. This flies in the face of the
| common wisdom that entrepreneurs and employees are very different
| from one another.
| tptacek wrote:
| It's a funding process that appears to somewhat deliberately
| mimic the process for applying to postsecondary school, so the
| frequent school connections are unsurprising.
|
| (I didn't meaningfully attend college at all and am in this
| directory.)
| welder wrote:
| Cool, it's a round-about way to search YC companies based on HQ
| location:
|
| https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/founders?yc_locations=...
| jasfi wrote:
| The Startup Directory points to the Founder Directory as well.
| gist wrote:
| Yes that is actually https://www.ycombinator.com/companies
| emptysea wrote:
| Search is really quick and a look under the covers shows it's
| using algolia + s3 for images
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| To be fair, if you manage to make search slow for a database
| with ~10,000 entries, you're doing something very strange. Even
| allowing for egregious post-sizes of 100Kb/entry, that's less
| than 1 Gb. A raspberry pi could keep the database in RAM with
| room to spare.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| Full text search is tricky no matter how small the dataset
| is. But yes the speed should be instantaneous as long as you
| use standard FTS solutions.
| paxys wrote:
| It really isn't. You could have implemented this site using
| a single MySQL LIKE query and it would have been equally
| performant. Or even download the full dataset to the client
| on page load and do the search locally in JavaScript. The
| problems all arise when you need to scale.
| Alex3917 wrote:
| It is quick, but it also looks faster than it is because of the
| way they're animating the rows as you type. At the end of the
| day it's still taking the full 300ms or whatever to load the
| images from S3, and without all the extra jitter it would look
| kind of janky.
| BillSaysThis wrote:
| UX is strange. I searched for a founder friend and he has
| multiple companies listed but clicking on his image or anywhere
| in the result row just opens the page for an old company.
| [deleted]
| breck wrote:
| I am not in there, even though I did YC twice. My 2 classes are
| the 2 most valuable classes of all time. Coincidence?
|
| But they banned me.
|
| "Make something people want...that the censors approve of."
| capableweb wrote:
| Were you actually accepted to any of the batches? If so, which
| ones?
|
| Browsing some of your submissions (https://news.ycombinator.com
| /from?site=twitter.com/breckyuni...), it seems like there are
| two sides to the story of your battle with YC, where we only
| currently can read about one (your side).
| breck wrote:
| > Were you actually accepted to any of the batches? If so,
| which ones?
|
| Yes. I was in the Airbnb batch (when it was called
| airbedandbreakfast.com). I was also in the Stripe batch (when
| it was called /dev/finance).
| capableweb wrote:
| Strange, I don't find anything you have listed in your
| profile for either https://www.ycdb.co/batch/w09 (AirBnb
| batch) or https://www.ycdb.co/batch/s09 (Stripe) but maybe
| you don't have everything you were involved in listed on
| your profile?
| breck wrote:
| Both of them are listed.
|
| PetaSales is my first one (dead, I had a lot to learn).
|
| NudgePad is the second one (acquired by Microsoft in
| 2014).
| [deleted]
| tr33house wrote:
| could you share a bit more? Why were you banned? What did they
| not approve of. As someone who's considered YC, it would be
| great to know some of this
| breck wrote:
| > Why were you banned?
|
| I don't know.
|
| > could you share a bit more?
|
| I still have not been able to get to the bottom of it. My ex
| stole a bunch of money from me, lied like crazy and ran off
| with our two daughters (this part is heart breaking and kills
| me every day). We are in a bitter legal battle (an ironic
| thing is I am ordered to pay her legal bills), and she has
| sadly perjured herself multiple times. She somehow got YC
| involved, and was able to steal $50,000 from my business
| Mercury account. I couldn't believe it, and still haven't
| gotten an explanation or apology from Mercury. I raised
| bloody hell on the forums when that happened, and so I'm
| guessing the ban was related to that. I think it might be a
| cover your ass thing, as they really fucked up that one and
| are probably worried I'll sue (which I may, as I have great
| cause and people have been encouraging me to, but I'd rather
| focus on more positive things in life).
|
| They've done their best to censor me, but luckily there are
| mostly honest people there and many stick up for me. I'll
| keep fighting for the truth.
| OnlineGladiator wrote:
| Can you please send me a link to your story? I started
| looking through your comment history and the first thing I
| noticed was this comment doesn't show up (probably because
| it's a descendant of a flagged comment), and rather than go
| looking for something that may have already been hidden on
| HN I figured I'd just ask.
| dang wrote:
| > this comment doesn't show up (probably because it's a
| descendant of a flagged comment)
|
| Correct - this how HN's software works these days. We
| didn't do anything specific to the thread; it's just that
| users flagged the root comment.
|
| Btw I wasn't part of any internal YC discussions about
| banning anybody but I know and like breck from our time
| in W09 together, I have a lot of experience with this on
| the HN side, and you're unlikely to be able to extract
| the real story from material on the internet.
|
| Speaking generally, there's an asymmetry with stories
| like this: one side can take to the open internet and say
| anything, while the other side can't or won't--and
| sometimes one of the reasons, ironically, is to protect
| that very person.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| One way to view those is to go into your profile and flip
| "showdead" to yes. Careful of the zombies though.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| I'm saying this because I would want someone to tell me
| this if I was going through what you're going through.
|
| Forget YC, the $50k, and your startup right now. It seems
| like you're experiencing mental illness which is distorting
| your ability to see things accurately. 12 weeks ago you
| stated: "Our team is going to radically accelerate the
| cures for cancer in 12 weeks."[0], but there is no team and
| you haven't done that. It seems like delusions of grandeur
| from psychosis, maybe related to pandemic isolation. It's
| apparent to anyone seeing your HN submissions and twitter.
| It's why people from YC are "ghosting" you. You need to
| immediately see a therapist, psychologist, or psychiatrist,
| and get to the bottom of this. Do it for your family. Your
| startup and change-the-world ambitions can wait one year.
|
| [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32825826
| [deleted]
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/founders
|
| Male, Male, Male, Male, Male, Male, Male, Female, Male, Male,
| Male, Male, Male Male...
|
| Male privilege is pretty real!
| grepLeigh wrote:
| I've always been super curious about the YC application vs.
| accepted demographics. ESPECIALLY who gets told to come back
| with a co-founder.
|
| I applied as a solo woman technical founder with a product that
| is already close to ramen profitability. Going in, I thought
| this already made me an outlier - especially because I'll be
| able to tap my network and hire a founding team with some cash
| in the bank.
|
| The tepid response during YC interviews was jarring. I know the
| panels are an exhausting marathon, but my group partners acted
| like they'd rather be _anywhere_ else than talking to me. I got
| the impression that maybe I 'd been invited to fill a quota,
| and the Zoom interview was just going through the motions.
|
| The whole experience made me sit down and reverse-engineer the
| actions needed to hit 10-15k MRR by Q2 2023. With that amount
| of cash flow, I can reach out to angels directly. Just 6 angels
| in for 30k/1% party round is 180k @ 3M post.
|
| If you're a woman with a similar story, I'm an angel investor
| (B2B, Saas, manufacturing). Reach out (email in profile).
| belter wrote:
| Now you need to use this dataset and feed it into a ML model
| ;-)
| andrewstuart wrote:
| Universities and former employers really pop out as something
| important, in a way I'd never fully grasped before.
| pigtailgirl wrote:
| -- best pre-seed you can do is Stanford? --
| [deleted]
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