Startups
Why YC
paulgraham.com
Startups
2 min read → 45 sec
Paul Graham says Y Combinator began less as a money play or charity project than as a leverage hack, using small interventions to unlock startups that otherwise would not exist.
Y Combinator started as a leverage hack
Apply small force at the right point to unlock startups that otherwise would not exist
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Thousands of smart people could start companies but do not
A relatively small intervention at the right point can unlock a stream of new startups
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YC did not start mainly to make money
Its average returns were unknowable for years
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YC did not start mainly to help young founders, though helping them was appealing
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Startups are mostly schleps. Founders rarely start them mainly for fun
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A hacker's motive can be amoral optimization
Neither selfishness nor virtue, but finding the right tweak to make a system run better
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The world's economy is an open-source system that can run more efficiently with the right tweak
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YC also satisfied a long-running desire to work with Rtm and Trevor again after Viaweb
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Paul Graham kept looking after Viaweb for something he, Rtm, and Trevor could build together
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Viaweb was started explicitly to make money and escape living from one freelance project to the next
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Viaweb was sometimes fun, but mostly was not fun and was not designed for fun
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Startups are a good thing. This makes YC partly virtuous even if that was not the main motive
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