Y Combinator Startup Podcast
00:01:06 · Vivian Shen, Paul Graham
[00:01:06] S0: So you recently posted that the startups YC funds now are much more serious than they were in the supposedly good old days. Yeah. What did you mean by that? [00:01:15] S1: Well, what I meant by supposedly good old days is people are always saying that YC has jumped the shark. I remember when people started saying this, which is in about like 2008, YC is always this thing that was great, but now it's not what it was, right? Because they can't say it was always terrible. They have to admit it was once great. So if they want to attack it, they have to say it's fallen, right? It was good, but now it's not. It's always been, It's always not And good so that's what I meant by the supposedly good old days, because the old days are what people claim used to be good. But like in the old days, there was a lot of things like Reddit, Right? Which valuable as it is, is not exactly intercontinental ballistic cargo. Uh-huh. Right? Which I did office hours with recently. How about that for an idea? Like, it's like an ICBM, except instead of exploding, it lands. And Yeah, drops stuff that's serious, right? You don't get much more serious than an intercontinental ballistic cargo. [00:02:16] S0: Yeah. What were some of the other serious ones?
00:02:16 · Vivian Shen, Paul Graham
[00:02:16] S0: Yeah. What were some of the other serious ones? [00:02:18] S1: Well, curing cancer. There's a startup in this batch. I mean, there's all sorts of different approaches to curing cancer. And I say, fund many of them, because any one working would be good. So one way to approach curing cancer is vaccines. That's one end. The opposite end is therapies, right? And so there's a startup in this batch that is basically doing on demand research for people with cancer. And what I like about it is they're sort of inflicting on cancer the death of a thousand cuts, which may be the way to defeat it. Because it's notoriously not the sort of thing where you just come up with a cure for cancer. I mean, maybe you do if these vaccines work. Maybe you do, right? Or maybe the way you fight it is the death of a thousand cuts. [00:03:12] S0: And they're actually really interesting because they helped another YC community.
00:03:12 · Vivian Shen, Paul Graham
[00:03:12] S0: And they're actually really interesting because they helped another YC community. [00:03:15] S1: Yeah, right. It's part of the whole YC community. They helped Sid from GitLab deal with his cancer, which he has done very successfully. I mean, he approached it like a startup, right? And these were essentially his cofounders in that de facto startup. And it's funny because I remember thinking after that, you know, I'm all... I always have this process going of what would be a good startup idea. Right? And I remember after that saying, you know, somebody should start a startup to do for everyone what Sid did for himself. And now, not only is this startup happening, it's the people who actually did it for Sid. So it couldn't be better. I was so delighted when I realized that one was happening. [00:03:52] S0: Yeah. And I think his essay that I went founder mode on my cancer is Yeah. [00:03:56] S1: That's a very good way of describing what he did. [00:03:58] S0: Using another YC term to [00:04:00] S1: Yeah. [00:04:01] S0: Attack his cancer. So along that vein, I was rereading the essay you wrote in 2012 where you coined the term frighteningly ambitious. [00:04:09] S1: Frighteningly ambitious ideas. A lot of those ideas have actually gotten done since then. [00:04:14] S0: Like which ones?
00:04:14 · Vivian Shen, Paul Graham
[00:04:14] S0: Like which ones? [00:04:15] S1: Well, a new Google. That was one of them, right? And it turns out, look, I sort of predicted this, right? That the way you make a new Google is not by attacking them head on. You have to wait for things to change so much that their model is obsolete and that's when you can do it. That's what OpenAI is. [00:04:36] S0: Right. [00:04:37] S1: Right? Like I realized very early on, like after using OpenAI, like, woah, I don't use Google anymore. I don't use searches. That what I really wanted from searches was not web pages. I wanted information. Why not just ask the AI for the information? Right? And I'm sure everyone's now had this experience. [00:04:52] S0: And it was incubated at YC. [00:04:54] S1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. One of Sam's many side projects. [00:04:58] S0: Yes. And so along the same veins of around ambitious as a term, I am curious when you figured out why a founder needs to be not just unusually talented in technical ability or something else, but they actually have to be really ambitious as well. [00:05:13] S1: When did I figure out that founders had to be really ambitious? I think I already knew that before we started YC because when we started YC, we already had all this experience of doing a startup ourselves. And so we knew that it was grueling. And you need something to drive you through all those obstacles. And honestly, being dutiful is not enough. The obstacles are too fearsome for a mere dutifulness to do it. So there's gotta be something driving you, and you you call it ambition.
00:05:13 · Paul Graham, Vivian Shen
[00:05:13] S1: When did I figure out that founders had to be really ambitious? I think I already knew that before we started YC because when we started YC, we already had all this experience of doing a startup ourselves. And so we knew that it was grueling. And you need something to drive you through all those obstacles. And honestly, being dutiful is not enough. The obstacles are too fearsome for a mere dutifulness to do it. So there's gotta be something driving you, and you you call it ambition. [00:05:48] S0: And part of ambition, I assume, is wanting to be a billionaire someday. [00:05:51] S1: You'd be surprised, actually. [00:05:53] S0: Tell me more.
00:05:53 · Vivian Shen, Paul Graham
[00:05:53] S0: Tell me more. [00:05:54] S1: You know what actually motivates founders day to day? The fear of failure. Even though they're doing this thing that if they succeed, they'll be super rich, that does motivate them. But the thing that motivates them at any given moment is the fear of disaster, looking like a fool, the server crashing, right? Like if you're running some online service and your server's crashing, you're not thinking, I got to deal with this because if I deal with it, I'll become a billionaire. You're thinking, oh no, the server's crashing. It will be a disaster. The engine of my model train set is falling off the edge of the table. I need to go and save it. Right? That's what you're thinking at any given time. You just don't want your model train set to break. You put your head down and work on the model train set for ten years, and then you lift your head up and like, holy shit, like if I add up the value of all my shares at the current the last round valuation, I'm a billionaire. But it takes people by surprise when it happens. [00:06:54] S0: Yeah, that's great. [00:06:55] S1: Sometimes I'm the first to tell them. Like, I do the math. I'm like, wait, according to your last round, you're at a billionaire. Like, oh, yeah, I am. [00:07:02] S0: That's the way we want it. And I'm curious, can you tell me a story about a founder where when they started YC, they were maybe not ambitious enough, and then they became very ambitious during the batch?