something that confuses me about y combinator

[golditz]

I should preface this by saying that I know very little about y combinator or startups or venture capital but I am technical. Here's what confuses me. I understand that getting accepted by y combinator is very difficult because there is so much competition. But on the other hand I've scrolled through the list of the companies that have been accepted recently and while some look super impressive, there are others that I don't understand at all. I don't want to actually name the companies but it looks like the products they're offering are things that any competent engineer could whip up in a few weeks and the underlying idea is also not very unique. Even to the point where there are pre-existing open source projects that do what these companies do. Perhaps they could still be successful businesses, however it's still difficult for me to reconcile this with how competitive it is to get into y combinator. So put it succinctly, how can it be super competitive yet still accept companies whose product is not unique or difficult to replicate? What am I missing here?

 

[lind1]

@golditz If you go to any demo day as a technical person, you’ll realise you can whip up almost all the projects within 2-3 months. Making the product isn’t the issue, going to market & getting adoption is.

 

[golditz]

@lind1 Agreed, but it looks like they were accepted before even launching (the ones I looked at at least)

 

[bat7bruce]

@golditz I believe it's possible to get pre-seed funding from y combinator before you've made even made anything. Granted it will be more difficult and more scrutiny will be placed under you. I would assume that unless you have relevant experience in the area or a track record of projects you've worked on previously as well as being in a ivy league school then your chances are probably nil.

 

[golditz]

@bat7bruce I'm just going off all the posts I see on hacker news that look like "Launch: company_x (YC2024) etc" which I assume means that they were accepted before they launched but maybe I'm misunderstanding.

 

[eddieyourdj]

@golditz Traction is really important - some teams sell big name companies before they even have a product. This kind of scenario is pretty compelling, assuming the founders have some kind of strong product/technical background.

Some also pivot during the batch, so they might have been accepted with something else.

 

[doantrang]

@lind1 I really like this comment and it sums up not just YC but any startup and the reason so many fail.

I'm a founder and found that building tech is straightforward and you'll no doubt build something great that solves a problem assuming the world sat waiting to use it.

Getting your product in front of users is hard, getting them to use it unless compelling is harder and finally getting them to pay for it is the ultimate goal.

 

[distracted1]

@golditz YC often bets on the founders and not the idea. Many people pivot during the batch.

 

[golditz]

@distracted1 This is the only answer that makes sense to me. It seems like it can be the only differentiator in some cases.