I watched most of the FFC. Like Marc Andreesen has said, software is eating the world. YC is getting such critical mass now that entrepreneurs and idealists/pragmatists with world-affecting ideas are now applying for YC. Not necessarily because they'd heard of YC - but because someone they know who cares about them had heard about YC.
YC, in my opinion, is getting to a point where it can help incubate world-changing ideas that don't necessarily sell technology to consumers directly but use technology to enable more efficiency or connection or empathy (or all of the above).
Of all the presentations, Grace's was the best. I loved Grace Garey of Watsi's stories.
About how every Tuesday night, about eight or ten of the world-wide team of Watsi, in every timezone (day, afternoon, morning) would always get together for a Google Hangout to talk about Watsi.
About how she was at a busy bar in NYC with her friends and they were in the waning hours of an online contest to win $10k for Watsi. They were falling behind, and Grace had the gutsy idea to ask the bouncer to make everyone who came into the bar have to vote for Watsi on the contest site on their smartphone. They ended up winning by the scarcest of margins (1%) and the bouncer gonged a bell and the entire bar celebrated. Like Brian and Joe of Airbnb creating their own cereal, it was a gutsy move to make it to the next critical step (raising enough funds for some of the Watsi team to go full-time and all-in). And a little different.
Congratulations to the YC team on making a ripple in the pond!
YC is still stuck in a world of ideas based on controlling others through the creation of debt and claiming lifetime ownership of others' work. That they are stuck there is not entirely unsurprising, nor is it unsurprising that there is a forming gender-class that is trying to emulate the functioning of that world. To me, continuing to carry out these decade[century, millennium?]-long ideas is not very world-changing. It may be progressive enhancement, but that has slowly been happening for awhile.
The anecdote that you shared about the bar in NYC smacks of this old-world thinking:
>the gutsy idea to ask the bouncer to make everyone who came into the bar have to vote for
I'm still not quite sure if this is slavery or just tribal exculsivism. I don't know, maybe it's both?
> YC is still stuck in a world of ideas based on controlling others through the creation of debt and claiming lifetime ownership of others' work.
I don't understand this sentiment AT ALL. There is no debt involved, so I don't see any control exerted through those means. And sure, they buy non-controlling ownership of others' work, but that ownership is sold freely. Not to mention the other consideration that lands on the selling side in these transactions. I don't think the sellers are making out nearly as badly as you seem to be implying.
YC appears to have moved away from convertible notes (ie. debt) [1], but if you read closely it appears that PG said the reason was to avoid debt term limits and interest rate limits....so it's an even more extreme version of debt, just not 'debt' according to CA regulations.
YC itself didn't do convertible notes — other investors did. YC's investment as far back as 2011 was an equity mechanism (which I think was similar to the new Safe).
Other seed stage investors used convertible notes. These technically "debt", but only as a mechanism to keep from having to go through valuation exercises on <3 person companies that had plenty of other things to worry about.
Debt term limits and interest rate limits were bad for companies. It was not possible to have debt with, say, a 50 year term and a 0.1% interest rate. Instead, the debts had 5 year terms and non-negligible interest rates.
The term and interest rate limits were on the LOW side. i.e. being forced to renegotiate after 2 years if you haven't raised money yet (which happened to a lot of people, and the investors never had a problem with it), and charging a 0% rate (which is below the applicable federal rate and thus potentially viewed as a gift) is not the issue. It's not that YC/notes were trying to charge usurious rates or whatever.
If you read that link you posted you'll see "what the investor buys is not debt, but something more like a warrant. So there is no need to fix a term or decide on an interest rate"
Warrants just give the investor the right to purchase equity at a given price some time. They are not debt.
To be fair, I didn't hear the original anecdote. I'm only going off of the words in the post I responded to, but making people take an action to better your financial position is slavery.
From the description, the people being coerced could presumably choose not to take the action, but would then be denied entry to the bar. That is explicit tribalism and creates a situation where you either join along with the groupthink or you get cast back on to the streets.
Edit: If you can't refute or contribute, down-vote.
> making people take an action to better your financial position is slavery.
"What is Watsi?
Watsi is a global crowdfunding platform that enables anyone to donate as little as $5 to directly fund life-changing healthcare for people in need. Watsi is a registered U.S. 501(c)(3) non-profit organization (EIN: 45-3236734)."
If these were the actions of a CEO for a for profit business your statements might make more sense, except that's not the case at all. Nobody is getting rich off Watsi and there goals are commendable.
Not to say there aren't probably other examples that would make your point, but seriously this doesn't seem like a good one to pick.
I'm not sure what US Codes or Officer status has to do with my assessment. A CEO is not entitled, by position, to any business profits. They are strictly reserved for stock-owners. Those points are irrelevant to mine.
I just took a look Watsi's Transparency Report. It's commendable that they seem to be going much further than many other organizations do in opening up their financial information. However, while I found lots of patient details, I was unable to find a breakout of salaries and other payments to employees, officers, or other, only an aggregate monthly salary line item of ~66k. If their about page is accurate and there are currently 6 employees, that's about $132k/year/person. Not Jamie Dimon salaries, but still more than double US median household earnings.
Edit: Also, I'm not ragging on Watsi. I'm not familiar with them other than what I just shared above. My beef is with the behavior in the anecdote (which may or may not be accurate to what actually happened at that NYC bar) that was shared, but more importantly with the culture that people seem to be trying to emulate.
Asking people to do something before allowing them into your bar is not slavery. You don't need me to tell you that saying it is diminishes the great injustice that slavery is and was.
My reading of it wasn't even that the bouncer insisted they do it. More that he or she suggested it as they were entering. This is marketing, not servitude.
It's not slavery of course, but it is a troubling approach to marketing. If I'm going to a bar on my own account (rather than to participate in some prearranged party) then I don't want to be hustled by some total stranger into supporting something I've never heard of as a condition of entry.
I know I'm out of the mainstream on this, but as a European one of the most difficult things about living in the Us is the lack of regard for personal space. Before I knew the appropriate code words I went through a stage of fending off signature-gatherers with clipboard petitions by pretending not to speak English. If you asked me to vote for something on my smartphone as a condition of entry to a bar then my first response would be to find some other place to have a drink.
Well, we can look at what was said (in the third-party retelling):
>Grace had the gutsy idea to ask the bouncer to make everyone who came into the bar have to vote for Watsi on the contest site on their smartphone
I agree that it might not be quite slavery (it would depend on exactly what happened), which is why I included tribal exclusivism, which it most certainly was (at least according to the above portrayal).
Edit: Anonymous down-voters are out, in-force, tonight!
YC, in my opinion, is getting to a point where it can help incubate world-changing ideas that don't necessarily sell technology to consumers directly but use technology to enable more efficiency or connection or empathy (or all of the above).
Of all the presentations, Grace's was the best. I loved Grace Garey of Watsi's stories.
About how every Tuesday night, about eight or ten of the world-wide team of Watsi, in every timezone (day, afternoon, morning) would always get together for a Google Hangout to talk about Watsi.
About how she was at a busy bar in NYC with her friends and they were in the waning hours of an online contest to win $10k for Watsi. They were falling behind, and Grace had the gutsy idea to ask the bouncer to make everyone who came into the bar have to vote for Watsi on the contest site on their smartphone. They ended up winning by the scarcest of margins (1%) and the bouncer gonged a bell and the entire bar celebrated. Like Brian and Joe of Airbnb creating their own cereal, it was a gutsy move to make it to the next critical step (raising enough funds for some of the Watsi team to go full-time and all-in). And a little different.
Congratulations to the YC team on making a ripple in the pond!