YC used to be great… and still is great. I’ve done it 3x over 15 years. It’s different now, but so are startups and founders. I’d do it a 4th time if they (and my wife) let me.
All through YC's history, investors (for obvious reasons) have tried to tell founders that YC wasn't worth it. In 2010 they just said we sucked. Now, since it's obvious we didn't, they've had to change the claim: now it's YC *used* to be great, but has declined from what it was.
I just sent our launch announcement to 10,000 people.
It took one prompt in Claude.
Today we're launching @nitrosendx - the first email platform with no dashboard.
→ https://t.co/AwAv8mP5KM
This is the first dollar I ever held. It wasn't the first dollar I earned.
Back in 2013, @ohsimtabem and I released an HTML template on @CreativeMarket, which had launched the year before. I wrote the code, he did the design.
The template took off and we didn't see it coming. Buyers started asking for a WordPress version, so we built one almost immediately, and for a long stretch it sat among the premium templates on the top charts. It even made the platform's list of the 100 best products of the year.
We'd made plenty of sales by then, but the money was just numbers on a screen. Then a letter arrived. Inside was that same dollar, taped to a card, with a handwritten note: "Digital Cookers, thanks for selling with us!" Signed by @bubs.
I still find it incredible that the CEO of a company in San Francisco took the time to write to a couple of kids fresh out of college in Portugal. And it wasn't a thank-you email. It was a real bill, signed by hand and mailed across the Atlantic, nine years before I'd ever set foot in the US myself.
I've been making websites for 14 years now. Back then a lot of effort and thought went into HTML, today AI generates it in seconds. But caring about a customer enough to do something that doesn't scale stayed with me. It's how I've tried to run @concealedpt from day one.
It sits on my desk to this day. A reminder of how much one person, or a single moment, can shape the way you work for years.
Incubants don’t kill startups. They die most often of natural causes.
It’s a common concern when entering a market with giants… won’t the giants just kill you?
The giants are dealing with giant problems, that leaves room to sneak in and do great small things that can become huge things.
Perspective: “Oh you’re building a voice AI to create a smarter connected home? Alexa has that market dominated already!”
Reality: I talk to my agents to orchestrate research, execute operations based on findings in an audited pipeline and report to me issues, gaps and opportunities programmatically.
My Alexa: “You like cats?!”
Build your startup. Chase the small opportunities in the shadows of the giants.