zlacker

His company failed, selling for a bit over the amount of cash they burned. So he didn't handle huge obstacles. And at YC, it's the startups that have obstacles that need to be surmounted, not YC itself. YC has perpetuated the cult of the startup (and the cult of "you need YC for your startup to be successful") so well that they can take equity in a number of the world's tech startups very, very cheaply at the nascent, "fruit fly" stage, ensuring that YC has enough lottery tickets that some will pay off. It's the "startup factory" play, all the founders triumphs and tragedies are just so much grist for the mill.

YC is like a doctor which takes a 10% cut of the lifetime earnings of every baby they deliver. Adding some value, yes, and some kids won't earn very much, but the wealth earned by the new human would have almost certainly been earned regardless of the doctor's skill. And this doctor happens to deliver half the babies of the entire state of California.

The cult part was thanks to PaulG. As long as that continues, YC will be successful.

OpenAI was the result of a fear that big tech. was going to monopolize all the fruits from recent deep learning advances, because they had all the data and the money. That was the obvious new hotness to get into. Proprietary AI was an existential risk to VC livelihoods.