The proper title should be "The Truth about being a YC product". The startup mystique that YC perpetuates is designed to convince very smart people to work extremely hard on a small chance of becoming rich. They become a product in YC's portfolio, which captures just enough unicorns to allow hundreds of others to fail. This example is one of the lucky ones. There are order of magnitude of others who worked as hard but got nothing. The only consistent winners in this game are PG and his investors. You are the product. They're buying your surplus labor at a very cheap rate.
I was one of the founders in the same batch as Tracy / PlanGrid. Yes, I worked very hard (probably everybody worked as hard), and yes I got nothing. In fact, the opportunity cost of not working at a FAANG starting in 2012 is probably in the millions of dollars given their recent stock performance.
Nevertheless, I was very happy to be there and was happy to take YC's deal. Pretty much everybody else was too - we were all adults (average age ~29) and we knew what the deal was and were very happy to take it. If I do a startup again, I will certainly apply for YC again.
More broadly, your attitude/comment is very typical of the negative, cynical place that HN has become and it's quite sad. This place used to be more balanced between encouragement and criticism - the top comment in the famous Dropbox thread was actually encouraging, the famous dismissive comment was not #1. Today, there is little beyond self-reinforcing cynism and negativity around here. That is, your comment is not insightful, edgy or even remotely realistic. It's just shitty.
Provocations aside, I think my comment reflects a growing backlash against SV startup culture that needs to be heard. Just yesterday a YC company posted this in their job descriptions: "Understands the commitment required in an early-stage startup and is willing to sacrifice to grow our company". This mentality of sacrifice as the only way to disrupt and succeed demands a critical rebuttal. Calling me cynical and shitty for pointing out that YC investors subliminally encourage unhealthy overwork as part of their business model will not dissuade me from calling attention to it.
I bought into it myself and spent precious years of my life working for the benefit of such investors which I have no doubt will regret on my death bed. I am not attacking you or your decisions personally. I am speaking as a recovering startup employee who is tired of watching yet another generation being sold appealing ideals like risk-taking and entrepreneurship and who pay dearly for it with their health, family, and friendships.
I love the work I do, so do not attempt to paint me as a sad negative hater. I just want more people to think critically about YC's business model. Read stories like Tracy's and think twice before signing up for life at a startup. Better yet, I would like to challenge the idea that it takes 80 hours a week to be successful. YC wants you to think so, because if they can overclock you for a 1% chance your company will hit it big, then they win. They don't care if you burn out because there's another startup school class right around the corner.
Thats a really cynical interpretation of YC - There's a ton of risk with starting any business, tech especially. You could say the same about any angel or early stage investor or accelerator program. PG and Sam Altman have always been upfront about the risk and expected returns from one of these - in the Startup Class, Altman even says that if your goal is highest expected returns you should go work at a FAANG [1]
> They're buying your surplus labor at a very cheap rate.
Have you done the math here? Take the cumulative market cap of YC companies (use a conservative measure). Divide that by the hours worked by founders. Multiply that by founder ownership percentage. I think you'll find that founders are properly incentivized.
What you're describing entrepreneurship. I'd imagine pretty much every entrepreneur realizes they have an extremely low probability of success, but some people prefer the thrill of the hunt to the feeling of being a cog in the wheel job at large corporation.
This is not the case. It's hard to overstate the magnitude of the increase in risk you take by pursuing a VC-backablr business strategy vs a bootstrappable one. There are many, many totally good business ideas that will "only" make you tens of millions of dollars and that can be executed relatively casually.
Is it really a very cheap rate? It seems like it is the market rate to me for newbie founders. If it were "very cheap", every VC and their mom would be rushing to buy in on these types of startups -- and believe me, there are many VCs and a lot of VC money in SV.
