YC: Requests for Startups

I am building a company that falls under two categories (commercial Open Source and developer tools based on internal tools), but I would never take YC money for it.

Because of that stake, they want an "exit" in some form, and the drive to that exit will pave the road to user-hostile software and make it the path of least resistance.

I'll bite, I'm interested in the OSS dev tools field and I agree with your stance on investment money tending to corrupt good products. It's a big trade off. What are you working on? Do you have a website to share? Is it just you right now or do you have partners or employees?

I don't know, I would argue that YC might be the best place for Open Source and Dev Tools, because you start along with a large cohort of former and current YC startups who will be willing to try out your product. Plus the YC partners actually have experience in working with successful companies in this space, so that's actually equity that they would deserve.

That being said, dev tools is one of the sectors they have stopped funding, seemingly.

> Because of that stake, they want an "exit" in some form

Every single entity who invests in your company wants an exit.

You are absolutely right.

I am bootstrapping. I own 100% of the company.

You don't think you're cutting off your nose to spite your face? Maybe all those user-hostile features are a small price to pay for the resources to ship the "vital few" that are positively game-changing for your customers. For me, it's an open question.

I actually agree with you that YC is a good value for their founders. That network and experience are worth their weight in gold.

I am just different; I don't want gold. I want:

* Sufficient money for my needs and no more.

* To change the industry towards professional standards. [1] [2]

[1]: https://gavinhoward.com/2023/11/how-to-fund-foss-save-it-fro...

[2]: https://gavinhoward.com/2022/10/we-must-professionalize-prog...

For good reason: most of the dev tools companies have been commercial duds. Lots of traction/GitHub stars maybe, but none of those amounted to real sales.

Morally I agree with you.

My wallet unfortunately does not.

And I don't blame you!

Bootstrapping is hard, and I know that I am lucky to be able to...thus far.

If the world would still be net better off with the VC-backed software, and it wouldn't get made any other way, I don't think it would be immoral to take it, so long as effort is made to follow the harder path.

I've been thinking about whether investors should be consumer brands, to develop a reputation accross different companies, to encourage the companies they invest in to put ethics above profit to maintain that reputation.

I am surprised at the interest, thank you!

One note: technically my software isn't quite Open Source; it's source available. [0]

I will have my first release in less than two months, hopefully. It will include a scripting language and a build system.

If the language gets interest, I'll expand it and build the standard library.

If the build system gets interest, I will expand it. The end goal is Nix for mere mortals.

If neither gets interest, I will have to move to my next idea: VCS with project management and that handles large, binary files.

Beyond that, we'll see.

I have a business website, but not yet for those projects. I will at release, including tutorials.

You can read an old commit of design docs at [1], [2], and [3].

It's just me; I want to run my business like Hwaci, the SQLite guys. That also reduces overhead and will let me provide excellent support [4] for paying clients.

[0]: https://gavinhoward.com/2023/12/is-source-available-really-t...

[1]: https://git.yzena.com/Yzena/Yc/src/branch/master/docs/yao

[2]: https://git.yzena.com/Yzena/Yc/src/branch/master/docs/rig

[3]: https://git.yzena.com/Yzena/Yc/src/branch/master/docs/yar

[4]: https://github.com/gavinhoward/bc/issues/66

I was in one of the recent batches and they definitely didn't stop funding devtools. In fact, it felt like we were encouraged to pivot into the devtools space by some of the group partners.

There's often good money to be made in dev tools, but it's not always VC-level money.

I'll just put my two cents as a YC alum here — I never felt pressured to "do an exit", and YC is probably one of the least pushing investors in that field by a margin.

Though, a lot of advice given to YC companies is on how to build big companies that scale (unicorn+), so if you don't plan on doing that, you may not get very much out of the program.

Why would anyone pay for what you’re building? SQLite is not a business model anyone in the world could meaningfully replicate, don’t hope for it.

Yeah. YC acts like they are doing you a favor? Come on. They basically give these companies nothing in exchange for a huge stake.

You have a point. May I give my experience?

I have spent years building my stack. This stack gives me extreme velocity.

For example, I built my own localization. I query the OS for the locale, but beyond that, everything is mine. This allows me to make more assumptions and move faster.

In addition, this allows me to cull tech debt aggressively. [1] After years of this, when other codebases are molasses, mine is clean and easy to extend.

In other words, I did the hard work upfront, before getting clients. I hope this will give me the ability to add the "vital few" with few resources.

[1]: https://gavinhoward.com/2023/12/code-is-not-technical-debt/

You may be right.

However, there are rumblings that standards and liability will be imposed on the industry.

In that case, I would be well-positioned as someone who could accept that liability for a price. Your run-of-the-mill build system created by volunteers? Not so much.

That is good to know.

I do admit that I don't want a unicorn either, so YC wouldn't be a good fit.

YC's idea is to optimize for helping founders. That means supporting what the founders want If they don't want to exit, YC's not going to pressure them.

This works out well because it's the global optimum. YC has much more success optimizing for helping founders than it would by trying to squeeze individual lemons.

I hope that is true, and a sibling comment to yours suggests it is.

That said, that sibling comnent suggests that YC is for potential unicorns, and I don't want that either. So YC is not for me.

Though I will say nothing wrong with unicorns per se.

This depends on type of stock, old-fashioned stock had dividends, so investors were interested in profit rather than liquidity event.