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YC: Requests for Startups

(www.ycombinator.com)
514 points sarimkx | 2 comments | 14 Feb 24 16:31 UTC | HN request time: 0.421s | source
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gavinhoward ◴[14 Feb 24 17:36 UTC] No.39372613[source]▶
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.

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1. gavmor ◴[14 Feb 24 17:45 UTC] No.39372727[source]▶
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.
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2. gavinhoward ◴[14 Feb 24 19:10 UTC] No.39373835[source]▶
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/