You mean would Steve Wozniak & Steve Jobs have applied to Y Combinator? (Oh yeah, that other Steve...)
No! They were too busy hacking phones and building things people wanted to waste time to go through the application process of YC. Money was chasing them.
This is true for most runaway successes, they were all true hackers that broke things: Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, etc. Not the "hackers" who are asking for $125k salary...
They didn't care about the money, they didn't care about the allure, they didn't care about the status. They just wanted to break things and make them work better, legality aside.
But the landscape has changed, and Steve & Steve are not just starting Apple and YC would not be around if Apple wasn't started when it was, so it's a silly question be it a fun thought experiment.
I think YC supports the companies that shoot for the moon, but people aren't willing to take the risk and say no to acquisitions of $20-$100m because that is the short term business model of today and people just want to take their $5m and show off.
"The approach of remaining independent, and investing profits back into to the company followed by technology zealots such as Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs is unattractive to an investor."
They only way to counter this is to build a great product with little to no money and have it grow like a weed, then negotiate like a mob boss to keep the majority of the voting rights of the company.
I think your response and the OP are quite wrong on a few fronts.
First off, YC is NOT looking for companies that take $20M exits. They certainly happen, but it's not great for YC. 95% of the money made in the valley from liquidity events in the valley are from 10 companies-- YC is trying to be part of those 10. The smaller exits just keep the lights on (don't believe me? Do the math on what YC gets from a $20M exit after being diluted thru a funding round or two).
Second, to say "The approach of remaining independent, and investing profits back into to the company followed by technology zealots such as Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs is unattractive to an investor," is just flat out wrong. There are certainly long-game consumer plays (like Facebook) where revenue is eschewed. But Heroku? Parse? Dropbox? AirBnB? Monster cash flow businesses.
As to whether Jobs would do YC-- he might not have when Apple was already growing. What about when he was selling blue box hardware? What about when he came back from India and got a job at Atari?
Do we have empirical data that YC doesn't get most of its returns from incremental exits? I thought that the hallmark of the YC model was its diversification along the long tail of founders, freeing it from the 10-bagger trap of traditional VC.
While your statement is true about Wozniak from what I know it's not true about Jobs. He was a business person and he knew how to make a buck in addition to wanting to "change the world". Same with Gates for that matter.
“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me” - Jobs
“Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful . . . that’s what matters to me.” - Jobs
You could argue that he was smart enough to say things like that. Who wants to hear a rich guy say how much he loves having such a shitload of money that most people could not even imagine it?
"You could argue that he was smart enough to say things like that."
Agree. There is a pattern with people with money who do this. Oprah on her show would take people to her Chicago house which was nice but not opulent in the same way as her other houses. And she would make random statements about the cost of things to try and sound like an ordinary person. As if we are supposed to believe that someone worth hundreds of millions really needs to care about the price of vegetables in the super market? People try to wear frugality like a badge of courage trying to seem like "real" folk. I know of a particular wealthy VC who talks about flying coach. They are trying to say "I'm just like you.." don't be jealous.
While I've seen many wealthy people give away plenty of money to charities I have yet to see one (while still alive) that gives away all of their money except enough to live like an ordinary person in suburbia would do. Or even a majority of their money.
Trump of course has made a good living out of trying to say what a "shitload" of money he has. That's because that is what he is trying to sell an image of being successful which has of course helped him become successful. That's part of his product.
He proved through is way of living that he wasn't about the money. He lived by all metrics a fairly simple and humble private live far from the Ellifsons out there.
He may not have cared about money as much as other rich people, but it seems like he loved to make money, or, in another sense, sell a lot of something.
> I think YC supports the companies that shoot for the moon, but people aren't willing to take the risk and say no to acquisitions of $20-$100m because that is the short term business model of today and people just want to take their $5m and show off.
A more charitable take: A founder with a few grand in the bank is doing a high wire act without a safety net. A respected repeat founder who's already banked a few million can let go of most concerns for safety and family and focus on changing the world or self-actualization or whatever you want to call it.
This is the mindset I am talking about, "I just need a few million as a pillow and then I can create something great!"
A founder with a few grand in the bank who can create something great is the founder who doesn't depend on money to make them great! They don't need to look for investors to support them and give them an allowance.
Look at Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, etc... Money is not the dependent factor, they hack the system for the simple fact that they want to hack the system! Free phone calls, driving a van records across boarders, etc.
Citing billionaire succes stories leans a bit heavily on survivorship bias. As an individual who's not yet financially independent the expected return on trying to be Patrick McKenzie or even Joshua Schachter is much higher than the expected return on trying to be Bill Gates.
I agree with you completely but you're omitting that Steve & Steve and Richard, and almost all the mythical entrepreneurial successes had found a way to fire their boss and landlord (in some form) so that they could focus on what they do best. Everyone's situation is different so if making an early YC exit is your method (or plan) to achieve this then it shouldn't be gainsayed.
I saw Wozniak on a CNBC stating explicitly that Jobs cared very much about the allure and status of being in big business, for what it's worth. I see little evidence he cared much about the money.
"I see little evidence he cared much about the money."
Jobs was not the Ben & Jerry's guys. Jobs cared about money. Just because someone doesn't live an opulent lifestyle doesn't mean they don't care about money. Buffet is a good example of that. He lives in the same house he bought in 1957.
Money, even if you run out of things to spend it on, or if you don't buy luxury goods, allows you to have power and do so many things that you can't do without money.
You are making the point for me, thank you. They do love the tech, first and foremost, and don't want to sell out for a quick buck because they know money is not the thing that makes you happy! Wealth is different then money, building wealth is valuable for them, not money. Big difference.
I'm guessing they are making an assumption that without Apple personal computers would never have take off and we would still be stuck in mainframe hell.
No: if Apple hadn't happened, personal computing would have flourished anyway. Intel might not have been so dominant in the µprocessor market, as the IBM PC was a panic response to Apple's success, and IBM's scientific PC, based on a Motorola 68K chip, might have taken a larger market share.
See Ted Nelson's book Computer Lib/Dream Machines for more on the state of personal computing prior to the start of Apple.
No! They were too busy hacking phones and building things people wanted to waste time to go through the application process of YC. Money was chasing them.
This is true for most runaway successes, they were all true hackers that broke things: Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, etc. Not the "hackers" who are asking for $125k salary...
They didn't care about the money, they didn't care about the allure, they didn't care about the status. They just wanted to break things and make them work better, legality aside.
But the landscape has changed, and Steve & Steve are not just starting Apple and YC would not be around if Apple wasn't started when it was, so it's a silly question be it a fun thought experiment.
I think YC supports the companies that shoot for the moon, but people aren't willing to take the risk and say no to acquisitions of $20-$100m because that is the short term business model of today and people just want to take their $5m and show off.
"The approach of remaining independent, and investing profits back into to the company followed by technology zealots such as Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs is unattractive to an investor."
They only way to counter this is to build a great product with little to no money and have it grow like a weed, then negotiate like a mob boss to keep the majority of the voting rights of the company.
That's enough for now, time for focus...