Today marks the20th anniversaryof Y Combinator, a startup accelerator that has fostered companies that havechanged the world.
Founded in 2005, Y Combinator has helped to launch thousands of companies.
Its mere existence disrupted how venture capital-backed technology firms do business.
Kat Manalac, partner at Y Combinator, speaks during the Startupfest event in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, on Thursday, July 11, 2019.© Christinne Muschi/Bloomberg via Getty Images
We all live with the consequences.
Here are some of them.
DoorDash
A taxi for your burrito.
Sam Altman, chief executive officer of OpenAI, arrives for the Allen & Co. Media and Technology Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, US, on Tuesday, July 9, 2024.
Founded in 2013, the company promised to improve food delivery for everyone.
It ushered in an era where anyone could get delivery from any restaurant at any time.
To make that happen, itbrutalized delivery drivers,ripped off restaurants, andraised prices on its customers.
©Brian Ach/Getty Images for TechCrunch
Its a bad deal for everyone involved except, of course, DoorDash.
Airbnb fits a Silicon Valley template that will be repeated throughout Y Combinators history.
Take a solved problem and disrupt it so it’s possible for you to make a mint rent-seeking.
Y Combinator founder Paul Graham in 2014 ©David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images
A corrosive hit to theU.S.
Its hard to make money on Twitch; only a small percentage of people break through.
Altman was president of YC starting in 2014, and his tenure saw explosive growth at the company.
© David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
We have not even begun to reckon with Sam Altman and his consequences for the human race.
The appification of life itself
In 2011, Marc Andreeseen declared that software is eating the world.
We live in a world filled with unnecessary intercessions between us and basic tasks.
It seems you cant buy basic goods and services these days without downloading an app to support them.
Did you buy new lights on Amazon?They run on an app.
Want to get a new car?
Gonna have to get anapp to make it run.
Wanna grab brunch on a Sunday?
Better use the restaurants app toreserve a table.
Wanna browse the menu before you go?App.
Why is this happening?
Software and apps were a great way to create new middlemen.
This website is where jokes, memes, and videos from last years Reddit threads go to die.
Y Combinator funded it.
Speaking of Reddit …
Look, we all love Reddit.
Yes, its been the birthplace for some horrible things.
However, Reddit has birthed weird cultural trends we all have to contend with.
(Most recently inThe New Yorker) Where did they get their start?
Malcolmproposed to Simone on Redditusing advice animal memes.
Then he wrote about it for The Huffington Post.
A lot of people have Malcoms and Simones in their real life.
The tech hype cycle
Selling Silicon Valley to the rest of the world requireskeen marketing.
YC is a machine that builds hype.
Sure, most of these ventures fail.
But a lot of people will make a lot of money while its inflating.
See: YC Alum Sam Altman.
Founder Culture
Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Elon Musk.
Mythological figures that stride through Americas consciousness bending the world to their will.
YC has incubated more than just companies, its incubated founders.
And itll probably fail.
Sure, companies are collaborative enterprises that require massive amounts of talented and hardworking people cooperating to succeed.
But in todays social media and celebrity-driven world, its the face of the company that matters.
Over the past 20 years, YC has helped founders become that face.
Those founders now think theyre the center of the universe.
Anti-journalist sentiment in tech
Some people think the tech press is too easy on tech.
Founders and YC think its too hard.
The beef between the YC-backed founder community and journalists is long, fraught, and complicated.
YC founder Paul Grahamsigned a petitionthat chastisedThe New York Timesin 2020.
When the Wall Street Journal outed Theranos as a fraud, then-YC president Altmanrushed to her defenseon Twitter.
Slam pieces tell one side of a story.
I do think Theranos should be more transparent, but ppl shouldnt pray for failure.
Former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan gave a speech at a YC event in 2013 thatruffled journalists feathers.
YC and its founder culture fostered the ideology we now live with, one thats hostile to journalists.
One where a tech-bro is rampaging through the federal government.
Coinbase
All your worst tech-brained friends saw the possibilities of cryptocurrency when Bitcoin launched in 2009.
The problem was making it easy for normies to get their money into the system.
Enter Coinbase, the YC-backed company that helps people trade crypto of all types in just a few minutes.
OpenSea
Do you remember NFTs?
The bottom dropped out sometime around when Paris Hilton told Jimmy Fallon shed bought a Bored Ape.
Then, the whole market collapsed.
Assembly HOA
No one likes their Homeowners Association.
HOAs are draconian nightmares that sick the cops on people who havent cut their lawns.
They levy fees and punish people in communities who dont conform to often arbitrary standards.
What if you added AI to that process?
Say hello to Assembly HOA, a YC-backed startup that promises to make running an HOA transparent and efficient.
The bigger company ate its games and then shut OMGPop down just months after buying it.
uBiome
uBiome is the Showtime to Theranos HBO.
Elizabeth Holmes promised fast and safe blood tests.
uBiome promised safe and fast poop tests.
But uBiomes founders were lying and the FBIraided its labs in 2019.
Two years later the SEC charged its co-founders with defrauding investors.
Cruise
The ultimate goal of Tesla and Uber is the self-driving car.
Silicon Valley dreams of a world where automated cars cruise up and down Americas highways.
YC-backed Cruise was one of the first companies to pitch this dream to the world.
Its not working out at the moment.
GM gobbled up Cruise in 2016.
It began the process ofshutting downin 2025.
Future horrors
Y Combinator isnt done fostering innovation.
Tomorrows Twitch.com, DoorDash, or OMGPop is waiting somewhere on the list of companies its backing.
Lets take a look at some upcoming contenders.
Big Tech finds Jesus
America has a long and strange history of Christian revival movements.
This country loves to shape the word of the Lord to its own ends.
Y Combinators newest CEO, Garry Tan, was there to lead the discussion as well.
The group is putting millions into spreading the tech-tinged Gospel throughout San Francisco.
A spiritual and religious revival in the Bay Area?
These things havenever gonewrong before.
Ares Industries Disrupting cruise missiles
What does the future hold for Y Combinator?
In the summer of 2024, the startup accelerator backed its first defense company.
Ares plans to build low-cost cruise missiles for the DoD.
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