HN is a mirror on the tech world -- which is dead. There is dearth of original ideas, generally. There are no cool startups, no investment, nothing happening.
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I agree there. Back in 2009 I used to be excited by each new YC batch. There were fresh new ideas like Dropbox, AirBnB, Instacart. I feel like there were cool stories around those startups, like Drew losing a thumbdrive and coming up with the idea for DropBox, or the AirBnB marketing hack with the cereal, or Instacart's founder having beer delivered during the YC interview. I can't think of any recent YC startups that I've cared about. Maybe it just became saturated or maybe I just moved on to other things. I will say this, that the ideas I had 15 years ago needed a startup and investment. Now I'm able to build a lot of those ideas using the cloud and AI. It seems inevitable that some solo founder will soon be able to build a unicorn with no investment and no employees.
> It seems inevitable that some solo founder will soon be able to build a unicorn with no investment and no employees.
I know I'm no ivy grad or some hot shot, but this is my goal. Although I have a small team that I want to build up (they're fresh) because they're passionate about the problem space.
Can you expand on that idea ?
May be backed by evidence etc.
The recent batches all use the following formulas which I don't find particularly interesting:
AI native ______ for _______
______ for AI agents
AI _______ for _______
Isn't that how every major tech wave works? "Thing, but for $X" is what everyone was doing when $X was personal computing, the web, mobile.
Sure, but how many of those were YC-worthy?
Exactly, and the formula in the past was less "[hot new tech] for [some industry]" back in the day, and more "[problem solved] for [target audience]". Maybe it is just the wording that I object to, and not the substance of the startup's solution to the problem?
I guess I don't care about today's "AI agent for the agricultural industry" as much as I cared about yesterday's "Tool to help farmers plan crop rotation".
"$Foo for $Bar" has always been a common formula for startups that are just getting going, including in YC. I think you guys are rewriting the past a bit here.
I have to defer, you're a lot closer to these things than I am, but I remember since the 90's the "this-for-that" analogies were around and became hot at some point, so that you were even encouraged by some to put it into that form for a while.
Where I see a difference is that it used to be about creating unique combinations and now it's more about deployment. "What about the known tool for this market?" It's banal. I can honestly say, it's not that I don't remember -- I do -- it's that I'm waiting and hoping to get excited about a startup again.
Yeah I remember the "X for Y" format being encouraged [1]. But X was always an example of a successful startup that was a leader in one category/audience, and you were saying you would be the X for a different category or audience.
PG's examples here were AirBnB as the "Ebay for space" or Viaweb as "the Microsoft Word of Ecommerce".
I'm not rewriting history when I say that the X has changed from a representative example of a successful company to a lazy broad technology like "AI agent for insurance" or "AI native recruiting". Here is a current YC batch startup: Manicule - AI Native Developer Relations. I have no Idea what that is. Does it talk to devs using my product like in a chatbot? Does it help them write code using AI? If they said "HubSpot for developer content" or "Vercel for developer relations" I would get it right away. But better than the X for Y formula would be just to describe the startup: we provide an AI-native developer relations team that owns documentation and technical content end-to-end so you don't have to hire someone for $300k.
1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6866822Correct $Foo for $Bar was common back then but I made the subtle distinction between "TikTok for Math Tutors" ([solution] for [audience served]) where naming a startup in a different vertical is a shortcut for the solution, and what we see now which is "AI agents for Banking" ([technology] for [industry]) where naming the technology doesn't make it clear what the problem or solution is, and the industry doesn't necessarily say who has the problem or needs the solution.