Ask HN: Why does Y Combinator seem to be consistently funding AI slop?
This is one of the recent ones that I came across - https://x.com/ycombinator/status/1988366241460089118
Of late it looks like I've been noticing more of such pointless businesses and I'm not alone. What do you think? Probably the same reasons it funded JustinTV when the idea was live streaming Justin Kan’s life. YC bets on founders not ideas because that’s how they get Twitch paydays. Remember that the “Air” in AirBnB came from the idea of renting air mattresses. Smart motivated people can have dumb ideas. Iterating from a dumb idea is how good ideas are made. There is a such thing as survivorship bias - the overwhelming bad ideas fail spectacularly and disappear into obscurity. For every one success you can name I can easily pick out 9 that failed that were funded by YC. Of course those big successes outweigh the failures measured by profit to YC. Someone somewhere made this sheet of YCs s24 companies. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Uy2aWoeRZopMIaXXxY2E... I found a few of the companies that YC invests in have two non technical founders looking for a “founding engineer” to build their product who they were going to pay $150K to and “equity”. I guess there are people that gullible? Same reason they funded Web3/crypto/NFT crap. Investors’ greatest fear is missing out. They fund founders with the immutable qualities which correlate with success. These include 1. FAANG or Ivy/Stanford/Harvard pedigree 2. Ex-founder with a good exit 3. Physically attractive/charismatic, a good salesman 4. Extremely high intelligence, ability, track record of aptitude These qualities are more important than the idea of the company, which they expect to pivot or evolve over time. What doesn't change over time is the founders' relative advantage over their peers in these aspects, so it makes sense to prioritize them in selection I am going to play devil's advocate here and say that so many processes that can be automated with AI are still untouched. I'm not making a statement about the quality of businesses funded, but rather the fact there is a lot of opportunity. And if a company already in that segment or an adjacent segment sees an opportunity, they will throw a few devs on it, sell it to their existing customer base and crush the little startup. Most of these startups that have any technical people at most have a couple. "Why does Y Combinator seem to be consistently funding AI slop?" Because everyone is funding AI slop. The example you gave is more about AI workflow management vs actual slop. It's a slop enabler. I think part of the reason everyone is funding AI slop is because companies like YC, 500 Startups, a16z do it. It's like apps for phones in 2005-2015 - take a shot and see where it lands. Might be worthless, or might hit it big. VC investing is basically just playing a lottery that you can influence the odds. People have mentioned they back "founders not ideas". Which is a great tag line, and also not 100% true, but true enough. The other side is they like to fund in area's that have a strong why now. One great answer to that is "Because it wasnt possible to build this X years ago" in other words they like to fund companies that are taking advantage of a new technical property, regulatory change, or cultural change. AI hits 2/3 of those. Now you can say "AI slop all you want" just like you can say "Crypto is a scam" but its a statement that ignores there has been profitable and viable new ventures built on top of these new compute properties. TLDR: technological change is the basis of how VC's make money. YC basically throws mud at a wall and sees what sticks. For example, Theos dumb projects. Who's Theo? I'm not surprised