Newsletter #255 Theme

NYC was a blast

Announcements 

Back in SF. This month is all heads down to apply to Y Combinator (Deadline on Apr 22nd)! Wish me luck!

Weekly Shoutout

Shoutout to my NYC friends for helping @Val and I to have a great time in the Big Apple!

• @William, @Chuck, @Rob, @Ani, @Cory, @Max, @Edward, @Ryan, and @Alice

Food for Thought

• As we prepare to apply to YC, I thought I’d put together some of the interesting stats on the best startup accellerator in the world (Stanford is maybe #2 ahah).

• YC by the Numbers

  • Batch sizes have been growin

    

  • The fundraising amounts have been fluctuating

    

  • Thee % of the batches getting acquired has gone down, but overall the # of exists is up

• Marketplace are 14% of the top 100 YC companies but generate 30% of the returns bc there’s a winner-take-all-effect

  

Crowd Pleasers 

• Reddit IPO has popped and come back down already, but the story of The Front Page of the Internet is intriguing

• Sadly, the founders sold too early, but Sam Altman helped me spin the biz out of the acquirer which gave Reddit a second chance at becoming what it is today!

  

• The bullish case on Reddit is that they have been at monetization, and it’s better to won a growing social network bad at monetizing than a stagnant social network good at monetizing

  

Mind-Benders 

• MacKenzie Scott (AKA Bezo’s original wife) proves that despite all the criticism, Effective Altruism is such an important movements bc otherwise the winners of the capitalist lottery will squander their resources on virtue signaling charity as opposed to genuine high-impact philanthropy

  

• However, the strongest criticism of EA’s Philanthropic network is that SBF was just the latest fraudster who managed to infiltrate a network that prides itself on rationalism, critical thinking and long-term outlook

• To counter-argument is that the Giving Pledge also has a criminal problem

  

  • 25% of signatories have been accused of financial misconduct (10% convicted) and 41% of signatories have had at least one allegation of substantial misconduct (financial, sexual, or otherwise)