Friendly reminder: the strategy here is to invest in the founders, not the ideas. So great founders right now create AI startups. So either AI solves problems or they arent great founders.
That's exactly right. When people see YC funding a lot of AI startups, a lot of them think it must be because YC has some thesis about AI.
Actually, it says something much deeper about the world than whatever YC's partners' opinions are. YC funds founders, not ideas, so the reason that so many companies in S23 are AI startups is that that's what founders want to work on right now. It's an emergent phenomenon, like stock prices in the market.
One thing that's interesting is that there have been many hype cycles between 2006 and now (chatbots, several waves of crypto, VR, online-to-offline, etc). YC funded a few companies in each of those hype cycles but never anything like the current %.
I would argue that just because they want to work on AI while it has a lot of hype, might not be a good thing. Folks should do what they are passionate about and interested in, not just raise money to turn a fume from the karat and greatest buzzword technology. Will they leave AI if the tides change?
I'm working on an idea that I'm submitting to YC this year. AI is revolutionizing the field I'm most passionate about, I feel like it would be a waste if I didn't even try to make a contribution at what's possibly the last time we get to make a significant contribution in this way.
I was hyped about Bitcoin when it came out, but the only truly revolutionary thing that happened after Bitcoin in that field was Ethereum, and there really wasn't anything to be hyped about besides that in the decade since even though people kept hyping it.
This hype is so different, it's as powerful as web 2.0 was. I felt like I missed out on building something epic then, and now I get another shot so I'm not gonna miss it. I bet there's thousands of people who feel this way.
while there is certainly merit to the idea that they invest in founders over ideas, its scope is more to founders within an idea rather than wholly.
your statement fails to consider the possibility that the pool of applicants to YC are not great and the demographic of such founders are bad founders who are easily swayed by hype into fragile and failing topics such as "AI" and crypto.
in the situation where the applicant pool of ideas is in fact incredibly diverse, then it supports the thesis even moreso because it would show YC went with "AI" founders over other founders, regardless of their quality as potential business owners.
