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Reverse YC funding program. PG, what's your thought?
7 points by rokhayakebe on July 31, 2007 | hide | past | favorite | 64 comments
20 months from now I will be financially set from the sale of my not-launched-yet mobile startup and I will create the reverse yc program. Instead of funding techies, I will fund marketing and sales geniuses with unique ideas. We will provide them with the technical help they need to turn their vision into a product then they can make millions out of it. Meanwhile if someone has a few thousands in the bank you would run a trial program and get some proposal from non technical founders. For now I am still broke and in debt.



> I will fund marketing and sales geniuses

> We will provide them with the technical help

This is quite common already. Remember all those companies everyone made fun of in the 1990s, like Pets.com? That is how they came about.


Correct me if I am wrong. But I believe in those situations they would fund your idea and let you hire techies. Now how can you hire a dev when you do not know what ajax is? So the program would will provide the best teams and ideas with technical support. People who know the differnce between php and ruby and scaling and browser based etc....


Typically people with a software idea aren't completely ignorant of technology and they usually know at least one person who knows the difference between php and ruby. Are you proposing that you will create programming teams for completely clueless "business people?" Hasn't the continent of India already positioned itself pretty well in that space?


Dude have you ever try hiring a developer? It can be really hard for someone who has never done it. 40 percent of the time they get played and let with half a website. I work for an Indian firm and everyday we get people who complain about how some other dev messed up their project and they must launch soon.


Yes, I am responsible for hiring people at my startup. It is really hard for me to hire people, and I know what I'm doing. With that in mind, what you are suggesting is impossible.


Partner. "Difficult takes a day, Impossible takes a week." This is how revolutions are started


The problem with startup hiring isn't that you need to think harder about it, it's that it's an inherently low-information situation. The factors that make a good employee often depend as much on what the startup is doing and how that squares with the employee's goals rather than any innate personnel factors.

For example, I'm leaving my day job. My reasons for this are complex and I'm not going to air all of them in a public forum, but they boil down to "It's not a good fit for me anymore." Thing is, there was no possible way we could know that when I was hired, because I was a good fit back then. My job description now is totally different than it was back then - in fact, when I was working with a coworker to come up with a job advertisement for my position, I realized that I would not have applied for my position as it currently exists. I've also grown as a developer - when I took this job, I thought Java was a decent-if-not-great language, I thought dynamic languages were unsuitable for real work, I had only passing familiarity with Haskell, I didn't really know JavaScript (though I listed it on my resume), and I basically didn't know what I wanted out of my career. I even mentioned during my interview that "Yeah, I don't know if this is something I really want to do, but I can't know that until I give it a try - after all, when I took my last programming job, I didn't know if programming was something I wanted to do, and that worked out great." Come to think of it, I still don't know what I want out of my career, I just think that this particular startup I'm working on is more likely to be it than my current job.

In my experience, the best indicator of job success isn't raw programming talent, it's how much the programmer believes in the product. That's why cofounders usually need to be friends before they can work together. Oftentimes, you'll have to take a leap of faith that you're on the right track, and you need to trust your cofounder to do that. I don't see how you can test for that with a third-party service. You can take the absolute best programmer in the world, stick him in a project he thinks is boring, and he'll suck at it.


Good point. The issue is easily solved by making developera part of the program by choosing whcig projcts they would like to work on the most and why


You're saying that you would help the marketing/sales guy outsource the programming, right? So how are you going to defend your product against anyone else that has $15k?


What do you mean?


The problem is, sales and marketing people generally don't have good ideas for startups. Because they're not masters of the medium, they don't know what's possible.


I think that there is a very strong emotional bond involved when programmers create a product that they think is the best. This is because they have both the craft and the vision - these are critical components for success.

Rokhyakebe in your suggested model marketers will have the vision and not the craft and programmers will have the craft and not the vision.


They often do know what's needed, though. Most of the time their ideas won't be feasible, at any level of technology (I think this idea may be an example). But once in a while they might come across something that's just on the edge of possible, if they find someone who knows the tech well enough to know where the edge is.


Call me crazy but it feels good to have PG comment. To get back to your comment, I respectfully disagree. that is like putting a limit to the power of thought. Think about manufacturing. How many clothing line make millions of dollars and are highly successful, but the founder can't even use a sewing machine. Same for moms who make millions because they thought of a crazy fork-knife combined and hired a manufacturer to make a prototype. Or how many people own a Italian restaurant and are American and never been to Italy and don't know how to cook. It all start with what if if I can say that, then I just need to get up and go find someone to make it. Excuse the typo, suretype is still at its primitive stage.


Unless you're a celebrity, how many people have clothing lines can't design clothes? How many people own restaurants and don't know how to cook?

How many people think designing software is as easy as designing a spork?


Thinking of a unique clothing line isn't that different from thinking of a unique web app. If you doubt then I suggest you grap a grab a pair of loafers from cole haan and compare it to one from banana republic. Look at the threads inside. Look at the cut and drive with it. If you think it is the same then you are as my friend who cannot understand the differnce between hotmail and gmail. Designing a jcrew sweater for complicated people like me is as hard as designing a web app. You are looking at major clothing lines, but maybe you should digg underground and find brands that are less known. The restaurant argument is harder to prove. So you got that one. And even if designing a sweater was easier than building a web app, I can argue that you can distributing your service is 25 times easier than distributing your sweater.


Yes, exactly.

You're kind of proving my point here. Designing clothing is hard. Designing web apps are hard. You need to be good at each to be successful at each. You won't be good at either if all you have is a "business/marketing genius" with an idea.


Thinking of a unique clothing line isn't that different from thinking of a unique web app. If you doubt then I suggest you grap a grab a pair of loafers from cole haan and compare it to one from banana republic. Look at the threads inside. Look at the cut and drive with it. If you think it is the same then you are as my friend who cannot understand the differnce between hotmail and gmail. Designing a jcrew sweater for complicated people like me is as hard as designing a web app. You are looking at major clothing lines, but maybe you should digg underground and find brands that are less known. The restaurant argument is harder to prove. So you got that one. And even if designing a sweater was easier than building a web app, I can argue that distributing your app is 25 times easier than distributing your sweater.


There's a lot of layers of the medium. Design and programming is only a narrow part of the broader picture.


If you think engineers can get carried away on tangents, I don't think you will find much better out of marketing and sales geniuses (whatever this means). Maybe it's better to save your money and invest in people that are more grounded instead of those who sling the most buzzwords around.

It's hard to build a nanotechnology social networking viral space play without engineers.


This is the situation that I'm in. I work in the mortgage industry and I've identified a problem and solution that I never would have seen otherwise. I have a solid tech understanding but my skills are not currently good enough to produce the quality of web app I want.

I don't want to wait too long and I don't know how long my window of opportunity will be open so I've hired a coder to begin development. However, if I could have been paired with a coder and a little funding I'm sure things could have been easier and I might have been able to be to market right about now.


Thank you


This is a great idea, because sales and marketing geniuses are really really useful when you have don't have a product and don't know how to build one.


Yep and to those who dont believe than you must believe the following "Build it and they will come". I dont.


Or maybe you'd have to believe something like "they won't come if you don't build it."


I apologize if someone has already mentioned this, but it seems to me that what you're proposing is to provide seed funding for marketing companies. By marketing companies, I mean companies that place product quality second to the marketing apparatus.

I have worked for several such companies, and at one time I was Information Coordinator for the American Marketing Association, so I've been exposed to a lot of marketing 'genius'. One thing I noticed time and time again in all these places is the prevalence of 'internal marketing'. When stripped of trendy buzzwords and platitudes about 'empowerment', internal marketing is a De facto ideology which stipulates that marketing is the primary driving force in every organization. It places product quality, customer value, and strategy in a distant secondary position.

The problem with marketing companies is that their myopic focus produces reactionary organizations - more ad hoc institutions than enterprises. 'Marketing companies' are sometimes profitable, but rarely maintain a commanding market position for long if they get there in the first place.

Contrast these with the real product companies of our time: Apple, Google, Craigslist, Facebook, Toyota. The real profit and value are being created by companies who focus on actual products. Some of these companies have little marketing apparatus at all, at least in the sense you're talking about.

This reminds me of a silly aphorism: You rob a bank because that's where the money is. Providing seed funding to 'marketing geniuses' is like robbing twenty hot dog stands and hoping that one of them forgot to deposit their earnings that week. It's only a good plan if you can't figure out how to rob the bank.


I like your confidence, but I don't quite get it yet. Are you talking about the same type of ideas that would be submitted to YC now, but just by people who don't have the skills (at least currently) to implement them?


Yes. I am speaking from personal experience. It took me forever to find a technical cofounder. If I had technical support in the beginning from experts maybe I could have sold and market it.there are lots of people who know what they want and how to build a company, but they just can't make it.


That is what I think he is trying to say. This is a situation where someone has the idea and needs to find the resources (programmer) to make it a reality.


Fallacy: If they are sales geniuses/marketing geniuses, they won't need you to get the 15k. They don't need a YC. They have the loot and the connections already.

The good thing about technical entrepreneurs is that they know if their projects in mind are realistic. They can also actually go out and build it exactly how they envision it rather than relying on someone who works according to their own schedule with their vision on how it should be. This basically leads to things being developed slower where speed is the #1 thing a startup has going for it.

p.s: what exactly is a sales/marketing genius?


i ll answer that when you answer what exactly is "talented developer/programmer". We can both write books on the subject.


The only riff raff you get will be unsuccessful sales/marketing people. Your basically going to be paying for an idea. I am inexperienced but from what I have read, ideas are not worth a whole lot...

I would hope that the answer to your question is farely obvious......


Dude. If we move our thinking process from this is not going to work to how are we going to make it work then a solution will emerge. I mean common, we are at ycnews where people challenge the Impossible.


This reminds me of "I'm going to make an MMORPG, anyone wanna help?"


"20 months from now I will be financially set from the sale of my not-launched-yet mobile startup"

That's my favorite part.


That part was supposed to be fun. As I said before noone knows what the outcome is.


You haven't launched your startup yet, but in 20 months you will be financially set from its sale?


I took that as tongue-in-cheek bravado. If he really thinks it's certain that he'll be finally set in 20 months from a not-yet-launched-startup, he perhaps has more pressing things to worry about than what he'll do afterwards. Like launching, perhaps.


That is called being optimistic I believe. It might never make it through the first 25 users. Maybe it will suck to death. Money from s startup or from the lottery, it is totally arbitrary. All I am trying to say is that such a program should exist.


http://www.paulgraham.com/startuplessons.html

Number seven


So your company will be generating 94% of the value instead of 6%?


Not at all. If I make your prototype and help you launch it. If it is a good product then eventually you will be able to add technical cofounders and they can come in and help even more. It also shows that you are good at something other than thinking and you are already trying to make your vision a reality. That alone, my friend, is worth millions. Doubt it let's go to a vc and you got an idea and I got the prototype.


This would be something I would be incredibly interested in.


I got your back. Give me 20 months unless someone do it right now.


How would you provide the technical help?


Hire developers for 2 months and work on the apps. Invest 15,000 for development like PG maybe. I mean guy launched truemors for 12K


And Truemors is a piece of shit. And Guy is famous.

15K is enough when you have motivated founders who own half the company and are willing to eat ramen and sleep on cots for 3 months to realize their dreams.

It is not enough to hire the equivalent programming talent for 3 months to work on an idea by non technical founders.


Would you like to bet on it


Probably not. We clearly have very different definitions of what "talent" means.


That's what I thought the talented Mr Blader.


Yeah way to go, you win the argument.


Ok I apologize. I feel bad now.


Every 3rd rate guy who accidentally made a couple million dollars in Silicon Valley is considering doing some variant of this right now, so you'll have a bunch of competition.

Maybe you could name it "Incubatr 2.0" and have the tag line "this time around, we don't even provide office space!"


I don't think that would work too well. You'd need to find a few exceptionally talented hackers that would be interested in helping a variety of founders implement their ideas technically for a significant stake (eg 6%) in the company. I'm not sure there's anyone who can code that much.

Realize also that Y Combinator doesn't discriminate against non-technical people, except that the applying company has to have at least one technical founder.


actually, I believe kulveer and harj (boso now auctomatic) applied with no technical skills and got accepted. they have now hooked up with pat collinson etc.


So you are telling me that if you find someone who gave away 5 % of his stock to get an alpha product out, asuming you like the idea, you still would not consider being a cofounder to his startup ? The way startups are made today is almost the same 1.have a unique idea 2. Work hard at building the alpha and demo it 3. Get funded and grow it. Etc....

All I want is to have step 1.5 get someone who understand your vision to help you build the alpha.


I'm saying that Y Combinator is a very small number of people providing startup and venture capital mentoring to a correspondingly large number of bright young people (not all of whom are technical). I'm saying that if you tried to take a similarly small number of technical experts to support a similarly large number of fledgling companies, it probably wouldn't work.

I'm not saying you have a bad idea, but it's an important question and "hiring programmers" isn't really a good answer. If I was a good hacker, and I could take 6% from 30 little companies and do all their coding in 3 months, that might be fun and profitable. I think the chances of you finding someone that capable and willing to take the risk are slim, is all.


you are clueless


this is a huge troll and everybody is just feeding it.

edit: including me, duh!


I am just glad the reddit guys didn't think it was impossible to change the way we get/submit news or any web relevant content. By saying it can't be done what you are really saying is I am not up to the challenge . Now I am not saying this is easy task.


then you will fail


going around down voting isn't making a point is it? Its like the bully hitting the weak kid because he cannot respond intelligibly to his questions. Please speak your mind. If you cannot convince me without down voting, maybe you need to read a few blogs about how to get IT out of the brains. It is a very short distance, but for some it is a long way so they just go with the next best thing. In this vas that is down voting. Because you cannot hit me physically you are trying to get points away. I believe that is showing your level of maturity and if you are truly honest to yourself I am challenging you to put your startup name here and I will put mine. We should all agree to disagree. If you do not like my comment then do not read them. Excuse my freedom of speech.


Is it okay if I respond to you, and down vote at the same time?


It doesn't make sense to go through all my comments ever made and down vote them. If you do so all that's gonna happen is some friends are gonna go and do the same to you and vote up my comments again. At the end no1 is going to benefit. Now please tell us your startup since you are so sincere about down voting me and I will tell mine. You are acting like a groupy




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