Seems like YC should pair more of these smaller companies together, I honestly don’t know if that would help or not. Most YC funded projects aren’t really profitable to begin with.
It’s like somewhere in between getting grant funding for a university project and real corporate work.
I mean, this was precisely PG's genius - taking the right set of unwashed nerds, pairing them up appropriately and then mentoring the end result. That model gave birth to Reddit and Auctomatic.
I don't get it either - why spend $2m on 4 YC companies under different group partners, creating a hunger games of sorts, instead of convincing all of them to combine their talent for $500k. Sure, egos will be bruised and they might fight over who's boss, but the chances of the final product succeeding would be much higher.
It’s like somewhere in between getting grant funding for a university project and real corporate work.