y combinator

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Ben Horowitz, co-founder of Silicon Valley venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, told a crowd at today's Y Combinator startup school that running a company is a nerve-racking experience; that you shouldn't be fooled into thinking everything's been done; and that "every breakthrough idea looks like a stupid idea" at first.

"Sure we look for big markets and blah, blah, blah," Horowitz told some 1,700 entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs packed into Stanford University's Memorial Hall auditorium. "But we're all looking for a breakthrough idea. And by definition, … Read more

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg addressed an adoring crowd at Y Combinator's startup school today, speaking confidently about Facebook and describing a world in which people will share a whole lot more than they do now -- via Facebook and other social companies.

"It's sort of a social-networking version of Moore's Law," said Zuckerberg, who was interviewed by Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham. "We expect this rate [of sharing] will double every year. ...So in 10 years from now, people will be sharing about 1,000 times as many … Read more

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- The future for startup funding is "getting more unpredictable."

That's what Y Combinator founder Paul Graham said today, theorizing that because there are so many more young companies getting off the ground these days, venture capitalists may well have a much harder time predicting winners than in the past.

It makes sense. Startups can get going today for as little as a few hundred thousand dollars, so there are many more of them. "But the funnel at the top is the same," Graham said during the Y Combinator Demo Day. "… Read more

HelloFax CEO Jospeh Walla wants to kill printers and scanners -- doing away with them one digital signature at a time.

HelloFax is known for letting people send and receive faxes, request signatures, and fill out forms -- all without a physical document. From that service, the company is launching HelloSign, which lets people sign documents digitally.

Through HelloSign, Walla hopes to accomplish what many companies have tried and failed to do: create a paperless office. It was a dream born in the dot-com era but never realized, as workers still cling to physical paper despite the financial and environmental … Read more

Having lots of money isn't a reason to spend it, especially if you're a startup that has yet to prove itself as a viable, sustainable business.

There have been a lot of early-stage startups raising monster rounds in recent months. Ark ($4.2 million seed), Viddy ($30 million), and Gumroad ($7 million) are just a few prominent examples.

The funding party may be over though, at least according to Paul Graham, a prominent investor and founder of Y Combinator.

"Jessica and I had dinner recently with a prominent investor," Graham said in a letter to Y … Read more

One of the most prominent people in Silicon Valley's startup world is warning that Facebook's disastrous IPO performance will lead to hard times for startups.

Paul Graham, the co-founder of the first and most influential startup incubator anywhere, sent an e-mail to his portfolio companies warning them that Facebook has made it a lot harder to raise money. Graham wrote that "the startups that really get hosed are going to be the ones that have easy money built into the structure of their company: the ones that raise a lot on easy terms, and are then led … Read more

Y Combinator is one of the most influential organizations in Silicon Valley. But thanks to the incubator's most recent demo day, it has become a Disneyland for investors, where startups are the attractions that VCs and angels are willing to pay to ride.

On Wednesday, YC graduated 65 startups from its program, its largest class yet. The room was wowed by pitch after pitch from companies like Sonalight, 99dresses, Ark and Socialcam. There were plenty of graphs depicting skyrocketing user growth and revenue, and investors (as they typically do at YC demo day) ate it up.

This demo day … Read more

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. -- The pace of startups popping up seems matched only by the emergence of new "incubators," or "accelerators," whichever word you chose to describe these startup boot camps that have cropped up across the country.

And Paul Graham, the man behind the grandaddy of them all, Y Combinator, barely pays attention to them. What he is convinced of, though, is that many will die, and that they're formed for the wrong reason.

"People are doing it because it's the cool thing to do," Graham told me during a break … Read more

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--If you 're an entrepreneur looking for money today on the famous Silicon Valley venture capital row known as Sand Hill Road, yes, that is the sound of crickets you hear.

That's because today is Y Combinator Demo Day, and the lion's share of the biggest tech-oriented VCs in the Valley are packed into one auditorium here, listening to 65 early-stage companies pitch their wares.

The list is a veritable who's who of investors: Ron Conway, Tim Draper, Jeff Clavier, Mike Arrington, Stewart Alsop, and many, many others. And they've got their checkbooks … Read more