I once took down HN by submitting /topcolors. The moment it reached the front page, HN ground to a halt. I quickly fired off an email to sctb who cleared it up within a minute or two (by wiping it off the front page, not by fixing the caching, which is totally valid), otherwise it could have taken much longer to figure out what had happened.
Caching is a hard thing to get right. I try to use “vegeta attack” to load test pages as I make them, but the measurement is the problem. Unless you already have a profiling pipeline set up, it’s a bit hard to fix the issue quickly.
One trick is to comment out half the site in a binary fashion until it suddenly loads, then keep bisecting until it stops loading. It’s crude but only takes log(n) steps and can be done quickly. You’d have to do it in production, but it might be easier than guessing.
It's not totally clear to me if OP is referring to that product specifically or something else, but I figured I would take the opportunity to get feedback anyway!
We are very actively working on the co-founder matching site and would love to hear from people who have used it - what your experience was and how we could make it better.
We've been running the site for about two years now, since we launched it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27750298. Coincidentally, the idea actually grew out of open threads just like the ones OP suggested. We started by experimenting with those threads on HN and our Startup School forum, but nobody ever found an actual co-founder that way.
So we decided to build it as an actual product. Since we launched, over 20 teams that met on the site have gotten funded by YC, and many of them are doing quite well. So we think the early results are overall promising.
That said, co-founder matching is a very hard problem. It's a multi-sided marketplace with complex dynamics, and we know we have a lot of work to do to make it work for everyone. We'd love your feedback if you've tried it.
> We are very actively working on the co-founder matching site and would love to hear from people who have used it - what your experience was and how we could make it better.
I used it a year and a few months ago. I'm a technical person with 10 years working in startups. I treated it the way I'd treat a job search etc.
I matched with ~150 people. Talked to ~50 people. Got close/did trial project with 3. Did a deal with 1. Raised a VC pre-seed (similar process) and have had a wild journey since.
Some learnings:
* Met some really cool people, some amazing talent on the platform.
* Know what you're looking for (e.g. complimentary skillset, company stage). Matching experience was key - didn't want too little (still making mistakes) but not too much (wanted an equal relationship, not a minor founder role).
* Co-founding is a relationship IMO. 'Matching' is just dating, 'trail project' is moving in together, and 'cofounding' is marriage. Expect to argue about curtains.
* It's hard to do and complex, this isn't handed on a plate. On the flip side, that's how business is, so builds skill sets that come in useful later.
Some ideas, if I ran this program:
1) Experiment with different interaction forms. E.g. 60 second video bio's to see if that helps people match faster.
2) Do a 'YC-lite' incubator program. We were never interested in the time or equity of a full YC program, so DIY'd fundraising, company formation etc. There's room to build community/support that's less intensive than YC's incubator, more suitable for founders who have matched and are building now... not waiting for incubator. I note that 20 match teams got YC funded... how many are doing well that YC knows nothing about?
This is cool to hear (as another member of the CFM team!)
We have admittedly less insight in this type of 'success' (we talk to all of the teams that end up in a YC batch) but if you stopped actively using the platform and paused your account, you would have told us you met someone you were working with.
Anecdotally I think some training on preseed/seed funding may be beneficial.
I’ve met more than a few pre seed folks who are focused on equity retention. This is all well and good for a few exceptional founders, and they are welcome to seek out a compatible match. However there should be an asterisk on when people are looking for a founding engineer or otherwise giving out marginal equity.
I had a few such meetings which were educational- but ultimately non productive as it would not make financial sense for me to join a seed stage firm for less than a 50% stake. Of course the discussion is different for later stage firms.
That being said the speed dating events were fantastic.
"Founding engineers" are employees. The site is for finding cofounders. Using the site for hiring is strictly against the rules -strongly advise letting that know to people who are doing this and/or report them directly on the site. We really really don't want the site to degrade into another jobsearch tool.
Yes, this is definitely something that was happening.
We recently added a question to the profile about "equity expectations" to try to solve this. I'm hopeful that will help, because then you can just not match with people who don't align with your expectations; would love any feedback on this.
It's a great feature, however I suspect that you may get too many "I'm flexible" entries relative to how flexible people actually are. In practice I'm probably flexible on equity expectations if a well known engineer/founder wanted to partner with me - or X MM had been secured for funding.
While it might be too much information for a profile, allowing individuals to indicate equity preferences for specific company valuations in their match preferences might guide both parties to the right deal.
Hi, I have been using it since launch, have reviewed ~100s-1000s of profiles, have talked with ~50-80 people, did a try-out with 2, for 6 months each. (Background is: I am a technical founder with 6 prior startups, 2 of which were successful; still want to build something, looking for good ideas, and great execution people)
I'm still actively looking for high-quality cofounders to join, and will take anyone who jumps the (high) bar I've set that is required to make a startup a success. However, it is extremely frustrating to work with the site for a mix of cultural, and UX issues reasons.
Specifically:
* Establish a culture of people sharing both their ideas, and the progress they made so far on the project. If the "idea" section is empty / "will discuss on a phone call" / NDAs, that's a no-go from the start. You might want to add a text in the "idea" section of the profile builder, that _not sharing their idea_ is very very bad, and they will get passed on for that reason.
* Search, and a way to look at "everyone who wants to work on X". There are several usability issues with browsing people one-by-one: for one, there are some startup ideas that are very timely right now, and I want to know everyone who wants to work in that area. For another, I can't know if a person I've passed on ~10 months ago haven't pivoted into something more interesting. This is not a sector-specific selector, rather a full-text search for every profile who has specific keywords; with results displayed in a list, similar to cofounderslab.
* Having a profile checkbox, and ability to filter for high-quality founder signals: have built a startup before, have made it profitable, have sold things in the same product category he's thinking on launching a new thing in.
(These are off the top of my head, will edit, if other things come up)
+1 on the site being lower value than it could be for repeat founders with previous successes, but who still want to build things with other people with extensive experience and a track record.
You could argue that if you're in that situation you should be relying on existing networks to propel you into your next thing, but sometimes you want a new start or things just aren't aligning time-wise with your former allies.
The majority of folks on the site have never done a startup before and are entirely unproven in a startup context, or have a couple of short stints that they unfortunately didn't learn much from because the thing never gained any traction, so they did "1 year experience 3 times over". Doesn't mean they're not potentially great startup material, it's pretty hard to get something to take off. But, it's still a pretty risky bet for someone who wants to derisk partners a tad more.
I was in a similar position to OP. I'll comment on
>You could argue that if you're in that situation you should be relying on existing networks to propel you into your next thing
That was very much the case for me. My network is the most valuable thing I posses in many ways, but it is 20 years old and it does stagnate a bit. I used YC founder match to find new connections with (younger) ambitious people who had a strong success drive. More established people tend to have far less bias to commit and act.
First of all, thanks for building it and as a user, the product is solid that matches the needs well. Note that I used 'matches' not 'solves' as the problem itself is so messy and difficult that a product like this could help but fundamentally it requires two people working together, which is super hard.
My way of somehow hacking it is to come in with low or no expectation. There are otherwise tons of great people on YC co-founder matching site, and almost all conversations I've had were excellent. Even if it didn't help me find a cofounder, I still rate the product highly.
Also chiming in from the CFM team. This point resonated with me based on conversations I've had with some of the teams that matched & are still working together. The evaluation period: asking tough questions, trial projects, equity expectations, and setting a strong foundation to work together are important steps to add onto any cf search -- CFM platform or personal network.
This. Also could you add a not interested in matching up because field option when someone tries to connect. And/or if you want to poke someone by letting them know you like what they are up to but you wouldn’t be good co-founder material.
I've used it and met some interesting folks; some whom I still chat with. One whom I seriously considered working with.
But ultimately no co-founders.
I think that there are different modalities for the folks on YC Co-Founder Matching and that's OK, IMO.
Like andrewfromx mentioned in a comment below, it would be great to be able to somehow identify and filter by those modalities. My sense is that there are some folks on there who would make great "first hires", but not necessarily "co-founder". There are some users on the platform who seem interested in joining a startup in the early stages (who should probably instead be on workatastartup.com instead) rather than actually co-founding a company.
Yes! YC calls them "scenesters", but the reality is that often you don't know if you're cut out for the gig until you actually do it, so lots of people have to experience it first-hand to realize they don't actually want the job.
I wish the same! My first couple weeks on co-founder matching were consumed with meeting a wide range of folks, most of whom in the "I'd like to start a company if the right co-founder / idea / other criteria present themselves" stage.
One thing that seems to reduce the noise is selecting "I'm working full time on my startup" and make that a requirement for co-founder. But it would be nice to also meet those who are not actively working on an idea but very committed to finding a co-founder to start something.
I actually would like to talk to people who really want to run a startup (with on of my great pre-developed ideas) in a somehow coordinated way and get a five percent stake in the company or something. Is there a good place for that (other than putting it on Hackster)?
I met people with great ideas, ones with great skillsets, ones with great management and leadership skills, and you just can have all those things vary over time in your life.
The question is, but also for the classic startup, how stable and dedicated would such a construct be. The need for fame, money or just joy of development also varies over time, so I would guess there should be a way to bring those interest together into a working construct without necessarily judging up front that this is not the real deal. Lots of CXXs are just employees in a company they did not found themselves after all. Still they receive shares of their company. So why not start with that as the base right away.
No, one of those dramatic things would happen, even in a worst-case scenario.
The worst case scenario for a venture fund (not A16Z specific) is that their future funds would be smaller and as a result they would need to make fewer investments and perhaps reduce the firm's headcount. Existing companies are not very affected.
Y Combinator (yes, the people who run this site) | Software Engineer | Anywhere in US | REMOTE | Full-time
Y Combinator has a small ~10 person team that builds all the software that runs YC. We don't hire for this team very often, but we're looking to hire a couple of people now. Several of the people we've hired have come from prior monthly Who's Hiring threads.
This is a great role for somebody who loves startups and is interested in being part of the YC startup community, and wants to own projects from start-to-finish.
It could also be a great role for someone who's interested in doing a startup in the future (though that's certainly not a requirement). If you're interested in getting funded by YC as a founder in the future, but you don't have a startup that's ready for that yet, joining the YC software team could be a great step. Several former software team members are now running YC startups.
We work primarily in Ruby on Rails and React (learning on the job is fine though), and we spend most of our time coding. That said, we encourage everyone to participate in all of YC -- read applications, join our batch talks, help out with Demo Day and speak up on the projects you'd want to work on.
The software team you'd be joining has about ten people with lots of collective years of start-up and big company experience, so you'll get the best of both worlds: moving fast and shipping and strong teammates/mentors to help you learn. About half of us are YC alums and several of us are parents. We're open to people 2+ years out of school or with 10+ years of experience. Lastly, the work-life balance and compensation are great, and you get to work with people across the company.
YC is fully remote and is hiring people anywhere in the US. We plan to reopen optional, part-time in-person offices in the SF Bay Area in the future for employees in the area.
There are two specific product teams we're hiring for at the moment. The first is https://www.startupschool.org/, which is the world's largest course about startups. The second is the YC admissions team, which is the team that builds software that helps us decide which startups to invest in.
If that sounds interesting, apply below or email me: jared@ycombinator.com
Y Combinator (yes, the people who run this site) | Software Engineer | Anywhere in US | REMOTE | Full-time
Y Combinator has a small ~10 person team that builds all the software that runs YC. We don't hire for this team very often, but we're looking to hire a couple of people now. Several of the people we've hired have come from prior monthly Who's Hiring threads.
This is a great role for somebody who loves startups and is interested in being part of the YC startup community, and wants to own projects from start-to-finish.
It could also be a great role for someone who's interested in doing a startup in the future (though that's certainly not a requirement). If you're interested in getting funded by YC as a founder in the future, but you don't have a startup that's ready for that yet, joining the YC software team could be a great step. Several former software team members are now running YC startups.
We work primarily in Ruby on Rails and React (learning on the job is fine though), and we spend most of our time coding. That said, we encourage everyone to participate in all of YC -- read applications, join our batch talks, help out with Demo Day and speak up on the projects you'd want to work on.
The software team you'd be joining has about ten people with lots of collective years of start-up and big company experience, so you'll get the best of both worlds: moving fast and shipping and strong teammates/mentors to help you learn. About half of us are YC alums and several of us are parents. We're open to people 2+ years out of school or with 10+ years of experience. Lastly, the work-life balance and compensation are great, and you get to work with people across the company.
YC is fully remote and is hiring people anywhere in the US. We plan to reopen optional, part-time in-person offices in the SF Bay Area in the future for employees in the area.
There are two specific product teams we're hiring for at the moment. The first is https://www.startupschool.org/, which is the world's largest course about startups. The second is the YC admissions team, which is the team that builds software that helps us decide which startups to invest in.
If that sounds interesting, apply below or email me: jared@ycombinator.com
(I work with YC's biotech companies). I'm particularly excited about what this deal means for biotech companies. YC's previous deal of $125K was always a bit light for companies doing wetlab biotech, which is still expensive compared to building software. $500K is a much better fit for the needs of most new biotech companies.
Most companies in YC these days raise over $1M at demo day, so no, I don't think many companies are likely to skip demo day as a result of this.
Our goal instead is to make companies more successful at demo day. Now they'll have more capital to use to grow during the batch, and they'll have more leverage to negotiate with demo day investors because they are better capitalized going into their fundraise.
