I'm a "today's founder" (although I will admit I'm pretty old) but the history of PG, YC & the people that were in those first few batches I find incredibly interesting. In fact I find the whole evolution of this industry as a whole in Silicon Valley interesting & this is just the next evolution of that.
Sure, our focus is all about how to grow faster & I didn't mean to imply that today's YC is worse than it was when it started as it relates to achieving a founders actual goals, I didn't mean that at all.
My question to Michael was just based on this aspect of his post:
"For me, there were two amazing things in the early days of YC that are different today. First, in 2007, batches were much smaller so it was easier to meet all of your batchmates. Today, you have to work harder to meet and become friends with all the talented people in your batch. We put companies into groups of about 30-40 in order to replicate the feeling of the past. Second, getting to work directly with PG was special."
From strictly an experience aspect since Michael is uniquely qualified to give a perspective on being a part of both then and now there had to be a certain magic in that 2007 batch that would be pretty tough to recreate today, or maybe not I guess, I don't know, it's why I asked.
Michael how much of that early magic is lost now with PG not actively involved, with the bigger batches and the more industrialized machine?
Don't get me wrong, what YC has become is pretty amazing but boy what I wouldn't give to have been part of one of those first few batches or especially that first one with Aaron Swartz.
We're working on a new sales platform called coldminer (http://www.cold-miner.com) that unifies the entire process by including millions of built in prospecting leads, virtual call center, help desk, real time communications between sales reps, optional integrated e-commerce store for both front end purchasing as well as the option for sales reps to select inventory and make the sale from the call center, mass email capability, sales rep training and more.
We've been in the prototype phase for the last 7 months with one company using the prototype as it's sole leads source and sales platform and its helped them open over 200 new accounts and raise sales by over 200%.
We need alpha/beta testers and would love to see some other startups use it to gain traction so if anyone is interested in it let me know and we'll set you up.
It does both b2b and b2c but we're still working on the b2c aspect (a lot more data points and moving parts on the b2c side, plus a hell of a lot more leads to deal with) so we're really looking for companies that sell b2b right now but will be looking for b2c companies soon.
We're working on a new sales platform called coldminer (http://www.cold-miner.com) that unifies the entire process by including millions of built in prospecting leads, virtual call center, help desk, real time communications between sales reps, optional integrated e-commerce store for both front end purchasing as well as the option for sales reps to select inventory and make the sale from the call center, mass email capability, sales rep training and more.
We've been in the prototype phase for the last 7 months with one company using the prototype as it's sole leads source and sales platform and its helped them open over 200 new accounts and raise sales by over 200%.
We need alpha/beta testers and would love to see some other startups use it to gain traction so if anyone is interested in it let me know and we'll set you up.
It does both b2b and b2c but we're still working on the b2c aspect (a lot more data points and moving parts on the b2c side, plus a hell of a lot more leads to deal with) so we're really looking for companies that sell b2b right now but will be looking for b2c companies soon.
We're working on a new sales platform called coldminer (http://www.cold-miner.com) that unifies the entire process by including millions of built in prospecting leads, virtual call center, help desk, real time communications between sales reps, optional integrated e-commerce store for both front end purchasing as well as the option for sales reps to select inventory and make the sale from the call center, mass email capability, sales rep training and more.
We've been in the prototype phase for the last 7 months with one company using the prototype as it's sole leads source and sales platform and its helped them open over 200 new accounts and raise sales by over 200%.
We need alpha/beta testers and would love to see some other startups use it to gain traction so if anyone is interested in it let me know and we'll set you up.
It does both b2b and b2c but we're still working on the b2c aspect (a lot more data points and moving parts on the b2c side, plus a hell of a lot more leads to deal with) so we're really looking for companies that sell b2b right now but will be looking for b2c companies soon.