I think YC is the wrong place for this, for all the reasons you say. I don't see any reason that Tarsnap fits in YC besides "community", and even then it would be more of an outlier than a peer. It seems like it would fit in a community of people that are interested in lower risk, slower growing, but more personally lucrative businesses.
YC companies do technically interesting things for sure, but a lot of the community is probably more about hiring, office space, fund raising, financials, and that sort of thing. These are all different for high risk startups.
I heard about this "Micropreneur" thing several years ago. This is something that interests me, and I've been working part time on projects in this vein. It seems to me that people who want slower growth and less personal risk are inherently a little less "collaborative". That describes me and there's nothing wrong with it. Still, I understand the need to bounce ideas off of others, quickly fill in gaps in your knowledge, etc.
I don't see any reason that Tarsnap fits in YC besides "community"
Yes, that's exactly it.
and even then it would be more of an outlier than a peer.
I'm not so sure about that. OK, in a financial sense sure; but I know there are lots of YC companies doing technically cool things. It's not all rapidly-growing social networks for cats. ;-)
> It seems to me that people who want slower growth and less personal risk are inherently a little less "collaborative".
Could you please expand on this? I am in the same vein as cperciva but it doesn't have any relationship with collaboration. Sometimes you have a relatively successful company where more capital and fast growth would cause more harm than good BUT because right now you can't see a path for growth.
It wasn't a very important comment, but I would say that there are some people who get a "high" from collaborating with many people on problems (working really hard with a small team), and some people who get a "high" from learning things on their own and applying them, with the help of experts.
One person you could take as an example is the Pinboard founder. If you read all his blog posts, I wouldn't call him a "collaborative" person. Is he a highly intelligent, productive, and respected member of society? Yes. Collaborative? No.
My impression is that cperciva is like this, but I could be wrong. I'm more like this too, as mentioned. But you still need community if you're in this camp.
I think there is potential for higher overall growth when you have the right team, simply because there are too many things for one person to do, requiring many different types of expertise. Though there is not necessarily higher "per capita" return.
But growth compounds, so that explains why YC prefers co-founders over solo founders. But YC also acknowledges that there is a big downside to working with teams: co-founder disputes are one of the biggest, if not the biggest, reason for startups failing!
I will reply anyway! I don't know the details about Tarsnap but in my case I work with a co-founder and several employees. We work collaboratively.
In this context we don't have the potential for higher overall growth because the specific niches where we do business are not growing enough. In the past we tried some new areas with great expectations but they never took off. This doesn't mean that we would not prefer a more favorable market sector if we "discover" it in the future.
YC companies do technically interesting things for sure, but a lot of the community is probably more about hiring, office space, fund raising, financials, and that sort of thing. These are all different for high risk startups.
I heard about this "Micropreneur" thing several years ago. This is something that interests me, and I've been working part time on projects in this vein. It seems to me that people who want slower growth and less personal risk are inherently a little less "collaborative". That describes me and there's nothing wrong with it. Still, I understand the need to bounce ideas off of others, quickly fill in gaps in your knowledge, etc.