Some people think YC only funds software startups."
Kinda strange that software is not seen by YC as "hard tech".
I think there's lots of hard tech in software but the way venture capitalists/angel investors tell it, you should only ever build software that can be made in a weekend and then iterated upon.
The outcome of this is the X thousandth dog walking social network for uber drivers staying at AirBNB - i.e. stuff that you can build in a weekend and iterate on. And this is why demo days are full of such lightweight software applications - people are actively discouraged from taking the time to build something large scale and, well, "hard".
Sometimes it makes sense to make a big bet on building some complex software that might take months or years to build, with lots of moving parts, but once complete solves a big problem. That is software that is "hard tech".
Some people think YC only funds software startups."
Kinda strange that software is not seen by YC as "hard tech".
I think there's lots of hard tech in software but the way venture capitalists/angel investors tell it, you should only ever build software that can be made in a weekend and then iterated upon.
The outcome of this is the X thousandth dog walking social network for uber drivers staying at AirBNB - i.e. stuff that you can build in a weekend and iterate on. And this is why demo days are full of such lightweight software applications - people are actively discouraged from taking the time to build something large scale and, well, "hard".
Sometimes it makes sense to make a big bet on building some complex software that might take months or years to build, with lots of moving parts, but once complete solves a big problem. That is software that is "hard tech".