Sentence of the day

“I don’t mean this in a negative way, but Y Combinator is more like a cult than a venture capital fund. And Paul is the cult leader.” – Fred Wilson on Paul Graham‘s Y Combinator

Rage Against the Dying of the Light

Joel Spolsky’s latest article in Inc. talks about keeping on  fiddling the dials of your start-up till you get it right.

That reminded me of an essay by Paul Graham of how he can predict which start-ups that they invest in will die.

For us the main indication of impending doom is when we don’t hear from you. When we haven’t heard from, or about, a startup for a couple months, that’s a bad sign. If we send them an email asking what’s up, and they don’t reply, that’s a really bad sign. So far that is a 100% accurate predictor of death.

Whereas if a startup regularly does new deals and releases and either sends us mail or shows up at YC events, they’re probably going to live.

So for those folks who are experiencing a near-death experience, we can learn something from this man

and in the immortal words of Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that night

rage, rage against the dying of the light