i think there is no secret sauce , if your priority is getting into YC over building a successful business you're most likely doing it wrong. P.S im no way affiliated to YC
Every market is different and so are their rules. You are right that India has more players than the US or Europe markets but it also has more diversity and population density. Imagine paying all these multiple service providers to make your content free as a small company , non-profit , or startup to reach a billion people.
With multiple service providers available, why would you bother paying one? If they decide to make your service slow, their customers will notice, and if they care about your service, they'll switch. An ISP can only pull that kind of extortion when they're the only game in town.
The point of net neutrality is that without it, your new service will never have a chance to make any inroads at all, so customers won't know they can't access it. A competitive non-neutral market won't fix that.
You're assuming a world in which ISPs have managed to make themselves the gatekeepers for sites, which assumes they have the power to do so. Given competition among ISPs, no one ISP would have the power to do so, and a group of them getting together to do so would quickly find itself facing antitrust charges.
The ISPs don't have to be the first movers; enough megacorps paying enough ISPs to make a "free tier" would have the same effect, which is exactly what we seem to be discussing w.r.t. India.
This is already visible in the US with smaller sites; many video streaming sites, and subsections of even more video streaming sites, are exclusively available to customers of specific cable/sat network ISPs.
If Google and Facebook get their way, the world's poor will get subsidized "basic internet" that only delivers sponsored content. Only the competitively wealthy will be able to pay for the real internet and break out of the walled garden. This is opposed to giving everybody access to the same internet and having governments/charity subsidize the cost for those who can't afford it. Do we really want to create second class netizens?
> Why is the Indian government banning Google from providing free Internet, yet not providing such themselves?
The Indian government is not "banning" Google from doing anything.
> You are saying that he world's poor should become rich enough to pay for Internet, before they can get access to Internet?
In several ways, India has arguably more widespread and affordable internet infrastructure than Europe or the US. And it is getting cheaper all the time.
So the motivation of zero-rating is NOT about helping the poor. It is about the huge market that India represents and the boost in market share that companies with subsidised traffic get.
I think that charity with strings attached isn't charity, especially when it just disincentivizes (or makes more difficult) legitimate forms of charity. Or worse, when it makes legitimate forms of sustained enterprise more difficult.
So these western juggernauts are going to start injecting ads into vital communication infrastructure from day zero, and then when India decides it wants its own infra, do you think Google and FB will just step away? This is just the modern version of oil imperialism.
Just so we are clear, everyone is aware of the case of Nestle freely giving enough of the formula to new mothers to use so that by the time they ran out their natural production of milk had declined to be insufficient to feed the baby. This combined with many mothers being too poor to either afford the formula or clean water to mix the formula with resulted in babies dying. A pretty clear example of when giving something out for free is a horrible thing.
Absolutely - and a lot of what USDS, 18f and PIF do is bring technical people into gov't not only to design and code software, but to make sure the right solution gets implemented, and help policy makers understand how effective technology gets built.
implementing the right solutions is very subjective. There are many approaches to solving a single problem.Lets take the energy example where we have different solutions in renewables, hyro and nuclear amongst others . Now it seems that the people working on renewables dont talk to people from hydro nor with those working on nuclear. IMHO might be better for the global community where people working on a single problem communicated amongst themselves and policy makers to self select what works best.
Not disagreeing with you, but I don't see any programs that would actually help people do that on a global basis. The US Digital Service idea is great - I wouldn't want anyone to be under the impression that it isn't "big enough".
when you read about other accelerators , you realize that they are more region specific. For ex there are tons in the philly - pittsburgh area that continuously talk about being the best in that particular region as opposed to a massive global force. I've realized by inference that they prioritize their community goals (create more jobs , attract smart people) over founder priorities as Sam mentions here. I think what differentiates YC is that they understand that the community goals are a by-product of supporting great founder driven missionary companies and not vice-versa.
The Pittsburgh area accelerators also require that the company stays headquartered in Pittsburgh. I love my hometown, but it's not exactly the best place to grow a company, especially a startup (in general, I think in some verticals there may be a fair amount of potential). The governor talks about bringing in more venture capital to the area, but that's not really something you can legislate. There's a low cost of living and really smart people out here, but one of the biggest hurdles (IMHO) that no one is mentioning is that it's difficult to access capital to get going, and the small size of the business community here and lack of affordable transportation to other areas make it a bit daunting to start. Better to move out to SF and start something while couchsurfing--there's a higher ceiling elsewhere with their accelerator communities.
i agree that there is a small business community but i've noticed that most of the companies that are successful in that region are sold to bigger companies. I'm not sure what stops them from going all the way and achieve world domination. They have excellent ingredients for success (lower costs , incredibly driven smart people)but is it a lack of vision or lack of good advice as talked here?
Agreed--if the exit strategy for a startup is to simply be bought up by another company, well then come on down!! :-)
I think that's actually a very interesting question. It's certainly possible that the accelerators here encourage exits instead of world domination, because it's 'safer' to exit if you have the opportunity (i.e. why soldier on for an IPO when you can be acquired, the accelerator makes its money back, you make some money, and everyone in the region can say 'oh well startup x was sold, look at the success!'). Continuing on represents risk...the company may not IPO, or may not continue to grow at a rate that supports the valuation, etc.
I've not gone through an accelerator here in Pittsburgh (or anywhere else for that matter), but I would strongly suspect a large part of it is the cultural mindset here--an exit is a win, because compared to their peers, that's enough, just like how our high school football teams view winning the local championship as more important than winning states. Not saying that an exit isn't a win (it certainly is), but you don't see anyone around here swinging for the fences and taking that continued risk. My $.02.
Not been in an accelerator either. Although I did spend some time in Pittsburgh. If i were to start something they would not be on top of my list(the weather is palatable for a few)and most of the imp people there are very old for me to relate to , Or even to start a meaningful conversation with. I feel obligated to be respectful over honest because of my culture bias. I met this individual who taught an innovation in practice course and didn't know what " acqui-hiring" was. As someone who visited the country to study and learn how to innovate it was a slight shock
The title of the book put me off, but it worthwhile to read. Some of the stuff seems basic, but we all (speaking as a developer) had to learn the basics of computer programming, too.
About to say the same thing. I resisted a couple of times. Just wished that they did not pick a title comes across as manuscript for snake oil selling.
The basic and obvious stuff needs to be spelled out as it solidified the concepts.
