For the uninitiated like myself, PearAi just took the source code of continue.dev (not fork, they copy pasted) and did some clunky work on it. That was their entry to YC.
for additional uninitiatedness: one of the founders is "Frying Pan", a popular youtuber. There has been previous discussion on the fact that the cost to build software is approaching 0. If that is given, maybe "taste" is all that matters. Funding a ~productless popular youtuber is a great way to test if "taste" and "brand" is better to invest in than tech in the years to come.
“Taste” is something that’s developed through repetitive exposure to differentiated items in a particular set, combined with extremely high abstract analytical abilities, and that’s something completely different from having marketing or personal branding skills.
I think you’re right that that’s the evaluation happening, but it’s totally misguided. If you’re indexing for differentiating levels of taste I would be very wary of empty vessel young influencers. Taste is built over years and years and imo requires a certain disdain for the crowd. Look at Linus Torvalds as a pinnacle of taste in code for example.
> There has been previous discussion on the fact that the cost to build software is approaching 0.
People have been claiming that since COBOL came out (actually, probably before; I bet some people claimed it about _assembler_), so, er, yeah, will believe that one when I see it.
"did some clunky work on it. That was their entry to YC"
For more context, YC doesn't judge your code, never has. It was never a code quality competition. Orthogonally, they do judge the results (user metrics).
Did they? YC regularly funded competitors. This was always true. Fundamentally, YC is betting on founders. They're optimizing for founders who can move fast enough to find a moat before they die, that's it.
They fund competitors because most YC companies usually pivot out anyway.
