Paul Graham: YC's Current Startups Are More Serious Than in the Past
Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham stated that the startups funded by YC today are much more serious than during the so-called "good times." He has recently encountered projects including optical switches, rewriting manufacturing software infrastructure, building nuclear reactors, and cancer treatment. This reinforces the narrative of a rise in hard tech and deep tech entrepreneurship, with funding and attention shifting towards projects that address physical world challenges and long-term issues, while early lightweight consumer applications are under pressure.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Paul Graham, as a founder of YC, has long observed the evolution of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Early YC focused primarily on internet and software applications, but in recent years has clearly shifted towards deeper technology and physical industries. His observations focus on the changing nature of projects: moving from relatively lightweight internet startups to fields such as optics, manufacturing software, nuclear energy, and biomedicine, which require long-term investment and high barriers to entry. The motivation is to point out that current entrepreneurs are more willing to tackle fundamental scientific and industrial problems. Similar cases can be seen in YC and other accelerators increasing the proportion of deep tech, climate, and biotech projects in recent years, as well as the trend of Silicon Valley capital flowing back from pure software to hard tech, indicating a shift in entrepreneurial focus from application layers to foundational layers. Essentially, this represents a structural change: entrepreneurial resources are concentrating on projects with higher barriers and longer cycles, facilitated by AI and computational capabilities lowering some technical thresholds, making previously difficult physical and biological fields feasible.