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Focusing on growth and revenue sounds like the right thing to do for a p2p dog walking marketplace, or a SaaS enterprise meal planning app, but what about the startups solving big problems? Is month over month user growth relevant to a nuclear fusion or jet airplane startup?


growth & revenue are ways to show "traction" -- a buzzwordy way to measure meaningful progress.

For an R&D based startup working on Fusion, that progress would be measured differently.

Many businesses have Key Performance Indicators (KPI's). Startups should be no different.


I've seen meaningful progress metrics in R&D-stage companies working on fusion, synthetic bio, AI, rockets, and more. I think they're especially important in R&D companies, because it's so easy to go off into the weeds or solve the wrong problems.


And YC probably doesn't see many of those...


You just have to spend a lot longer in phase 1 (or pre phase 1) where you're trying to make something people want. Once you've built that tech you still want to sell it and to have growth right?


at the very least, you can get LOIs or POCs




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