In the technology world, "launch day" is a very big deal, with success measured by some as getting featured in as many tech-focused websites as possible, being Number 1 in the App Store right away, getting voted up on Hacker News and Reddit and holding the most lavish launch party possible, TechCrunch reported.
However, it's worth keeping in mind that fancy launches don't always equate to future long-term success. Some of the strongest startups, apps and organizations in the tech world actually started very quietly. Y Combinator is one of them, TechCrunch reported.
Although YC Demo Day now generates a lot of buzz in Silicon Valley these days that has not always been the case. At the Startup Grind 2014 conference held earlier this month, Derek Andersen did an onstage interview with YC Co-Founder Jessica Livingston which tackled the humble beginnings of the seed accelerator when it first rolled out in 2005, the report said.
According to Livingston, their first YC Demo Day held in Cambridge, Massachusetts only had eight startups in attendance. There were only 15 to 20 investors in that event. Livingston said, "Some of them were legit, and some of them were just rich people we knew and said, 'Can you please come?' But we knew we were on to something."
She added that YC kept growing from its humble days because people cared, emphasizing that this was an important point to remember. She said, "[The] eight people we funded cared, you know, and some of the investors who funded them cared, and it was slowly growing. Paul Buchheit, who's one of the YC partners who invented Gmail, gives this great advice which is, 'It's so much better to make a few people love you, than a lot of people just like you.' And that is just so true, with whatever you're doing. And that's what it was for us. A few people loved us, and we just sort of just grew from there."
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