How to Build Curation Businesses

Focus too much on utility (get too big), and you kill the signal. Focus too much on signal itself without bolting on utility, then it becomes like Harvard — people know it has no purpose other than the signal and that itself weakens the signal. It becomes a bubble.

Curation businesses — universities, bootcamps, accelerators — are incredibly powerful.

Give someone their start or otherwise be an inflection point. Believe in them before others do and they'll be immensely grateful. If you create the turning point in their career or personal growth, they’ll remember you forever.

Unlike with consumer products, a curation business’s brand can be a durable moat.

Which is why once you get curation businesses off the ground, they are very difficult to disrupt, because everyone has incentive to keep the whole charade going.

The last time a new university cracked the top 10 was over 100 years ago, whereas most tech businesses get disrupted every few decades or so.

Utility pulls you in the direction of expanding size. The more people there are, the more total opportunities there can be. Filter pulls you in the direction of less. The more people there are, the less likely the quality of the average person.

Indeed, the genius of the YC credential that it's tied to their winners, not their median outcomes. It's less that you'll be impressed with the average company — it's more so that "1 in X startups will be the next Airbnb."

On Deck has been building the accelerator for X infrastructure over the last two years.