I sent this email to the current YC batch this morning:

I've talked to some of you who are really bummed about negative press coverage or online comments about your company. Often this takes the general form of "ugh, all these new startups suck, everything good has already been started."

It sucks to have haters, but every founder who now runs a huge company faced this for a long time. Please don't let it get you down (some criticism is useful, and that you should pay attention to, but that's not normally what gets people down). The sooner you can develop a thick skin for this, the better.

Unless the world ends soon, the most valuable company the world will ever see has not yet been started. 
 Most startups will fail, so you can say everything sucks and be right most of the time. Although you never lose money with that strategy, you never make any either. 
 The best startups take a long time to be recognized as good. Go read the things people wrote about Google, Facebook, Airbnb, Uber, etc in their first few years of existence. Overnight success usually takes a decade of uphill work. 
 YC itself faced this for a long time. We turned out to do ok. 
 A friend of mine likes to say "there are two kinds of people in the world--the people that build the future, and the people who write posts on the internet about why they'll fail". Keep trying to be in former category.

Unless the world ends soon, the most valuable company the world will ever see has not yet been started.

Most startups will fail, so you can say everything sucks and be right most of the time. Although you never lose money with that strategy, you never make any either.

The best startups take a long time to be recognized as good. Go read the things people wrote about Google, Facebook, Airbnb, Uber, etc in their first few years of existence. Overnight success usually takes a decade of uphill work.

YC itself faced this for a long time. We turned out to do ok.

A friend of mine likes to say "there are two kinds of people in the world--the people that build the future, and the people who write posts on the internet about why they'll fail". Keep trying to be in former category.

The people who have said there is nothing new left to do in the world have been wrong every time. Don't let their lack of imagination hold you back.