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YC Changes

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: YC Changes

#71

Post by pb »

raldi wrote: post #34

My understanding of a provost's role is to be as senior as possible without having to do any administrative, managerial, or executive duties -- so they can focus entirely on academic topics. Is that basically what you're going for with the PB analogy, except s/academic/startup-mentoring/ ?

Yes, that's the goal :)

I like working with startups and advancing our program, but do not generally enjoy administrative work. This change enables me to do more of what I like and less of what I don't.

Re: YC Changes

#73

Post by projectileboy »

sama wrote: post #18
jlteran wrote: post #17

Will the MOOC content be in any way different from How to Start a Startup by Sam A. (class taught at Stanford)

Yes, I have a lot of new ideas about how to improve if after teaching that class. I plan to talk in more detail about it near the end of this year.

Thank you so much for taking the time to teach this class again. The original contained nuggets of knowledge and wisdom that are hard to find anywhere else.

Re: YC Changes

#74

Post by reflexive »

zorpner wrote: post #67
reflexive wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> using people of color as ideological puppets You assume if they practice cannibalism, they must be "people of color"? Edit: context: parent states that PG's use of the phrase "an island full of cannibals" is "a commonly recognized form of racism"

I'll happily call this out as obvious concern trolling. While you are technically correct (as most concern trolling is designed to be), it's obvious to any reasonable person that referring to an "island of cannibals" to an English-speaking primarily Western audience will call up a specific cultural trope that involves people of color. And now I've spent my order of magnitude more effort pointing out your bullshit tha…

> an English-speaking primarily Western audience

Fair point, although it hinges on the assumption that HackerNews is mainly of interest to Westerners who are primarily English-speakers.

When it comes to casual assertions of racism - most often the one who smelt it, dealt it.

Re: YC Changes

#75

Post by pb »

minimaxir wrote: post #4

What didn't work with the Fellowship, exactly? In light of the dissolution, how did the winners of the Apply HN competition ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11440627 ) work with the most recent Fellowship class?

Fellowship worked really well for the most part, but our real goal is to 10x or 100x the number of startups that we help, and Fellowship in it's current form couldn't easily do that. The MOOC is essentially Fellowship 2.0 -- we're taking what we learned from Fellowship and then opening it up to the whole world so that anyone can participate.

Re: YC Changes

#76

Post by vinceguidry »

afinlayson wrote: post #54

So YC is the new Alphabet?

My guess is that just about any organization that's using it's business as a vehicle to push social changes is eventually going to start adopting such a structure. You want to keep the business profitable while at the same time making room for new efforts. If you just started opening up new departments in the already-profitable organization you risk watering down what makes it magical.

Re: YC Changes

#77

Post by cperciva »

sandslash wrote: post #50
cperciva wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused by this - coming from an academic background, the words "financial aid" mean "help with subsidized tuition fees" to me, but you've said that this is going to be free. Can you elaborate on what you're thinking here?

The initial thought process around financial aid in this case is to give founders the means to be able to work on their idea, project, or company. I'd like to think of it more as a grant. The grant will afford founders in more disadvantaged positions an opportunity to focus on their startup. We're still working out the details of program, but our aim is to encourage more people to work on their ideas, and hopefully h…

Got it. So funding for the ideas/projects/companies, not funding for the MOOC.

I don't envy you the task of deciding who will get the grants (and I say this as someone who routinely pores through hundreds of undergraduate student applications for scholarships and awards). Is there any way you can structure the MOOC to give you a cheap-but-not-trivially-gameable grade? That way you could formulate the "startup grants" as being awards for the best performers in the MOOC and cut down significantly on the administrative effort involved. Of course, you might want people to be working on their projects while they take the MOOC, in which case the timeline wouldn't work -- I don't know whether your MOOC is aimed more at preparing people for a startup or people currently doing a startup (this seems like a very important thing to decide and to be clear about).

... it occurs to me now that I've written this that you've almost certainly considered all the points I've raised already; but I figure I might as well leave them here just in case I've pointed out anything you missed. :-)

Re: YC Changes

#78

Post by mceoin »

pb wrote: post #75
minimaxir wrote: post #4

What didn't work with the Fellowship, exactly? In light of the dissolution, how did the winners of the Apply HN competition ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11440627 ) work with the most recent Fellowship class?

Fellowship worked really well for the most part, but our real goal is to 10x or 100x the number of startups that we help, and Fellowship in it's current form couldn't easily do that. The MOOC is essentially Fellowship 2.0 -- we're taking what we learned from Fellowship and then opening it up to the whole world so that anyone can participate.

Do you anticipate seed funding for standout fellowship "graduates", especially those in foreign countries?

Re: YC Changes

#79

Post by pb »

Qworg wrote: post #59
snowmaker wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YC would like to fund a lot more startups. We're working on this. Also, being connected doesn't help people get into YC. We have no connection to most of the companies we fund.

RE: "We have no connection to most of the companies we fund." This certainly isn't the perception on my part - the flood of posts from previous YC companies who talk about how they had help from other YC companies to polish their pitch makes it seem like current YC companies are definitively connected to previous YC companies.

The handful of blog posts you see here on HN are not representative of the whole batch. The majority of companies that we fund have zero alumni connections.

To me, this is actually one of the most important features of YC: the application process is completely open and we fund people from around the world regardless of background. Having graduated from college in Ohio in the 90s I moved here with zero connections and really wished for something like YC.

Re: YC Changes

#80

Post by cperciva »

mceoin wrote: post #78
pb wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fellowship worked really well for the most part, but our real goal is to 10x or 100x the number of startups that we help, and Fellowship in it's current form couldn't easily do that. The MOOC is essentially Fellowship 2.0 -- we're taking what we learned from Fellowship and then opening it up to the whole world so that anyone can participate.

Do you anticipate seed funding for standout fellowship "graduates", especially those in foreign countries?

sama mentioned "financial aid" below, which sandslash clarified as "The grant will afford founders in more disadvantaged positions an opportunity to focus on their startup.", so it sounds like there will be something along those lines (although whether during or after the course, it's not entirely clear yet).
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