Ask HN: Submit Questions for Office Hours with YC

I applied for Upcoming YC batch as a startup from India. I've been into startup ecosystem since last 2 years and typically a hardware based. My startup application was unfortunately not selected and we totally acknowledge your team's decision. But we have a query here, I have already gone through the FAQs section and i totally understand "Why don't you invite groups for the personal Interview". But this one is slightly different and is more of a general question. I thoroughly walked your FAQ sections and somewhere in between the FAQs, i found a section that said "Request For startups/Hardware". Now though i'm running a hardware based startup in India, i read the section and i found a line that said, "We help hardware companies quickly create prototypes, test with potential customers, iterate their product, launch in a way that maximizes the likelihood of success, and scale production in response to demand." I even walked through the alumini section and found that most of the startups are directly/indirectly related to mobile applications/web based/IT based. Even though the startups are categorized as Hardware startups, more or less i can see a mobile application/any other web based stuff involvement in them. Moreover, when a user browse through your webpage, the homepage clearly shows couple of startups (whom YC funded and supported) and 90% (or more) are the ones who are developing Mobile applications or are into web based applications (Ex - Payment services, Cloud services, Foodtech, etc). It's a clear thing that a user like me perceives this as the very first thing when i open up your webpage. Being a hardware guy, i need to exclusively search for options in order to find out some Hardware startups to whom i could relate myself. And the very first thing that motivated me to apply for YC are the following points: Versatility Pool of talented people Clear support for a startup like mine (Hardware based) and most importantly, the statement, "We help hardware companies quickly create prototypes, test with potential customers, iterate their product, launch in a way that maximizes the likelihood of success, and scale production in response to demand." This actually excited me about the fact that we already have a MVP ready with us and YC can help us reach greater heights with the help of their pool of talented people.

From previous comments by PG and others I think the gist of it is that college is a great place to work on interesting projects and meet potential co-founders (other students).

Startups tend to be all consuming, so it's hard to say that another full-time commitment like school could be an advantage. Unless you have a business that is taking off like a rocket ship, I would wait til after graduation.

Hello Sam,

With VR/AR on the rise in the last couple of years, how do you think it is going to impact the startup community and in your opinion, what industry is going to get impacted the most in the next 10-20 years?

Jamal

I recently read a blog post from Paul Graham titled, "Change Your Name." He suggests that "if you have a US startup called X and you don't have x.com, you should probably change your name." Taking this in to consideration, I decided to change the name of my side project. However, I soon discovered that its nearly impossible to acquire a good ".com" due to domain squatting by companies like Uniregistry Corp. It seems like domain squatting / speculating is the driving force behind goofy startup names, and maybe its time to just start using other TLDs. Anyway: What do you think about domain squatting and startup names Sam?

Sam - How can a student with no technical background go start a startup ? For e.g. - Evan Spiegel from Snap didn't have a programming background neither did Brian Chesky from AirBnB.