Michael Seibel, CEO of YC, is doing an AMA

BTW this Chrome Extension makes it track users in HN comments: https://github.com/brhs/hnuserlist (e.g. read all of mwseibel's comments)

This is probably off-topic, but this proposal seems dystopic and anti-disruptive. The ability to mine coins is proportional to current ownership of capital (i.e., ability to calculate proof-of-work). You "eliminate" spam by allowing the richest to send you emails. You charge for DDoS attacks. Uber and Lyft get traffic signal priority over individual drivers, and that's assuming that Uber and Lyft could even get started in a world where taxi medallion holders could just buy all the green lights and resell them to everyone other than Uber and Lyft. And if you can bid on computing capacity itself with proof-of-work, you're well on your way to a Yudkowskian horror story of sentient Ethereum smart contracts buying computer factories for themselves.

If I'm trying to write open source outside the confines of traditional capitalism, the last thing I want to do is require that people's usage of it is proportional to their riches.

I am someone completely removed from the scene, and have never attempted a startup let alone applied to YC, but I do get the image that the ideal YC start up is one comprised of the following: 2 to 4 smart, young, and hungry developers that really just need food and rent money for three months so they can dedicate themselves 100% to hacking on their project.

That seemed to be the idea early at least. Now they're expanding and investing in larger startups who get more value from the alumni network and the face time with the YC crew. At the end of the day though, they don't want people to have the fallback plan of just letting their startup fizzle while they continue to work their day job. I don't blame them to be honest.

The nascent Mozilla was Netscape and a well funded company that achieved a multi-billion dollar exit (final valuation $10 Billion per Wikipedia)[1]. As a commercial operation it was able to hire a significant engineering staff to work heads down on browser development over a sustained period. In contrast most non-profits have to hire for and focus on donor development and don't have a period of massive commercial growth fueled by venture capital.

The Mozilla Foundation has a wholly owned for commercial entity, the Mozilla Corporation.

[1] If there was a nascent non-profit in the chain that led to Mozilla, it would be NCSA [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Center_for_Supercompu...] where Andreesen was developing Mosaic.

As a solo founder: my main advice is just do everything you can to create value and hustle. I don't want to paint a rosy picture --- being a solo founder is a hell of a lot of really, really hard work. It's not enough to just be good at writing software. My top recommendation is to find a cofounder you have worked with before that you really trust, and barring that, make sure you have a solid support network of friends and (hopefully) a supportive partner. The emotional rollercoaster is real and it can f_cking hurt.

The number one skill you can have as a solo founder is a tremendous amount of self-awareness and self-reflective ability. You're not going to have a business partner telling you when you're f_cking up, and you can't rely on really early stage investors too much for this, either (even after they've invested) because as empathetic human beings it's often better to give somebody the chance to figure it out on their own than risk alienating them. So be the person that figures it out on their own.

Aside from that, listen to the advice people give you, and take it seriously, but judge them by their motivations and actions, not necessarily the content of the advice at face value. A question from a prospective investor like, "how do you compete with [X]" isn't necessarily looking for an answer - if their action is they don't invest, it's probably more of a signal that the story you're telling them is raising red flags about [X] and you're not going to convince them today and move on. Figure out how to take [X] out of the equation in your story. (But it's good to know, for the sake of the business, how you plan on dealing with [X]. Storytelling-by-pitch is only a high level overview of a robust business strategy.) Similarly, keep in mind many active founders have motivations around self-interest of talent / IP acquisition first and foremost --- there are many, many helpful ones but at the end of the day they all have a business to grow just like you do.

Finally, with all of that in mind, trust your gut. If you believe in what you're building, and you're creating value for your customers, that's all that matters. Find believers. They're out there. Love others and accept love that others are willing to give. Listen to your believers when they speak. (Early investors, employees, etc.) They've already made actions you can trust (re: above), so their words are an order of magnitude more valuable.

Re: YC specifically, I can't be helpful there, but thought I'd jump in. I hope Michael has valuable advice about timelines and such.