301–310 of 317 posts
Has YC ever considered moving from the Bay Area due to the high cost of living there?
What advantages does YC see in being in the Bay Area that prevents them from moving elsewhere, or setting up a satellite office in, perhaps, Vancouver?
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This is a great question. It seems like it'd be difficult for YC to be neutral on such topics, considering they are actively pursuing pilot projects on things that very left-wing, like a basic income. From the perspective of a non-profit, it's probably less likely because the argument is probably less "invest and see what thrives [so we can make money off anything that makes money]" and more "help craft the world in…
Wasn't this basically answered by the Pinboard fiasco a while back? ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11633517 ) It wasn't really over left-wing/right-wing political differences but there was a clash.
I could probably understand if they tried it for a month or so and it fell apart; it is true that some people have personality clashes that are not really worth the investment to overcome vs. having each party just move on independently, but he seems to expect a "connection" to materialize in a couple of minutes.
That speaks to the bubble that these VC types end up believing to be reality, and unfortunately it means that a lot of people who aren't necessarily convinced that there's any reason they should be pitching a VC are written off as low-energy merely because they're being compared to all the sycophants who will say anything to get a check.
The next question is whether someone being conservative, a Trump supporter, and/or both is enough to make the YC partners feel like they can't establish a "connection". One would hope that Thiel is proof to them that it is possible. The question is whether they'd give the benefit of the doubt to someone who doesn't already have billions of dollars.
Hi, any advice for solo founders, if the startup isn't launched yet, but expected to launch in 1 month? Thanks.
I'm a solo founder. Like yourself, about 4-6 weeks away from launching. I'm going to offer a different perspective than @keithwhor. Yes, you need to have many skills than writing software. You need to know how to cold call/email, how to cultivate relationships over many mediums, how to ask for more things that are offered, how to push for that sale, how to essentially moon-shoot and to know everything is a negotiatio…
How will computer science ever be taught to the general K-12 population if software engineers make $102k and teachers make $45k in the US on average? This gap seems to only be increasing too.
How should we think about developing solutions to solve the problem of affordable CS education for everyone?
Even with the best textbooks, curriculums, etc., it is probably not enough for the average teacher (definitely without a CS background) to teach CS effectively.
Can you provide some info on how does YC support hardware startups? More specifically, what is a good stage to apply? We are working on building a demo-quality HW prototype, with the ETA of ~6months. That means we will not be focused on growth, but on tech development. Should we wait until we have a working system and apply to YC when we are ready to scale and grow it (this is our current thought).
I am on your same boat. We been working for the past year to get the HW prototype build and at a stage where we can demo it. We are still around 6 months on finishing but lack of funding and advice would definitely accelerate our progress. (Paying for assembled boards instead of hand building each as a example of how it would make it faster.)
Thank you for taking the time today. It's neat and rare to have a somewhat direct line to someone in your position. What's the "big thing" 10 years from now? Ie Are smartphones still the rage and hottest "endpoint"? Did security wind up being the highest demand/pay IT career path? Etc
Honestly, this is not how I think about YC. We don't spend a lot of time thinking about what is going to be "the rage". We are excited about funding great founders and some subset of what early stage founders are interested in today will become the rage 10 years from now.
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You're basically asking YC to bet on you before you bet on yourself. If you aren't willing to go all in, what does that say? Startups are really fucking hard. You have to have a serious belief and commitment to build a billion dollar business (which is what YC is investing in.) If you're unsure, that's totally fine, but you need to be the first to believe in your company and get used to being the only ones who believ…
> If you aren't willing to go all in, what does that say? That you are smart enough not to weaken your negotiation position if you don't actually have to?
This isn't a game theory experiment. It's not unreasonable for investors to want you to be full-time invested (if you can) before putting in money. Also, some people may want to run their company until it is profitable enough that the company can pay them a full-time salary.
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To be clear: YC accepts non-profits each round. www.ycombinator.com/nonprofits/ The question of whether open-source producing non-profits fit into YC is still a good one. I couldn't find an info on whether they have already accepted such non-profits, but the incubator Fast Forward has: > Intelehealth built an open-source intelligence engine for assessing primary care conditions https://qz.com/792685/silicon-valley-wa…
Sure, and I'm aware of the non-profit initiatives. I don't think many people have considered producing actual software under a not-for-profit (except for Khan Academy?), probably because it's insanely expensive. Would YCombinator help facilitate funding a fully open Facebook or Twitter clone, for instance? It sounds outlandish to consider, but it seems equally outlandish to consider the 2020 election happening over e…
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Wasn't this basically answered by the Pinboard fiasco a while back? ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11633517 ) It wasn't really over left-wing/right-wing political differences but there was a clash.
Thanks for the link. I do vaguely remember seeing a controversy around that, but not really having the time to get into the threads. No one really knows what happened on the call between "kevin" (who I guess is important) and idlewords, but it does seems like they were quick to dismiss him. I could probably understand if they tried it for a month or so and it fell apart; it is true that some people have personality c…
I'm convinced they wouldn't. The various opinion pieces posted by sama made it pretty clear that they've got a particular agenda and the choices for YC applicants going forward are either 1) hop on the wagon, or 2) keep your beliefs to yourself.