What do you recommend to the founders that can't move to the bay area? Like people who own homes, have a family, etc? I know the YC requires it. I once emailed and asked about commuting because my co-founder and I both live in Sacramento, but the person who answered my email basically said that commuting is not feasible.
What Happens At Y Combinator
51–60 of 144 posts
Re: What Happens At Y Combinator
#52I've always thought of YC as more of an incubator for young 20-somethings trying to get an idea off the ground. The impression has been fortified by the reported small amounts of 'seed' that is given out. I know a lot of people in older age brackets (30s-40s-50s) with a family and Silicon Valley mortgage who have great ideas and experience but wouldn't even consider approaching YC.
My one suggestion is if you want to expand your age/experience bracket and get these people to apply, you may want to address issues directly relevant to them. One suggestion is to relabel the investment to something more like a 'stipend' and explain clearly that it's not expected to cover salary and life expenses, but only to help defer company expenses. That way, people know that they need to set aside enough savings to cover their family.
The other is to spell out clearly the policy of working on outside projects (to bring in some money) during the YC 3-month period. Leaving it ambiguous keeps out people who need a part-time gig to bring in some money but could spend the rest of their waking time working on a cool product.
I know people who work as consultants and make $10K-$25K in a month. To these people, the YC 'investment' is more of a deterrent. The main attraction would be to get wired into the network and tap into the experience YC and its alumni can offer. It would be good if you could clarify whether it makes sense for them to apply or not.
Overall though, a good write-up with a decent level of detail. Thanks for putting it up.
Re: What Happens At Y Combinator
#53How frequently do companies grow (hire, add a cofounder) during the YC term? Does that ever happen? Is advising on that ever part of the YC role/conversation?
Maybe 15-20% do. And yes, we care a lot about that, and often help not only in advising but in recruiting.
Do you generally advise single-founder companies to add cofounders (it does have its benefits), or do you think single founders are fine if they pass the filter?
I guess my question is, do you see single-founder companies as missing something (a cofounder), or does it depend on the founder?
Re: What Happens At Y Combinator
#54If you were to start YC again, from scratch - i.e. if your brain was teleported into your body 5 years ago - what would you do differently? Would you start it directly in SV instead of Boston? Would you focus more on building the alumni network from day one?
There must have been many mistakes along the way, while this article talks mostly about the successes. I'm curious what mistakes you made and avoided... maybe that's a topic for another article though.
Re: What Happens At Y Combinator
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
No others are quite as bad. We'd be dubious about startups building stuff for the government, for example, because there is such a horrible mismatch between startup culture and government culture. But we'd still fund a startup building stuff for the government if they weren't naive about what selling to the government would entail.
Thanks and agreed. I'm surprised I haven't seen many (any?) medical applications from YC companies given the margins available over consumer applications. Do you think it is the uncertainty of the FDA regulations or just a space that Silicon Valley doesn't tend to mine as frequently? Make something patients want is particularly alluring to me.
Make something patients want is particularly alluring to me.
I am curious as to what you have in mind. (I tried to find an email address for you and couldn't. Sorry to junk up this thread. You can email me -- from one of the websites in my profile -- if you don't want to post it here.)
Re: What Happens At Y Combinator
#56The main insight I took from this was the quip about "investing in YC-funded startups is safe in the same way buying name-brand products is".
Like many people I sometimes feel ripped off when I pay 50% more for that box of Kellogs cereal or whatever. I imagine the same feeling might be the motivation behind AngelGate.
Re: What Happens At Y Combinator
#57How exportable is YCombinator? Much of YCombinator depends on people being in the same geography. I understand that to be the reason why founders are required to move to Mountain View.
Do you think it would be possible to start YCombinator prime elsewhere in the country? If we put together many of the same factors, angels, infrastructure, good mentors, could this be replicated, albeit on a smaller scale?
Re: What Happens At Y Combinator
#58"At the end of Demo Day what the startups usually have is a bunch of potential leads. Our default advice is to do a breadth first search, weighted by expected value. ... There are a few investors for whom it should be zero, and we can tell startups about those too." Interesting. If you know beforehand that those investors' expected value is 0, why invite them?
It would be too much of a deliberate affront to refuse to let them even attend. And not all the leads startups have are from the audience at DDay. Since there are so many investors here, they often get introed to investors before DDay through some other connection. Also, zero is probably an overstatement. It would have been better to say epsilon. Because most of these investors I would take money from if the alternat…
How often do those situations happen (ie- take money from a low quality individual or close the doors)? Startup sucess rattes are very low as a whole, so it seems as if there may be a culture of "vulture" investors in SV to prey on entrepreneurs who just need cash. It'd be good to know the warning signs.
Re: What Happens At Y Combinator
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow, this list really made me glad we applied for the next cycle. One question though, what about startups from outside the US? Can you offer advice there visa-wise and such? I know it doesn't really matter for the three month period, but what about after that. It would really suck for a startup to do well on Demo Day, only to be unable to go to any meetings because they can't get back to the US for a few months (I t…
Visas are something I don't know much about. The rules seem to vary a lot from country to country. There is a mailing list of YC founders from other countries who exchange advice about the topic. And we've certainly funded startups from a lot of different countries. So if I were you I'd just apply, and if we fund you, you can ask the alumni for advice about immigration stuff.
We're a YC startup going through the visa process right now.
Once you raise enough to pay yourself market salary, the situation transitions from "impossible" to "annoying and long".
So focus on the product, then on funding and/or revenue: the rest will follow.
Re: What Happens At Y Combinator
#60If the startup either hasn't decided what to work on
Approximately what percentage of startups do you accept that apply with no particular idea?