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What Happens At Y Combinator

ycombinator.com

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Re: What Happens At Y Combinator

#71

Post by cperciva »

pg wrote: post #46
cperciva wrote: post #43

It's a bit misleading to call these events "dinners" though, because they last half a day. People start to show up for dinners around 6 pm. This seems wrong, unless the YC dinners conclude at 6 AM.

I meant half a waking day, cperciva. When someone says "I spent half a day trying to find that bug," they don't mean 12 hours.

I meant half a waking day, cperciva.

Huh. That never occurred to me as an interpretation.

I wonder if this is a British vs. American vs. Canadian English issue, or if I'm just slower than usual today.

Re: What Happens At Y Combinator

#72

Post by pg »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #48
pg wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't thought too much about it. I usually focus on the bottleneck immediately in front of us. But what we do is pretty parallelizable.

Maybe an eventual next step is creating a YCombinator for YCombinators - a program to help your successful alumni do what you did and become successful incubators/angels/VCs, while keeping them under the overall YC umbrella.

I don't think you need multiple YCs though. All our experience so far suggests it's better to have one big YC. Maybe there's some limit to scale, but the optimistic hacker in me would rather prove that by hitting it than assume it's there.

Re: What Happens At Y Combinator

#73

Post by cperciva »

shykes wrote: post #59
pg wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Doesn't it defeat the purpose of YC if you have to raise enough money to pay yourself market salary before you can enter the US to participate in YC?

Re: What Happens At Y Combinator

#75

Post by pg »

aspir wrote: post #58
pg wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe once per cycle. There doesn't seem to be a culture of bad investors; they're all bad in their own ways.

Re: What Happens At Y Combinator

#77

Post by robg »

Mz wrote: post #55
robg wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

I added the email to my profile. Specifically I'm interested in analytics platforms to help patients manage their health stats. I'm working on something specific with a great team, but I think there are a lot of opportunities in this space. Let data determine health status, where possible.

Re: What Happens At Y Combinator

#78

Post by sbowles »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #63
sbowles wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the concern about inciting the wrath of music labels. However, can you elaborate on your comment in footnote 5? Is there an unofficial policy of avoiding music startups, or just an extra special sanity check? What if the startup pre-clears (or is in the process of clearing) licensed use of label catalogs before the program?

The copyright problems related to music labels are nothing compared to the legal shenanigans of the contracts between labels and groups. They are horrific. The closest analogies would be share cropping or indentured servitude, though at least there is an out if the band fails. The way a lot of record labels work is that they will give a band a cash advance. The band uses that advance to pay for living expenses. They…

I agree it is tough to be a band in the era of digital music. I’ll have to respectfully disagree about whether or not our venture is foolhardy. We are early days, but the multiple discussions we’ve had with one major label have been respectful and encouraging.

Re: What Happens At Y Combinator

#79

Post by ABrandt »

philwelch wrote: post #9

Some of my favorite (unintentionally?) humorous bits: We have to recruit the largest founders in each batch to act like Tokyo subway pushers and herd all the investors back to their seats. The founders of Cloudkick are sysadmin gods who within the alumni network play the same role for servers that The Wolf in Pulp Fiction played for the back seats of cars.

Upvote for bringing the Tarantino reference to my attention; I missed that one somehow. I'd be hard pressed to find a more perfect analogy for the way I think about server issues.

If you're not familiar: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWmRTjLRMfU

Re: What Happens At Y Combinator

#80

Post by abalashov »

cperciva wrote: post #73
shykes wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Doesn't it defeat the purpose of YC if you have to raise enough money to pay yourself market salary before you can enter the US to participate in YC?

Perhaps, but not necessarily; the YC project is about going big, ultimately -- after all, that's the only way YC is going to make some money.

It is possible to bootstrap a company in such a way as to plateau out at, say, 3 people, each of whom gets a decent market salary. However, that company may not have further room to climb for various structural and/or marketing reasons, lack of appropriate connections, funding opportunities, etc. In principle, the purpose of YC is to address that specific gap irrespectively of how much short-term revenue the startup may be generating.

On the other hand, I agree that the amount of funding they provide per se is not particularly useful if you are already generating enough revenue to pay yourself(ves) a market salary.

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