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What Happens At Y Combinator

ycombinator.com

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Re: What Happens At Y Combinator

#91

Post by robryan »

raminf wrote: post #52

I'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…

Can someone with big recurring expenses really afford to devote all their time to something that is statistically likely to either outright fail or never provide them enough to cover these expenses?

Re: What Happens At Y Combinator

#92

Post by jacquesm »

pg wrote: post #66
swombat wrote: post #54

If 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 th…

Very interesting question. I would do it more emphatically, for one. The first couple batches we were pretty tentative, because we didn't know it was going to work. It's painful to consider whether it would have been best to do YC in SV year round from the start. I loved alternating between the two places. I still miss living in Cambridge. And yet the founders in the Boston batches probably were getting short shrift.…

> like funding startups we shouldn't have, or not funding startups we should.

Examples?

Re: What Happens At Y Combinator

#93

Post by tgriesser »

In your essay about the application process you discuss figuring out what the combination of founders are (e.g. two hackers, one business one hacker, two hackers one business...different stages of their careers) and you have seen about 20 or 30 different founder combinations.

Have you noticed any particular combination that seems to work better than the others across the board, or does it depend on the startup?

Re: What Happens At Y Combinator

#94

Post by budu3 »

patio11 wrote: post #44
Swizec wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

x = speed-of-implementation(idea) y = usefulness(idea) rank(x,y) = x*y Something like that I think.

That is accurate parse as written. I think the even more dramatic conclusion suggested by Lean Startup is it is probably max(y1..yN)*C^(90/x), where y1 is the utility of your first idea and x is average number of days it takes you to learn one important thing (a full cycle through the idea, implement, measure, conclude loop). Scary stuff starts happening in any business when you take the limit as x approaches zero. (…

What is C?

Re: What Happens At Y Combinator

#95

Post by budu3 »

pg wrote: post #70
StavrosK wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes, usually, though we don't insist on it. I think most single founders would be better off with cofounders, but it's not worth taking someone mediocre just to have a cofounder.

Have you ever had any successful single founder company came out of the other end of the YC process?

Re: What Happens At Y Combinator

#96

Post by adlep »

This may be too direct question to ask, but I will anyway to have some points of reference...

1. What do you - at YCombinator consider to be your best example of a successful start-up? If you can name that company, that would be awesome and appreciated.

2. On the other hand, what do you consider to be a flat out failure? An example of an idea that totally did not work? If you could name this venture, it would be appreciated too.

Re: What Happens At Y Combinator

#97

Post by lincolnq »

ghshephard wrote: post #83
cperciva wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm from British Columbia originally, Half a Day (in the dinner context) is 12 Hours to me. I'll do a sample of the Indians, Canadians, and Americans in the office and get back to you. This may be another of those "organ-eye-zation" versus "organ-eh-zation" things that pop up form time to time.

American here. To claim that something takes me half a day, I would usually interpret that as half a working day, so 4-5 hours. I brew beer, and I tell people that "beer brewing takes a full day" -- if I start brewing at 8:30 then I get done before 5. Yeah I could do some other stuff afterwards.

Oh, and it's "organ-eh-zation" through and through. :)

Re: What Happens At Y Combinator

#98

Post by hyad »

hyad wrote: post #89

Great article! Just reading this finally motivated me enough to create an account here and seriously think about applying for winter 2011. After some reconsideration though, I'm not quite sure I'd be willing to quit my day job just yet. I have a few ideas for startups and one project I've been working on in my spare time that is interesting but nowhere near complete. Would it be worth to apply anyway? Perhaps I could…

To reply to my own comment: I probably should have signed up to attend this - www.startupschool.org The deadline was 3 days ago. D'oh! If anyone who had signed up is reading this and has to cancel, let me know if I can take your spot. :)

Re: What Happens At Y Combinator

#99

Post by cperciva »

abalashov wrote: post #80
cperciva wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I wasn't so much thinking about the funding provided by YC; but rather that if you've reached a stage where you can raise enough funding to hire yourself into the US, the fact that YC provides connections to angels and VCs is probably not tremendously useful.

Re: What Happens At Y Combinator

#100

Post by patio11 »

budu3 wrote: post #94
patio11 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is accurate parse as written. I think the even more dramatic conclusion suggested by Lean Startup is it is probably max(y1..yN)*C^(90/x), where y1 is the utility of your first idea and x is average number of days it takes you to learn one important thing (a full cycle through the idea, implement, measure, conclude loop). Scary stuff starts happening in any business when you take the limit as x approaches zero. (…

What is C?

A constant, for simplicity. Call it your lower threshold of the impact one good idea makes on your business. (I have a mental target at C = 1.05 but at YC stages there is almost certainly a company with C = staggering.)
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