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Startup School: Every Company That Applied Is Now Accepted

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Startup School: Every Company That Applied Is Now Accepted

#171

Post by modells »

pcmaffey wrote: post #79
kcorbitt wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. We do a little bit of that already with our normal batch applicants, but with the wide net of Startup School there may be more more data available that would be interesting to correlate with long-term success. I think it would be so valuable to have a rigorous study of the factors that correlate with startup success – letting founders know what they should optimize for is an important part of the value we want t…

eg. 40% of VCs went to Harvard or Stanford, so therefore if you want to be a VC or know VCs, you should optimize for going to Harvard or Stanford. /s - because much of the data you'd have on such early stage co's is identity-based, and therefor chock full of bias.

Exactly. They filter for pedigree (and sometimes looks) first. Remember which and why schools used to require photographs with apps? It wasn't just a beauty contest.

Re: Startup School: Every Company That Applied Is Now Accepted

#174

Post by edanm »

robocat wrote: post #149
seanlinehan wrote: post #33

I hope somebody runs the data in the future to see if there was a statistical difference in outcomes between the companies intended to be accepted vs. not :-)

Unfortunately there is a huge self selection bias: the majority of applicants would know it is hard to get accepted, so they will have tried really hard to get in. In the next round if they said they would accept anyone, then presumably there would be a lot of low quality applicants (100's of Facebook clones etc).

This would still be an interesting experiment of YC's ability to choose the best startups out of a much larger set of good ones.

Re: Startup School: Every Company That Applied Is Now Accepted

#175

Post by jackconnor »

funnynoodles wrote: post #169
solarkraft wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

Respectfully, you don’t see any reasons this would be a bad idea?

Whatup funnynoodles, there definitely are reasons this COULD end up bad, which are pretty much just that YC gets stretched too thin. But, honestly, it could also go super well for them. I mean, accelerators are entirely based on the idea of funding a lot of ideas to cherry pick the few good ones. Well, YC just accidentally created a batch of 15,000 ideas they are associated with, which could potentially provide some crazy successful startups. The downside is they lose money, and maybe some of the cohort are unhappy, though as they've told the later group they wouldn't have the same advisory resources, the program degradation feels fairly minimal.

Experiment - it could go bad, but it could also go good, we'll see.

Re: Startup School: Every Company That Applied Is Now Accepted

#176

Post by r_singh »

dotBen wrote: post #132

How can we volunteer to advise groups who didn't get an existing advisor?

Interesting question. Now that the forum is going to be open to all applicants, I guess you (and others like you) can post some information about yourself and how you can help what kind of startups and how many. And then startups can choose whether they'd like you and / or can get you to be their advisor.

Re: Startup School: Every Company That Applied Is Now Accepted

#178

Post by r_singh »

sanjanamane wrote: post #156

I got a rejected email first and then I got the accepted email with an apology. So I am assuming I was among the originally accepted startups, now since everyone is going to be accepted, the originally accepted startups will have a disadvantage and will we still get an advisor? The thing to rejoice is being accepted out of a pool of competition but now since everyone is accepted, its just something usual.

Does your email say you're accepted to the advisor track? That's how you know if you will be a part of a group that gets an advisor.

Re: Startup School: Every Company That Applied Is Now Accepted

#179

Post by r_singh »

L_226 wrote: post #177

Was this all just a PR stunt? /tinfoil

Pretty sure it wasn't because a lot of originally accepted startups received the rejection email and to be honest it's slightly embarrassing to make such a mistake.

However, saying that we're "accepting" all applicants does seem to be an attempt to turn this mistake into something positive, when all that's really changing is that all the applicants get forum access, whereas, only the originally accepted startups still get an advisor (as a part of a group).

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