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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

#221

Post by ctvo »

threeisoneis wrote: post #209
jackconnor wrote: post #104

Man, credit where credit is due, this showed a lot of integrity. There was one good solution, it was just a painful one, yet they still did it. Well done YCombinator! P.S. They make the point that this is an experiment, and I think all of us who join should prove that it is a good one. Nobody rails against applications and qualifying scores like HN peeps (check the comments of any article, ever, about SAT/GMAT/GRE sc…

I disagree. They didn’t do anything except open up the grant application part to everyone (no cost to them) and promise everybody that they would get some credits (probably no cost to them). The course was always able to be audited. What this really does is make clear the desire of the people at ycombinator to open their pre screening program (which is what startup school is, essentially) to more startups. The value…

Agreed.

It's great for YC. If there's a large amount of negative feedback, they can use the excuse that this was an experiment (and the result of their... high integrity) and revert.

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

#222

Post by soyapi »

tenfold wrote: post #184

I was originally accepted and then got the second mail about the mistake and it being opened up. This may sound sour but it’s just some honest feedback, even if it’s bitter to swallow. For an accelerator that prides itself on grooming some of the world’s best in technology this is a trivially amateur mistake that just shouldn’t have happened. There should have been a double check process for the notifications. Any ot…

The deserving 4,000 startups are not getting a devalued experience. They will still have an advisor in groups of 25 startups. The remaining ~11,000 won't have an advisor (at least not yet).

And innovators always make mistakes. YC has actually admitted to being "always slightly broken" https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/14/y-combinator-is-zeroing-in...

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

#223

Post by allpratik »

r_singh wrote: post #212
rpm33 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Founder from India, got accepted into the advisor track. Hit me up.

Your bio doesn't have any contact info. I've updated mine to include my email address.

Hi guys!

I'm also a founder from advisor track and from India. You can ping me at mail (at) Khandagale dot com

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

#224

Post by smu »

mindcrime wrote: post #106
sudosteph wrote: post #86

I can't stay mad at y'all after this response. I am looking forward to making your application reviewer peeps feel silly after this is all over though. Team 2nd chance has a lot to prove, and I think many of us do really appreciate YC's new commitment to supporting ALL founders at this point, even if it took a mistake to get there.

Team 2nd chance has a lot to prove Hah! "Team 2nd chance"... love it! We should get t-shirts made with that on them and everything. You do make a good point though. This is a great chance for a lot of us to show the doubters that they were wrong, and to prove that we do belong.

Ha, you read my mind!

You can forever keep the chip on your shoulder here: https://teamsecondchance.threadless.com/

* Profit (if any) will go to a charity we can decide upon in the thread below. I nominate doctors without borders because they always do good work.

* Help with design is appreciated. I'm just a clueless engineer...

* Should you spend time designing a better version, the thought might occur to you that you are not spending that time on your startup and that might be a reason why you're team 2nd chance... ;-)

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

#225

Post by [deleted] »

throwmeoutoft11 wrote: post #157

Unpopular opinion here. The value of startupschool (as a previous graduate) is the individual attention we got from a hand selected instructor. I know yc screwed up with the emails, and their response was to please those that they have misled, accidentally of course. But I think they also devalued the class. It's gonna be much harder to offer the quality attention of the past. I think the right thing they should have…

[deleted]

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

#226

Post by bpicolo »

r_singh wrote: post #163
throwmeoutoft11 wrote: post #157

Unpopular opinion here. The value of startupschool (as a previous graduate) is the individual attention we got from a hand selected instructor. I know yc screwed up with the emails, and their response was to please those that they have misled, accidentally of course. But I think they also devalued the class. It's gonna be much harder to offer the quality attention of the past. I think the right thing they should have…

I personally think that they've rectified this in a smart way by introducing 2 tracks: the advisor track and a normal one (this is just a guess since I received mail saying I've been accepted to the 'advisor track'). So YC is giving forum access to all the companies that applied but advisor access only to a subset of all the companies that applied. Is that correct?

The advisor track email was the email they didn't intend to send referenced in this post, isn't it?

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

#227

Post by tgb »

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).

The idea is to compare this round of applicants between the ones that were originally accepted and those that were "accidentally" accepted.

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

#228

Post by chrismorgan »

threeisoneis wrote: post #209
jackconnor wrote: post #104

Man, credit where credit is due, this showed a lot of integrity. There was one good solution, it was just a painful one, yet they still did it. Well done YCombinator! P.S. They make the point that this is an experiment, and I think all of us who join should prove that it is a good one. Nobody rails against applications and qualifying scores like HN peeps (check the comments of any article, ever, about SAT/GMAT/GRE sc…

I disagree. They didn’t do anything except open up the grant application part to everyone (no cost to them) and promise everybody that they would get some credits (probably no cost to them). The course was always able to be audited. What this really does is make clear the desire of the people at ycombinator to open their pre screening program (which is what startup school is, essentially) to more startups. The value…

There’s quite a lot of extra organisational and support work that they will have to do to support another 11,000 people. That’s going to be roughly 450 more groups of 25 people to sort out, four times as many people to still interact with to some extent, and a whole lot more traffic.

When they say “we’ve decided to use our error as a forcing function to find a way to make Startup School work for all founders who applied”, that really is a fair way of describing it. Making this work is possible, but it will be quite a lot more work for them—work they had not reckoned on.

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

#229

Post by embalam »

tenfold wrote: post #184

I was originally accepted and then got the second mail about the mistake and it being opened up. This may sound sour but it’s just some honest feedback, even if it’s bitter to swallow. For an accelerator that prides itself on grooming some of the world’s best in technology this is a trivially amateur mistake that just shouldn’t have happened. There should have been a double check process for the notifications. Any ot…

I share your sentiments. everyone is in takes out the juice from the whole thing.

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

#230

Post by xenator »

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