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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

#271

Post by mindcrime »

tragicjordan wrote: post #262
mindcrime wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get that, but there was still some form of vetting - enough to disqualify 2/3 of candidates. But that's just the thing... nobody actually knows if that level of vetting is meaningful... it may perform no better than chance in terms of identifying "good" startups (however you define that). This experiment will actually be very interesting exactly in that it will help YC see if their vetting IS as good as they think…

Having $15k MRR means you actually are a company. What value am I going to get from people who haven't even gotten to that point yet? It's a pretty good barometer for success - 99% of founders don't get to that point.

What value am I going to get from people who haven't even gotten to that point yet?

Who knows? Why do you think only people who have gotten to $15K MRR can offer value?

I agree it's something of a signal, but I'd personally consider that a very weak signal. shrug

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

#272

Post by allanmacgregor »

kcorbitt wrote: post #238
threeisoneis wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Hi, I was involved in the decision to open Startup School to all applicants and am the developer primarily responsible for writing the software we’ll need to make this scale. We're all planning on working overtime for the next 12 weeks as we prepare for and go through the course. Although we don't have the resources to assign an advisor to every group, we do want to provide human attention to every single company we'…

Thank you, as someone that has been on the other end of snafus like this, I know owning up and opening the program to an additional 11K people is not easy.

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

#273

Post by 1996 »

mLuby wrote: post #258
deepGem wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Agreed. I was excited by the prospect of being a part of a network of other vetted founders. I feel compelled to say this. I am one of the founders who got an initial reject followed by an accept email. I read the accept email and felt good (I had not even read the reject email). When I learned that YC has accepted everyone, I felt better. Sure having access to a dedicated advisor has an advantage. The advisor can…

There are so many wantrepreneurs and "founder networking" types that suck up valuable time. I'd hoped that YC had filtered those out and that accepted companies could assume their peers are as serious as they are.

after careful thinking, I decided applying was not worth the time I could invest in improving the product.

now that everyone gets a trophy, I am glad I dodged the bullet

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

#274

Post by 1996 »

mindcrime wrote: post #251
allanmacgregor wrote: post #216

As someone that is now in the Team 2nd Chance, this has been a fun emotional rollercoaster. Two great lessons can be taken from this experience, first for those that got accepted, then rejected then accepted; dealing with rejection is an essential part of a startup or any business, shit happens and is how to deal with it that makes or breaks companies. Second, YC just thought a masterclass on how to handle mistakes a…

There's another lesson in this as well: There's still a group of people who aren't in this class... the people who didn't even apply in the first place. How many people were either too lazy to fill out the application, or thought "we won't get in, why bother", etc, who arguably would now be benefiting from this had they applied? To me this is a good example of how, while you can't literally "make your own luck", you…

or alternatively, thought that the value to be gained from this was lower that the next best use of their time?

10 grands at best, no mentoring - a consulting gig is worth more in money and experience.

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

#275

Post by enqa »

kcorbitt wrote: post #248
tragicjordan wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I was excited by the prospect of being a part of a network of other vetted founders. If they're letting literally anyone in, it's no more useful than every other founders mastermind group on FB. Huge misfire by YC. Startup School had the chance to be a wonderful network of promising early stage companies - not only that, you've alienated a lot of the promising companies who were properly accepted. YC simply d…

> If they're letting literally anyone in, it's no more useful than every other founders mastermind group on FB. We made a major mistake with the admissions emails – which I still feel terribly about. However, while that mistake moved up our timeline drastically, a more open process was directionally the way we were going with Startup School anyway. In fact, the first iteration of Startup School we ran a few years ago…

What about the people who should have been rejected? Surely, with so many companies there are companies where rejecting them was a service. Now they are instead getting that validation which might make them go on working on something obviously fruitless. It might not even be their own fault, it might just be that no one in YC is really excited about working with them and you can't offer much else which you should be up front about. It is of course admirable that you want to make things work, but I definitely wouldn't underestimate the challenge of transforming your whole process retroactively.

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

#276

Post by halfjoking »

ericglyman wrote: post #20

Startup School lesson one: keep iterating :)

First rule of Startup Club... you DO NOT get accepted to Startup club.

Second rule of Startup Club... you ARE NOW ACCEPTED to Startup Club.

Third rule... if either of these notices from the other two rules affected the trajectory of your startup you are not a true founder. So get to work and stop worrying if someone else approves your startup or not.

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

#277

Post by tragicjordan »

mindcrime wrote: post #271
tragicjordan wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having $15k MRR means you actually are a company. What value am I going to get from people who haven't even gotten to that point yet? It's a pretty good barometer for success - 99% of founders don't get to that point.

What value am I going to get from people who haven't even gotten to that point yet? Who knows? Why do you think only people who have gotten to $15K MRR can offer value? I agree it's something of a signal, but I'd personally consider that a very weak signal. shrug

You don't see the difference in value between someone who has built a company that's making nearly $200k a year vs someone who hasn't?

In that case, we fundamentally disagree, and this discussion is fruitless.

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

#278

Post by Suncho »

enqa wrote: post #275
kcorbitt wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they're letting literally anyone in, it's no more useful than every other founders mastermind group on FB. We made a major mistake with the admissions emails – which I still feel terribly about. However, while that mistake moved up our timeline drastically, a more open process was directionally the way we were going with Startup School anyway. In fact, the first iteration of Startup School we ran a few years ago…

What about the people who should have been rejected? Surely, with so many companies there are companies where rejecting them was a service. Now they are instead getting that validation which might make them go on working on something obviously fruitless. It might not even be their own fault, it might just be that no one in YC is really excited about working with them and you can't offer much else which you should be…

You might be right that this is true for some startups. But it's also true that there are other startups that will keep going regardless of whether they get rejected by Startup School or YC proper.

As a founder of a startup that would have been rejected, I'm looking forward to getting the most I can out of Startup School.

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

#279

Post by mindcrime »

tragicjordan wrote: post #277
mindcrime wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What value am I going to get from people who haven't even gotten to that point yet? Who knows? Why do you think only people who have gotten to $15K MRR can offer value? I agree it's something of a signal, but I'd personally consider that a very weak signal. shrug

You don't see the difference in value between someone who has built a company that's making nearly $200k a year vs someone who hasn't? In that case, we fundamentally disagree, and this discussion is fruitless.

$200K a year is shit though. Just because somebody can get to that level doesn't mean they're going to tell you anything useful for getting to $500,000,000 / year. That's why I say it is a signal, but it's a very weak signal.

There's also the problem that you don't know the value of the hypothetical "person who hasn't gotten to $15K MRR" yet. If they started their company 2 weeks ago, they probably have an MRR of $0. Does that mean that they have nothing of value to tell you? That depends on a lot of other variables.

Anyway, you're probably right... we probably just have fundamentally differing world-views. I lean towards the "you can learn something for everybody" mindset, and try to late-bind judgment on people's value as advisers until the last possible moment.

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