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Why I turned down my Y Combinator interview

facetdev.com

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Re: Why I turned down my Y Combinator interview

#31

Post by fictionfuture »

EGreg wrote: post #10

Can someone elaborate on this? It makes no sense to me: The risk profile of your company increases dramatically when you take VC funding. You start spending more money than you are earning, your focus shifts to raising your next round, and your VC now has veto authority over the sale of your company. Your company is now a ticking time-bomb. You can literally NOT do those things. All the VC has is signaling. Theh can’…

If you raise the expectation is you will spend that money in a certain timeframe (thats why you're raising)

Ultimately, the best analogy is baseball. Raising money is like going for home runs, higher chance of striking out.

Re: Why I turned down my Y Combinator interview

#32

Post by solarkraft »

m_ke wrote: post #22

These days going through Y Combinator practically guarantees success for B2B/SaaS startups. Their network is so big now that you can hit growth targets that most VCs look for just by selling to other YC companies. Then you can throw the late stage logos on your landing page and use that to lure in enterprise customers.

But the barrier to entry is still decently high. You can't just take a bullshit company, put it through YC and have it succeed.

Re: Why I turned down my Y Combinator interview

#33

Post by jessaustin »

rsweeney21 wrote: post #28
jessaustin wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One wonders about the "fluency" of whoever wrote that requirement...

English was always my worst subject. :)

Ha! If you decide to change it, I would just drop the "native". (IANAL)

Re: Why I turned down my Y Combinator interview

#34

Post by JabavuAdams »

lnsru wrote: post #6

Good luck bootstrapping biotech or robotics company! Of course it’s better to be sole owner, but it does not work when building product takes years.

What about subcomponents? I.e. becoming a supplier for these industries? Can you bootstrap an actuator company?

Re: Why I turned down my Y Combinator interview

#35

Post by rsweeney21 »

danvoell wrote: post #27

I don't view YC as a VC, am I wrong? This whole post is about VCs pushing you to the brink. YC doesn't push companies too hard, do they? Why not do YC and NOT raise VC money afterward but take advantage of the network?

YC is a non-traditional VC, but still a VC. VCs expect a certain growth rate (2-3x annually for the first five years) that almost always requires follow on funding.

You could do what you are describing, but if you are up-front with your plans to grow slowly, most VCs will pass on you.

Re: Why I turned down my Y Combinator interview

#36

Post by cldellow »

foldr wrote: post #21
cldellow wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of tests that achieve this. My university got a lot of international candidates whose first language wasn't English and who hadn't been educated in English up until that point. As a result, they established a process to assess your fluency so they could accommodate you with additional training on English to ensure you'd be successful. https://uwaterloo.ca/future-students/admissions/english-lang... li…

The issue is the term "native", not requiring fluency in a given language. None of those tests will certify you as having "native" fluency in English.

Yes, I should have been more detailed in my response.

You're right that all of them give a quantative score, not a qualitative score like "native". There are qualitative scales where one of the labels is "native fluency". For example, the Interagency Language Roundtable has level 5 (native/bilingual fluency) which means the speaker has "complete fluency in the language, such that speech on all levels is fully accepted by educated native speakers in all of its features, including breadth of vocabulary and idiom, colloquialisms, and pertinent cultural references".

Other people have devised concordances that map the quantitative scores from things like TOEFL onto the ILR labels.

ILR level 5 is a very high bar, though, as you point out elsewhere. It is unlikely that Facet truly needs someone at that level, they'd most likely be fine with level 4 or level 3 speakers.

But reaaaaaaaallllly, I suspect we're all ironically missing the point of the communication. On the one hand, we can construe it narrowly and it may be technically flawed. On the other hand, it's marketing copy and I suspect most readers treat it informally, especially since their audience is entrepreneurial people who want to do contract work -- a pool who is likely to ignore the strict letter of the requirement and apply anyway.

Re: Why I turned down my Y Combinator interview

#37

Post by aboutruby »

m_ke wrote: post #22

These days going through Y Combinator practically guarantees success for B2B/SaaS startups. Their network is so big now that you can hit growth targets that most VCs look for just by selling to other YC companies. Then you can throw the late stage logos on your landing page and use that to lure in enterprise customers.

I don't think other companies are going to buy into the new companies's products if those are not good. It's one thing to be able to reach to YC companies/founders, another to convince them to use your product.

Re: Why I turned down my Y Combinator interview

#38

Post by piokoch »

docker_up wrote: post #7

I think the biggest difference between today and 20 years ago when I first go into Silicon Valley is that most founders are generally already planning their exit. There are a lot of startups whose mentality is "get big quick enough so that we can get bought out by Google/Facebook/Amazon/etc". And unfortunately this is a legitimate play because it leads to quick payouts so it motivates founders and VCs alike. It's a f…

Yup, the side effect is that customers of a given startup often get abandon with "it was great journey for us, you have one month to get your toys somewhere else" note.

Re: Why I turned down my Y Combinator interview

#39

Post by rememberlenny »

docker_up wrote: post #7

I think the biggest difference between today and 20 years ago when I first go into Silicon Valley is that most founders are generally already planning their exit. There are a lot of startups whose mentality is "get big quick enough so that we can get bought out by Google/Facebook/Amazon/etc". And unfortunately this is a legitimate play because it leads to quick payouts so it motivates founders and VCs alike. It's a f…

> I just don't think I would get excited working for someone I know with that short term of a mentality.

This.

I was recently the first full-time hire at a seed funded company that was in the right place and the right time. They grew to 10 people over a few months, and I loved the people I was working with.

Knowing that the founders had a 10-40x equity stake larger than mine made it nearly impossible to feel invested in the company.

Re: Why I turned down my Y Combinator interview

#40

Post by tptacek »

docker_up wrote: post #7

I think the biggest difference between today and 20 years ago when I first go into Silicon Valley is that most founders are generally already planning their exit. There are a lot of startups whose mentality is "get big quick enough so that we can get bought out by Google/Facebook/Amazon/etc". And unfortunately this is a legitimate play because it leads to quick payouts so it motivates founders and VCs alike. It's a f…

I've been working at startups since the mid-1990s and building-to-flip was as prevalent then as it is now.

I'd say the much bigger change is that randos have a real shot at getting funded today, due to YC and the syndicated convertible debt round. It's hard to overstate how much more open the funding market is now than it was even 15 years ago.

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