31–40 of 61 posts
I did Startup School in 2018 and was one of the inaugural grant winners. The program was extremely helpful for getting me through to the launch. My product is a moonshot sold to enterprises , so it took an enormous amount of work upfront to get something into users' hands. The accountability of a cohort was critical for the lonely days of coding something that is both ambiguous and ambitious. Also, constantly being f…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What were your initial expectations for Startup School? Where do you see Startup School in 2030? Thank you for this work, I've gained interesting and profitable lessons from the program.
Initial expectations: we expected Startup School to be very popular with founders, and in the long term also hopefully encourage more founders to apply to YC's core program. It modestly exceeded our expectations on the former (we've seen over 100k users sign up in the last two years), and has vastly exceeded expectations on the latter. Concretely, in the latest YC core batch 44% of founders are Startup School alums.…
I love that there a groups later in Startup School that are for later stage companies.
I can see a progression where based on the stage and growth of your company you get different peers, investors, advisors, and off the record content.
I did Startup School in 2018 and was one of the inaugural grant winners. The program was extremely helpful for getting me through to the launch. My product is a moonshot sold to enterprises , so it took an enormous amount of work upfront to get something into users' hands. The accountability of a cohort was critical for the lonely days of coding something that is both ambiguous and ambitious. Also, constantly being f…
What are the advantages of Empirical vs q/kdb+?
I'm currently in the (long) process of adding streaming computation. Once that's ready, Empirical will be able to handle everything from gargantuan CSV files to real-time data using the same language primitives.
I talked about some of these goals when I launched on HN last year:
I've been through SUS and I really valued it. It's great content and some of the discussions were really valuable. I think it's fair to say, though, that the content is very opinionated. I understand why - it's trying to prepare people to apply to YC and YC have a particular way of doing things. I think that's fine. My worry is that the reach of YC on the broader tech start-up culture is so broad now (and getting broader) that these opinions and ideas become broadly accepted norms. When that happens, people stop recognising the fact that there could be a choice to make and we loose the diversity and richness of other opinions and ideas.
Here's an example: everyone knows that the only place to incorporate a company is in the state of Delaware. Creating something in your local region is out of the question, not because you've reasoned well about the pros and cons but because the culture has a generally accepted answer.
I think if we don't have diverse views and perspectives on what's possible and what kind of companies we should be creating, we'll end up with more of the same. That's a winning formula for YC but a bad one for culture as a whole.
We don't need one VC that dominates the early stage market. We need competition to keep the ecosystem healthy. Maybe what we really need is the other VCs, bootstrappers, open-source foundations and NGOs to get into the startup education/social network business too.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Initial expectations: we expected Startup School to be very popular with founders, and in the long term also hopefully encourage more founders to apply to YC's core program. It modestly exceeded our expectations on the former (we've seen over 100k users sign up in the last two years), and has vastly exceeded expectations on the latter. Concretely, in the latest YC core batch 44% of founders are Startup School alums.…
This is awesome! I love that there a groups later in Startup School that are for later stage companies. I can see a progression where based on the stage and growth of your company you get different peers, investors, advisors, and off the record content.
Awesome news. If you haven't done startup school, I'd highly recommend it. We got paired with lots of people from our local city (which surprised me since I didn't know there was this much activity around here). Seriously startup school is great. Cannot recommend participating enough. And also: do it no matter what stage you are at. Full disclosure: the project that our team was working has been put on hold by us[1]…
If I had one regret, looking back on the experience, it would be a mistake I made: forming an LLC far before I needed to, largely to be seen as a 'company' by YC. You can (and I'd say in some cases should) validate your project, esp. if you're a solo founder - by launching an app as an individual developer vs a company account. I know YC itself is only interested in companies, but they should appreciate that if this school is open to all -- all people don't need a company to have a profitable project.
Awesome news. If you haven't done startup school, I'd highly recommend it. We got paired with lots of people from our local city (which surprised me since I didn't know there was this much activity around here). Seriously startup school is great. Cannot recommend participating enough. And also: do it no matter what stage you are at. Full disclosure: the project that our team was working has been put on hold by us[1]…
So happy to hear you had a great experience! We've added a new concept of "company stage" to improve the relevance of curriculum content and group session matches, hopefully that will make your point of "do it no matter what stage you are at" even more true. :)
For example, I am working on a side-hustle that is more of a service that sells a product, versus a traditional app/SaaS app. So I'm wondering if Startup School is more geared towards product/app businesses than a typical service-type business.