I would put that footnote at the top, it's very important context.
Is Y Combinator worth the money?
261–270 of 349 posts
Re: Is Y Combinator worth the money?
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have no intention of lying, I'd rather bootstrap or shop for other investors who don't have the same expectation of 'growth potential'. The YC model is.. it's own thing.. seems like in the current economy, they need every company to be a potential unicorn, which works out for them because they're doing it at scale, and the ones that deliver, deliver outsized returns. But possibly doesn't work out as well for the fo…
Why don't you look into bootstrapper friendly VCs instead? TinySeed and Calm Fund come to mind.
This is awesome, thank you for suggesting these!
Re: Is Y Combinator worth the money?
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
We didn't take 375k in fact. In W22 batch they were optional, and would trigger MFN for many. As for the rest of money, we returned what has been left. That's why closing so rapidly - to be able to return more.
Why not take the 375k and/or pivot?
The dilution at that point would be unbearable
Re: Is Y Combinator worth the money?
#264Re: Is Y Combinator worth the money?
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
> get an idea out and then do everything you can to make it grow 30% each week Compounded? After 8 weeks you go from 10 customers to 81, seems doable. But after 6 months you'd have 5,428 customers. Maybe if it was an App Store app? But if you have to talk to any of them, yikes. Might not be the most sustainable rate of growth?
Yeah, it's hard. But sustaining that is how you get the next Facebook.
So YC is mostly just for unicorns?
Re: Is Y Combinator worth the money?
#266Earlier quoted context omitted.
Super interesting. Do you have an example in mind where a startup excels through marketing in a crowded niche with the mentioned 10-15 startups?
In the crypto space currently, there are projects that excel in terms of technological merits, making them far superior to their competition. However, the competition often has better marketing and generates more hype and win the market.
Technological merits are not the product.
Re: Is Y Combinator worth the money?
#267Doesn't this miss the point.
If you need 150k to start your company it is difficult to find other options.
You have a booking dollar idea, the drive and knowledge to set it through, but no cash. You need an early stage investor. What you are paying for is the massive risk that they are tipping that money down the drain. The other stuff is just value-add
Re: Is Y Combinator worth the money?
#268i find this fair and informative. i havent got into yc yet but their free content is very valuable in giving me direction, and the things mentioned in the article are very valuable to me who is still an outsider.
to some they're like "meh", but to me those subtle things really make or break your company.
it's like yc has solid focus on your company's fundamentals and reminding you of it again and again so you dont get distracted.
Re: Is Y Combinator worth the money?
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whenever I see interviews with YC advisors, they blame mistakes of founders of not taking their advice as the biggest as mistake. I don't have a strong opinion on this, and I believe YC is worth it, as 7% of nothing is still nothing, so any way a startup can decrease its risks is great.
> Whenever I see interviews with YC advisors, they blame mistakes of founders of not taking their advice as the biggest as mistake. This is normal human behavior. You did X and failed. If only you had done Y as I had suggested... Monday morning quarterbacking at it's finest.
My experience is usually more like being told to do X, me saying X probably isn’t worth the time and energy, doing X anyway at their prompting assuming they’ll take some accountability for it going sideways, it ultimately going sideways because it was a bad idea, and then them taking zero accountability for their bad idea and not helping with the fact we’ve now been materially set back by the attempt.
I’ve since learned to align our incentives around advice. If they’ll put their money where their mouth is to stand behind their advice, then it’s good advice. If they won’t, then it’s bad advice and I’m just their lab rat.
Re: Is Y Combinator worth the money?
#270S22, solo founder, open-source infra + internal tools (windmill.dev). As the other ones in this thread have mentionned, YC is what you make out of it. For the fundraising alone, it allowed me to raise - a non US solo founder - at very comfortable terms and on the financial aspect alone it would have been worth it. But most importantly, the hardest part to start a company in my opinion is to keep being motivated. I wa…
> a non US solo founder As a non US citizen, I'm interested so bear with me: 1) You had move to US right? 2) Did YC provide you the finances to do so beforehand? 3) What kind of Visa status should/could I seek for this? No need to answer what you don't feel comfortable. I would appreciate any pointers.
There is information on YC's website that answers your questions: