I would put that footnote at the top, it's very important context.
I wrote the original article before we even thought about it, if it helps.
Is Y Combinator worth the money?
281–290 of 349 posts
Re: Is Y Combinator worth the money?
#282I am surprised they got with that idea into the Batch.
Then you will be even more surprised to see another AI Recommendations in the most recent batch
Re: Is Y Combinator worth the money?
#283Is it worth the money? I think what YC gets you, you can't find elsewhere for less money.
But maybe this industry is ready to be disrupted, and someone could create a YC competitor that automates things like office hours with ChatGPT4. In fact you could pitch this idea to YC, and YC could spawn its own successor.
Re: Is Y Combinator worth the money?
#284I am an outsider who observed YC companies and their founders for a while.
YC is an institution in the VC world and YC is extremely specific about what people they want in their program. But you have to understand the people running YC has probably told many many founders "I am not going to spoonfeed you everything, figure that sh*t on your own".
YC will give you the initial boost and you make up what you want to make up for it. Making it to YC doesn't mean you are going to be a unicorn and they know it. Considering the amount of people they take in, it is not possible to make everyone special.
I think the picking criteria explcitely mentions that there are companies that are actually too good for YC meaning that they can certainly generate a sustainable income but they just don't fit the bill. The bill is about, a VC who is a startup founder. When the dust settles you either get a founder of a successful company or a VC who came from a failed or acquired startup.
That is what I see standing from outside. YC want people who fit the VC personality and posses the youth and the desparation of scaling up a startup. Someone who can work incredibly hard and shake hands with the sweater vest people.
I honestly don't think the startup aspect has much to do with. It doesn't have to be one person, they want this very particular personality trait shared among the co-founders.
This is not a criticism at all. But I think YC doesn't want companies they want people. Some people are just not that.
Re: Is Y Combinator worth the money?
#285I did YC in S20 remotely from Charlotte, NC. As a first time founder doing things solo, it was a great experience and most importantly, opened up a lot of doors that were previously closed. I met so many amazing people who previously I didn't have access to. Plus, the YC community was friendly to me when I had a lot of questions.
We had a terrible experience fundraising simply because I didn't understand how to do it properly. There were a lot of stuff in between the lines that I wasn't aware of. Also what I wished I would've done more of was spend time with fellow founders. It being remote, I felt I was missing the "energy" of being in the same spot as everyone else.
Overall, I'm glad that I went through YC and even though my startup didn't pan out the way I wanted to, it opened new doors and a lot of opportunities. If I was to do another startup, I would go through YC again.
Re: Is Y Combinator worth the money?
#286S22, 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…
Same batch, not a solo founder. But I agree with his opinions about the experience. Transformative, positive, difficult, and it is what you make out of it.
Re: Is Y Combinator worth the money?
#287Re: Is Y Combinator worth the money?
#288Their logic can be understood: make a good product, and the rest will catch up. But in real life marketing and hype really matters, and when everyone does these things while you naively sit and code, they get an advantage in the market, and you get your cool product. I sometimes get the feeling, also by watching their public content on YT, that a lot of YC advice, especially w.r.t. what to prioritize, is from an era…
Maybe that’s your clue that your idea is bad then? YC likely has decided it’s not in their interest to badmouth your idea, but if you are making the 20th data pipeline company in the same batch, maybe the smart thing to do is take a step back and ask yourself “is this really what I want to spend 5 years in?”
From what I hear in the YC YouTube videos, it’s clear that the partners quickly form an image of how much brutal feedback you can take and measure their responses accordingly. My suspicion is that they are unable to gauge who’s good at that brutal feedback until you’re well into the program and they would rather have 100 grifters for that one golden founder who can truly take feedback. I suspect that one founder gets a very different treatment from everyone else. Clearly OP was not that 1 in hundred.
If you approach YC with this mindset, you can make a decision before you even join whether this is worth it for you - are you ready to easily take brutal feedback and adjust or are you like OP going to double down on marketing or whatever you think is the key to succeeding? In the latter case just don’t bother I guess!
Re: Is Y Combinator worth the money?
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
building a valuable product doesn't make you successful in 2023? Please, elaborate.
* markets measure sentiment * capital flows through trust networks * the important thing is not how things are but how they seem to be ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiio%27s_laws ) * Curse of Development: the depth of any transaction is limited by the depth of the shallower party ( https://www.dustingetz.com/#/page/the%20curse%20of%20develop... ) * You Can't Tell People Anything ( https://www.dustingetz.com/#/page/…
These all sound like marketing tactic problems, not fundamental "build something valuable" problems.
Re: Is Y Combinator worth the money?
#290I am raising for playwhitelabel dot com with following stats - revenue US$16K+ (since May, 2022), paid users 120+ (including presales), and don't have a product yet.
As a 2-person team, looking forward to growing with a product, and a bit of capital, YC will suite us. But it's highly unlikely we will even get an interview. I wonder why all those later stage YC companies are being taught SuS content.