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Tell HN: Ever think of applying to YC? Do it this weekend for S24

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Re: Tell HN: Ever think of applying to YC? Do it this weekend for S24

#111

Post by llamaimperative »

bdjsiqoocwk wrote: post #103
jacobwg wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I didn't even graduate college :P > So we're just doing it on our own. IMO if you can become a $100M household name without VC, that's absolutely the way to do it. Even if you do take the VC path, YC for me was a massive boost in network, knowledge, and resources that I didn't have before, but it's also not the only way to acquire those things. You can even find that YC knowledge online, e.g. https://www.star…

> I mean, I didn't even graduate college :P Yes, but did you go to one of those colleges where dropping out is even better than graduating? Because most of us didn't even get the chance to drop out of one of those.

I'm a YC founder and I dropped out of not-one-of-those colleges (RPI). My cofounder dropped out of high school.

Why not just give it a shot? Find the powerful parts of your story (I'm sure they exist) and share them!

We applied, as GP advocates for, mostly to sharpen our thinking. Just the application process would've been worth the time, even if we had gotten declined immediately. The interview 10x'd that value, then the YC batch itself was another multiple on top of that.

Re: Tell HN: Ever think of applying to YC? Do it this weekend for S24

#112

Post by sevagh »

eggbrain wrote: post #101

I'm going to post something vulnerable, but I hope people take my comment in the right light, as in general I love YC and what it has done for the startup community. I've been building startups for a long time, and have applied to YC several times, mainly with the same idea (although I've always listed 4-5 other ideas I'm interested in as well). I have always gotten rejected, and while that was disappointing, I 100%…

Sorry to hear that experience.

I've come to discount any form of flattery in intro emails. E.g. when a FAANG recruiter emails me "wow, we were impressed by your public project!", I used to believe it.

Now I know it's just a synonym for "join the back of the line of 17,639,838 applicants."

Re: Tell HN: Ever think of applying to YC? Do it this weekend for S24

#113

Post by wizcaps »

Re the “won’t get in” point..

We applied a few years ago. I won’t lie, I was sad and disappointed we didn’t get in, but even more so because our application was just ignored. Left a very bad taste in our mouths.

I won’t again spend days on an application to have it be ignored. Since then, we have been grinding away at the same business and it’s now making 7 figures, giving us the perfect life of a 20% YoY growth business with no VCs breathing down our necks trying to 10x that growth rate. Not taking VC money was the best thing we ever did, albeit inadvertently.

So sure, you won’t get in (statistically), but it could be the best thing you ever don’t do!

Re: Tell HN: Ever think of applying to YC? Do it this weekend for S24

#115

Post by tempusalaria »

bdjsiqoocwk wrote: post #110
Rapzid wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also with you! Just wanted to share my experience in case it helps as a data point. Gates, Jobs, and Zuck all famously dropped out of college of course. It's an interesting and tricky social dynamic matching within and between these somewhat distinct groups.

Didn't they ask drop out from Harvard or something? It's a bit disingenuous to say that.

Steve Jobs went to an obscure private school called Reed which seems to be something he became obsessed with due to LSD.

Zuck and Gates both dropped out of Harvard after founding their companies.

Re: Tell HN: Ever think of applying to YC? Do it this weekend for S24

#116

Post by llamaimperative »

tempsy wrote: post #100
alephnerd wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> YC basically being a post-Ivy League thing I have a lot of friends of mine who are decade+ YoE first time founders who have done very very well in YC. Lots of Enterprise SaaS companies have went thru YC and done very well - you just don't hear about them as much because Direct Enterprise Sales doesn't require as much marketing. There are similar B2C successes by older founders and non-Ivy/Ivy Tier founders. > we're…

How many years do you have to go back to find 1 company that is on par with a dropbox or airbnb i feel like if you went back 5 years it would be hard to even find more than 1-2 companies that has achieved a moderate level of mainstream success in the same way

Consumer != mainstream

Re: Tell HN: Ever think of applying to YC? Do it this weekend for S24

#117

Post by sillysaurusx »

dang wrote: post #93
sillysaurusx wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d be very curious to see what you’d choose to work on if you were forced to pick something with the highest probability of growing at 5% per week minimum. I suspect you have a few ideas, but it becomes a different sort of question when you imagine yourself committing to one for the next 10 years. Which idea could you see yourself throwing all of your effort into growing each week till you’re today+10 years old?

> the highest probability of growing at 5% per week minimum I don't think this is a helpful frame, because you can't know this in advance, and I'd hate for anybody to read something like this, feel "I have no idea what could grow 5% per week minimum", and close the page on getting started. No one knows this in advance. What YC teaches is to start by making something a few people actually want, no matter how small it…

That’s a good point. Thank you.

Happy one-decade anniversary, by the way. I just noticed https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/meet-the-people-taking-over... was almost exactly 10 years ago.

The trouble with your frame is that you can’t know what people actually want until you try to get them to use what you’ve built. There’s a sort of chicken and egg problem here: you have to think of an idea first, before you build anything. "Choose what people actually want" begs the question.

It’s probably true that it’s better to work on something that you personally believe in (in the https://paulgraham.com/earnest.html sense), because you’re more likely to find ways to grow it. It’s hard to be earnest about an idea that only interests you because it might grow at 5% per week. But pg chose Viaweb, and he couldn’t have known ahead of time that anybody would actually want it, since it was the first webapp. Nobody even understood how to try it out, since this was the era of desktop software. All he had was a hunch that lots of people would soon want websites for their businesses.

So which frame would you choose, if you had to decide today? Suppose you and Scott were trapped in a room, and the door unlocks only after you pick something to build together. How would you decide, other than "X seems most likely to be something that people will actually want"? (Which is similar to "has a chance of growing at 5% per week," just phrased a little differently. pg originally thought museums would want websites; if he’d asked himself whether it might morph into an idea that could grow at 5% per week, he probably would’ve realized museums didn’t actually want that.)

Re: Tell HN: Ever think of applying to YC? Do it this weekend for S24

#118

Post by toomuchtodo »

dang wrote: post #11
ipsum2 wrote: post #6

Curious about the story behind applying to YC as a founder and ending up as a moderator for hacker news.

Startup in W09, worked on it for 4 years, started saying no to pg about moderating HN, ran out of money, needed a job, said yes to pg about moderating HN.

Is this the only path to the job?

Re: Tell HN: Ever think of applying to YC? Do it this weekend for S24

#120

Post by tempusalaria »

Rapzid wrote: post #81
999900000999 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had ambitions of cranking out an MVP and pitching it to VCs in my late 20s. After a year of solid rejection ( including YC not even responding), I gave up. You end up spending alot of time trying to pitch your work. I've had a few idea guys expect me to build MVPs for free with an offer of like 1% or something silly like that. Never any pay, poorly thought out concepts. I've accepted I'm never going to be rich, it'…

I'm seeing a few "founding engineer" roles that pay pretty well and offer up to 1% equity for highly experienced candidates. Honestly some pretty unique opportunities. But yeah, I'm not building out and MVP without pay for 1%.

1% at seed stage also become 0.1% after a few rounds of funding, plus you are way down the preference stack and have no liquidity power.

Startup equity is pretty much objectively a terrible deal except for founders. Be a founder or get paid market comp in cash.

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