181–190 of 441 posts
We are an early stage startup, $75K ARR (not a lot), 3 engineers, partnership with Accenture in 3 countries, working with top tier brands and got rejected 3 times. We will apply again. Would someone be kind enough to review our application? Thank you so much.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're already signed up, because you can use your HN account to log in. (All YC accounts are HN accounts and vice versa.) The process is that you fill out a form and make a 1 minute video* and click 'submit'. (* I know...I hated the video thing too... but it gives a sense of what someone is like that doesn't come through in text, and you just talk for a minute about what you care about. nothing fancy.) (edit: also,…
I just went through the application because of your post. I don't have a lot to bring to the table so hopes are not high but what's the worst that could happen? They say no. Anyway, I got hung up on the video, I definitely have no idea what to say, so I saved the application for later and will come back to it. Perhaps my plan for the video should be to read what I wrote in the plan fire it off and forget I did this.…
For people who feel the way that you and I both do, whoever watches your video as part of reviewing your YC application is probably going to see you an order of magnitude more positively than you see yourself. Self-evaluation of video is painful.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 anyt…
I would argue that if you’re building something in a vacuum, you’re wasting your time. You should find your customers first. Find their pain points in their industry. See how those could be fixed.
Why would I sell my code to you guys when I'm already giving it away for free?
It depends on whether you want to make a high-growth startup or not. If you do, YC can help with that a lot. I guess you might be joking, but there are tons of open-source startups these days, for some definition of "open source" or other.
Also entertaining direct VC offers via my telephone number in my HN bio. Kind of still joking, but in the AI era I find it's the best way to cope.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're already signed up, because you can use your HN account to log in. (All YC accounts are HN accounts and vice versa.) The process is that you fill out a form and make a 1 minute video* and click 'submit'. (* I know...I hated the video thing too... but it gives a sense of what someone is like that doesn't come through in text, and you just talk for a minute about what you care about. nothing fancy.) (edit: also,…
Video is fine(it's just a minute), but why LinkedIn URL is required(not optional)? LinkedIn is about education, career, and networking. I am under average in all of them, so I'm not registered. This is the only thing which holding me back from applying. Otherwise, I work full-time on kick-ass product for months with 1000+ commits.
Why would I sell my code to you guys when I'm already giving it away for free?
It depends on whether you want to make a high-growth startup or not. If you do, YC can help with that a lot. I guess you might be joking, but there are tons of open-source startups these days, for some definition of "open source" or other.
Re: "won't get in" How do I balance this encouraging advice with everything I've heard online about YC basically being a post-Ivy League thing? Seems like there's basically a 0% chance a random person would get into YC. And often those who did get in went to Stanford, Harvard, etc. and don't even have a product - sometimes they don't even know what they're going to build yet. I wrote the idea of VC stuff off long ago…
>how it becomes the next $100M household name Unfortunately this is too low for a VC/YC. The min valuation they are looking for is around $1B
We got rejected (2nd time applying) and ended up raising a substantial seed/pre-seed round at excellent terms a month later. Is there a compelling reason to still apply?