311–320 of 441 posts
What I’m more concerned about is (a) everyone seems to be incredibly young, I’m not, and (b) being a solo founder means you’re almost certain not to be accepted.
Are these correct? Is it worth bothering with?
You would say that, wouldn't you?
Yes, I'm super interested in reaching people for whom YC would be a great fit, but who don't apply because they doubt themselves. Partly because that's been such a big part of my own experience.
Like many jokes though, there was a grain of earnest feeling there. To be totally pretentious about it, take Koan 16 from The Gateless Gate
> Ummon asked: "The world is such a wide world, why do you answer a bell and don ceremonial robes?"
If I could rephrase that to "tech startups are so hot, how come you moderate/lurk a forum and just talk about entrepreneurship instead of doing it?", I like to ask it you Dan, or anyone else who thinks YC is cool but isn't quitting their day job to pitch their moonshot.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the smartest people happen to go to Stanford There's no way this is even possible, let alone true. This might be a hot take but if you're under the age of 25, it's likely that you know very few things total. And the things you do know, you're just not going to have a master level of understanding of in your 20s yet nor the drive to focus on it the way it needs, especially with other social pressures at play. What i…
There is a lot of variance in how words are used, so I'm not going to say you're wrong here. However, my usage of the following words deviate from yours: * intelligence - raw intellect, having absolutely nothing to do with anything ever learned * smarts - synonym for raw intellect, but often more on the 'crafty' side of raw intellect * ability - short for 'capabilities', and is a merge of 'intelligence' and 'learned…
3) They know all your alt accounts and shitposting history (via device_id)
You could argue that "filling the application gives clarity to a founder". Again genius marketing. That comes at an opportunity cost of talking to their leads, their prospects. At any rate, it takes you away from what you originally set out to do. You get more clarity from talking to your target market than filling an application.
Another thing is "people got in applying on a whim". Yes, those are exceptions. But, any average founder understands that if the decision is likely to be determined by what they write in the application and their application video (and several factors outside of their control), they will optimize it to the max. The videos you see are always multiple takes. The applications are always pruned and reviewed and rewritten before submitting.
When your goal is getting into YC, all this is worth doing. When the goal is building and growing a product, such advice, no matter how well intended, hurts more than helps the founders. It's okay if YC picks 200 startups out of 15000 instead of 20000.
What happened? Not enough people applied? Here's the last batch.[1] Gives a sense of what's being funded. Ideas: - MoneyNow - leverages the new FedNow instant payment system. FedNow is run by the Fed and transfers money in seconds with a charge of just US$0.045 per transaction. And they mean seconds . If the money isn't there in 10 seconds, the transaction times out. Few banks support it yet, but some do. It needs co…
Unrelated, but they _charge_ you for transferring money??? Is the US ever gonna have true free instant transfers? Without none of this venmo paypal shenanigans?
Another question (as a seperate comment incase dang is replying to the other one): This is the equity deal: https://www.ycombinator.com/deal What if I don’t want to raise any more than the 7% (which in itself is $125k I don’t really need but happy to give 7% for the higher P(success)) What if I want to bootstrap from that point or at least keep options open?
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…
That’s essentially how the whole world operates. Y Combinator isn’t an exception. Do you think a wealthy investor would prefer to fund an unknown individual, or someone whose father is a well-established law professor at Stanford? However, I do believe that YC tends to be somewhat more egalitarian and merit-based compared to others, although it’s not by a significant margin.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's definitely not true. Where did you get these numbers?
I had a side project that was meant to be an “IMDB of everything”. For my initial focus, I targeted YC, its companies and members. This involved looking at a lot of LinkedIn profiles and recording their alma mater because I wanted to give credit to organizations as well and not just individuals. That’s how I came to that conclusion. The result surprised me as well but it also makes sense. Investors would be more eage…
Not just from an equality perspective, but also that good ideas and founders can come from anywhere. Top Schools are going to produce one type of founder and idea. People that have walked different paths, another.
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…
The LinkedIn page for a lot of these companies showing you "Where they studied" can be a bit intimidating. Chockablock with Stanford and Ivy League. I was filling out the Co-Founder matching service application and it has a required text area for education. The placeholder text examples? Standford MS in Comp Sci, NYU BS in Physics. As a college dropout with "some college" but a 14+ year career in systems/software eng…
I agree that the cofounder dating was intimidating, and even some of the people fit into that category. Far more didn't though, and I've found an exceptional cofounder through it, which is one of the most exciting things in a very long career.
(I'll get around to doing YC at some point)