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Do YC after you graduate: Early decision for students

ycombinator.com

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Re: Do YC after you graduate: Early decision for students

#31

Post by edoceo »

paxys wrote: post #23
cassonmars wrote: post #3

Does YC ever intend to revisit doing remote batches again? There's many founders in the country who are just as driven and motivated, but have real-world situations that cannot allow uprooting themselves for several months, two very common ones: - new parents - disabled family members, or are themselves physically disabled The discourse on Hacker News has frequently chastised companies demanding RTO, and some of the…

It’s a form of self selection. YC (and silicon valley at large) isn't interested in founders with pesky things like real life responsibilities or anything else that will prevent them from focusing on their startup 24x7.

This is too flippant.

YC is so early on some of these deals that the primary gauge is team - which means personality of founders. Very hard to measure remotely.

I'm in a group, not as big or famous, that does early checks. We're 95% remote. IME, it's so hard to make those judgement calls through web-cam.

Agreed that founder focus is a big factor and that life gets in the way (of deals). However, if you don't like YC conditions there are 100s of other places to (attempt a) raise.

Re: Do YC after you graduate: Early decision for students

#32

Post by cde-v »

barbarr wrote: post #21

To what extent is YC's current strategy a form of "cookie-licking"? I.e. capture a small fraction of every plausible startup created by the next generation of students?

100% at this point. The industry's leading AI for start-up ideas has run out of AI for _____ suggestions. It was pretty obvious they were scraping the bottom of the barrel a month ago when I made this list from their current batch:

Acrely — AI for HVAC administration

Aden — AI for ERP operations

AgentHub — AI for agent simulation and evaluation

Agentin AI — AI for enterprise agents

AgentMail — AI for agent email infrastructure

AlphaWatch AI — AI for financial search

Alter — AI for secure agent workflow access control

Altur — AI for debt collection voice agents

Ambral — AI for account management

Anytrace — AI for support engineering

April — AI for voice executive assistants

AutoComputer — AI for robotic desktop automation

Autosana — AI for mobile QA

Autotab — AI for knowledge work

Avent — AI for industrial commerce

b-12 — AI for chemical intelligence

Bluebirds — AI for outbound targeting

burnt — AI for food supply chain operations

Cactus — AI for smartphone model deployment

Candytrail — AI for sales funnel automation

CareSwift — AI for ambulance operations

Certus AI — AI for restaurant phone lines

Clarm — AI for search and agent building

Clodo — AI for real estate CRMs

Closera — AI for commercial real estate employees

Clueso — AI for instructional content generation

cocreate — AI for video editing

Comena — AI for order automation in distribution

ContextFort — AI for construction drawing reviews

Convexia — AI for pharma drug discovery

Credal.ai — AI for enterprise workflow assistants

CTGT — AI for preventing hallucinations

Cyberdesk — AI for legacy desktop automation

datafruit — AI for DevOps engineering

Daymi — AI for personal clones

DeepAware AI — AI for data center efficiency

Defog.ai — AI for natural-language data queries

Design Arena — AI for design benchmarks

Doe — AI for autonomous private equity workforce

Double – Coding Copilot — AI for coding assistance

EffiGov — AI for local government call centers

Eloquent AI — AI for complex financial workflows

F4 — AI for compliance in engineering drawings

Finto — AI for enterprise accounting

Flai — AI for dealership customer acquisition

Floot — AI for app building

Fluidize — AI for scientific experiments

Flywheel AI — AI for excavator autonomy

Freya — AI for financial services voice agents

Frizzle — AI for teacher grading

Galini — AI guardrails as a service

Gaus — AI for retail investors

Ghostship — AI for UX bug detection

Golpo — AI for video generation from documents

Halluminate — AI for training computer use

HealthKey — AI for clinical trial matching

Hera — AI for motion design

Humoniq — AI for BPO in travel and transport

Hyprnote — AI for enterprise notetaking

Imprezia — AI for ad networks

Induction Labs — AI for computer use automation

iollo — AI for multimodal biological data

Iron Grid — AI for hardware insurance

IronLedger.ai — AI for property accounting

Janet AI — AI for project management (AI-native Jira)

Kernel — AI for web agent browsing infrastructure

Kestroll — AI for media asset management

Keystone — AI for software engineering

Knowlify — AI for explainer video creation

Kyber — AI for regulatory notice drafting

Lanesurf — AI for freight booking voice automation

Lantern — AI for Postgres application development

Lark — AI for billing operations

Latent — AI for medical language models

Lemma — AI for consumer brand insights

Linkana — AI for supplier onboarding reviews

Liva AI — AI for video and voice data labeling

Locata — AI for healthcare referral management

Lopus AI — AI for deal intelligence

Lotas — AI for data science IDEs

Louiza Labs — AI for synthetic biology data

Luminai — AI for business process automation

Magnetic — AI for tax preparation

MangoDesk — AI for evaluation data

Maven Bio — AI for BioPharma insights

Meteor — AI for web browsing (AI-native browser)

Mimos — AI for regulated firm visibility in search

Minimal AI — AI for e-commerce customer support

Mobile Operator — AI for mobile QA

Mohi — AI for workflow clarity

Monarcha — AI for GIS platforms

moonrepo — AI for developer workflow tooling

Motives — AI for consumer research

Nautilus — AI for car wash optimization

NOSO LABS — AI for field technician support

Nottelabs — AI for enterprise web agents

Novaflow — AI for biology lab analytics

Nozomio — AI for contextual coding agents

Oki — AI for company intelligence

Okibi — AI for agent building

Omnara — AI for agent command centers

OnDeck AI — AI for video analysis

Onyx — AI for generative platform development

Opennote — AI for note-based tutoring

Opslane — AI for ETL data pipelines

Orange Slice — AI for sales lead generation

Outlit — AI for quoting and proposals

Outrove — AI for Salesforce

Pally — AI for relationship management

Paloma — AI for billing CRMs

Parachute — AI for clinical evaluation and deployment

PARES AI — AI for commercial real estate brokers

People.ai — AI for enterprise growth insights

Perspectives Health — AI for clinic EMRs

Pharmie AI — AI for pharmacy technicians

Phases — AI for clinical trial automation

Pingo AI — AI for language learning companions

Pleom — AI for conversational interaction

Qualify.bot — AI for commercial lending phone agents

Reacher — AI for creator collaboration marketing

Ridecell — AI for fleet operations

Risely AI — AI for campus administration

Risotto — AI for IT helpdesk automation

Riverbank Security — AI for offensive security

Saphira AI — AI for certification automation

Sendbird — AI for omnichannel agents

Sentinel — AI for on-call engineering

Serafis — AI for institutional investor knowledge graphs

Sigmantic AI — AI for HDL design

Sira — AI for HR management of hourly teams

Socratix AI — AI for fraud and risk teams

Solva — AI for insurance

Spotlight Realty — AI for real estate brokerage

StackAI — AI for low-code agent platforms

stagewise — AI for frontend coding agents

Stellon Labs — AI for edge device models

Stockline — AI for food wholesaler ERP

Stormy AI — AI for influencer marketing

Synthetic Society — AI for simulating real users

SynthioLabs — AI for medical expertise in pharma

Tailor — AI for retail ERP automation

Tecto AI — AI for governance of AI employees

Tesora — AI for procurement analysis

Trace — AI for workflow automation

TraceRoot.AI — AI for automated bug fixing

truthsystems — AI for regulated governance layers

Uplift AI — AI for underserved voice languages

Veles — AI for dynamic sales pricing

Veritus Agent — AI for loan servicing and collections

Verne Robotics — AI for robotic arms

VoiceOS — AI for voice interviews

VoxOps AI — AI for regulated industry calls

Vulcan Technologies — AI for regulatory drafting

Waydev — AI for engineering leadership insights

Wayline — AI for property management voice automation

Wedge — AI for healthcare trust layers

Workflow86 — AI for workflow automation

ZeroEval — AI for agent evaluation and optimization

Re: Do YC after you graduate: Early decision for students

#33

Post by bix6 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #16
mikert89 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alot of them do, not only that, they build skills that help them start their next company. Many of which are bootstrapped and profitable. This whole idea that startups are a complete lottery ticket is not only false, its increasingly less false, more money is being made now in startups than ever

Based on public exit and liquidity event information, startups still remain a lottery ticket for most. 90% of startups fail entirely, for example (CB Insights). YC startups have more longevity, and more get to a Series A then non YC startups, but the best batches based on performance have been between 2009 and 2013. 10% achieve an exit, 4.5% became unicorns. Only 17 companies backed by YC (out of almost 5k) have gone…

> More than 50% of companies are still alive after 10 years

I’d rather have a 50% chance at my own startup being alive after 10 years than go work some big corp job.

Re: Do YC after you graduate: Early decision for students

#34

Post by nhumrich »

edoceo wrote: post #31
paxys wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a form of self selection. YC (and silicon valley at large) isn't interested in founders with pesky things like real life responsibilities or anything else that will prevent them from focusing on their startup 24x7.

This is too flippant. YC is so early on some of these deals that the primary gauge is team - which means personality of founders. Very hard to measure remotely. I'm in a group, not as big or famous, that does early checks. We're 95% remote. IME, it's so hard to make those judgement calls through web-cam. Agreed that founder focus is a big factor and that life gets in the way (of deals). However, if you don't like YC…

Except that all acceptance via YC is actually done remotely. They don't meet you in person until after they have already wired the money.

Re: Do YC after you graduate: Early decision for students

#35

Post by mikert89 »

dcreater wrote: post #29
fijiaarone wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Entrepreneurship isn’t getting showered with millions for doing nothing other than being accepted as a part of the blessed elite and access to an infinite spigot of free money when all other sources have been dammed off and diverted to the ever shrinking minority of ever increasing ultra-wealth.

For people who took a second to get this (like me), @fijiaarone means it is. And I concur - in this AI hypecycle more than ever it seems to be about how can peacock the best. Its neck and neck with the crypto hypecycle a few years ago for the incidence rate of vaporware and snake oil. Sure there are some legit founders building meaningful product but they seem to be a small minority.

dude we just invented computers you can talk to

Re: Do YC after you graduate: Early decision for students

#36

Post by bix6 »

cde-v wrote: post #32
barbarr wrote: post #21

To what extent is YC's current strategy a form of "cookie-licking"? I.e. capture a small fraction of every plausible startup created by the next generation of students?

100% at this point. The industry's leading AI for start-up ideas has run out of AI for _____ suggestions. It was pretty obvious they were scraping the bottom of the barrel a month ago when I made this list from their current batch: Acrely — AI for HVAC administration Aden — AI for ERP operations AgentHub — AI for agent simulation and evaluation Agentin AI — AI for enterprise agents AgentMail — AI for agent email infr…

Yo this is nuts lol!

Re: Do YC after you graduate: Early decision for students

#37

Post by bix6 »

gkoberger wrote: post #4

I loved YC and can't recommend it enough. But if you're going to start a company, please consider working at another company first, even if briefly. (And make it a company you respect and want to emulate.) The amount of wheels you won't have to reinvent if you work at another company are astronomical. From engineering practices to sales to management, there's a lot you don't want to innovate on. Starting a company is…

I learned a lot working for other people but I’ve learned the most running my own thing.

I do think many college grads generally don’t understand how business works though because they just haven’t experienced it yet. School is a totally different beast.

Re: Do YC after you graduate: Early decision for students

#38

Post by MegaButts »

mikert89 wrote: post #28
timr wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. Google "selection bias". You aren't meeting the 10,000 who failed. I also live in NYC. I lived in SF, during possibly the all-time greatest period of wealth creation in the last 50 years. I knew billionaires when they couldn't afford bar tabs. I ate leftover boxes of Obama-Os (again, Google it) that nobody wanted. I'm still telling you the truth. Every one of those people who succeeded went through hell and bac…

You dont have to create a billion dollar company. Especially after raising VC and failing, its much clearer how to build a business. Very reasonable to think a smart hard working person can build a company making 1M a year. Life owning a company that makes even a moderate amount is 1000x better than a career. I think your analysis is outdated

If it's 1000x better than a career and you believe it's achievable, why haven't you done it yet?

Re: Do YC after you graduate: Early decision for students

#39

Post by j_bum »

cde-v wrote: post #32
barbarr wrote: post #21

To what extent is YC's current strategy a form of "cookie-licking"? I.e. capture a small fraction of every plausible startup created by the next generation of students?

100% at this point. The industry's leading AI for start-up ideas has run out of AI for _____ suggestions. It was pretty obvious they were scraping the bottom of the barrel a month ago when I made this list from their current batch: Acrely — AI for HVAC administration Aden — AI for ERP operations AgentHub — AI for agent simulation and evaluation Agentin AI — AI for enterprise agents AgentMail — AI for agent email infr…

Incredible list. Thanks for sharing.

Re: Do YC after you graduate: Early decision for students

#40

Post by toomuchtodo »

bix6 wrote: post #33
toomuchtodo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on public exit and liquidity event information, startups still remain a lottery ticket for most. 90% of startups fail entirely, for example (CB Insights). YC startups have more longevity, and more get to a Series A then non YC startups, but the best batches based on performance have been between 2009 and 2013. 10% achieve an exit, 4.5% became unicorns. Only 17 companies backed by YC (out of almost 5k) have gone…

> More than 50% of companies are still alive after 10 years I’d rather have a 50% chance at my own startup being alive after 10 years than go work some big corp job.

To each their own. If you must do a startup, do so. My comments should be treated as informing prior to an informed decision.
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