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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

#41

Post by htrp »

mikert89 wrote: post #13
timr wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me make this simple for you: you will not get rich by 30. I know, I know...there are examples! And yes, there are, but statistically, they won't be you. You're playing the lottery, only it's a lottery that steals your youth and gives you psychological problems. If your only goal is to get rich, then don't do a startup. You have to have some more fundamental reason, or the agony will beat you.

I live in NYC, I have met alot of very rich startup founders. But not only that, lots of people making 50k a month from a startup they built post YC, raised no VC, and have no boss. Its an outdated take to think people arent doing this

You live in NYC.... there are a lot of "startup founders" who already come from generational family wealth

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

#42

Post by htrp »

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…

Please tell me your AI tool did that for you and you didn't do it manually

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

#43

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#44

Post by neilv »

If the funding is available immediately (not just an immediate commitment for funding once they start a batch), would it address the following problem I've run into a few times?

In the last year alone, I've had to bow out of co-founding two promising startups with good biz co-founders, because first-year MBA students wanted to finish their degree before they sought funding.

Two ways funding could help:

1. I couldn't afford to work over a year as a technical cofounder, executing in full-time startup mode like usually needs to be done, with no income. While they were part-time, and getting an MBA and networking out of it during this period. Even ramen lifestyle funding would've made this closer to an equitable balance of contribution and risk among the cofounders.

2. There's also the concern that MBA programs seem to push students to have a hypothetical startup, so there's always a chance that the MBA student won't be fully committed to actually do the startup once they graduate. Maybe accepted funding could make this a firmer commitment. (Even if there's no contractual obligation to pursue the startup, I'd guess that new MBA graduates don't want to burn bridges in the small world of investors, so would take the commitment fairly seriously.)

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

#45

Post by htrp »

cultofmetatron wrote: post #22
0x696C6961 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you've never seen first-hand how a functional company works. You can go an entire career without seeing how a functional company works.

> You can go an entire career without seeing how a functional company works. having worked at a few dysfunctional companies, there's value in it. you learn to spot red flag decisions and the kinds of people that tend to cause organizations to explode from within. a Lot of the success at my current company can be attributed to decisions I've made that came from experience at failed startups where we did the opposite.

Exactly! being able to recognize the wrong thing is just as valuable as recognizing the right thing

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

#46

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#47

Post by mikert89 »

MegaButts wrote: post #38
mikert89 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

why do you think i havent

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

#48

Post by pclmulqdq »

mikert89 wrote: post #27
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…

10% chance at millions fresh out school sounds great!

If you think "exit" automatically means millions, you've probably never seen an exit before. Of those that exit, the majority of startups get almost $0 for the common shareholders. I continue to believe that a lot of YC's alpha comes from the fact that they are very good at angling people toward small exits where they basically make no money but YC recovers their investment.

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

#49

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

mikert89 wrote: post #35
dcreater wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Whose "we"?

there are open weight models which are SOTA.

not sure how you plan to monetize it.

Tell me how you can make a profit or if you even have a plan to make a profit..

or your plan is to sell it to a higher fool who believes that they can sell it to an even higher fool....

Oh. Sounds similar?

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

#50

Post by aprilthird2021 »

mikert89 wrote: post #6

This is basically ensuring YC starts to get more absolute top graduates. Entrepreneurship is more and more seen as the default path for top people in the USA. All other career paths are for people that want to take the risk of ending up in a 50 year assembly line. This is probably good for society If you want to get rich by 30, you basically have to start a startup or get into a top small hedge fund out of undergrad.

> If you want to get rich by 30, you basically have to start a startup or get into a top small hedge fund out of undergrad.

I am 30, I am rich by most measures of wealth and probably in the minds of most college grads. I worked in various big tech companies (incl stints in FAANG) after graduating with my BS in CS. A lot of my peers did do startups, and they had varying degrees of success. But almost everyone who went to big tech has set up their next generation for success at this point

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