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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

#71

Post by charlie0 »

0x696C6961 wrote: post #5
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…

> 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.

Learning what NOT to do is almost as valuable as knowing what to do.

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

#72

Post by __loam »

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.

Many will enter, few will win lmao

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

#73

Post by __loam »

mikert89 wrote: post #61
sobellian wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having done this, and acknowledging the fuzzy definition of "rich" etc - going through YC after graduating is a great career move. You have to do everything yourself so you learn a lot. About business, about a specific industry, about programming, whatever. You make connections. But unless you walk an absolute golden path (hey it happens), > 90% chance you don't get rich. > 99.9% chance you won't get rich by 30.

Not denying you can fail, but one year spent on YC and failing puts you in a position to start another business

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

#74

Post by __loam »

mikert89 wrote: post #60
aprilthird2021 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

By rich I mean like 25 million +, not 3 million

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

#75

Post by dang »

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 don't spam the threads with massive lists. It's enough to link to the information.

I'm not sure what this is supposed to show, other than that YC funds a lot of startups and a lot of them are working in AI, which is what you'd expect during any major tech wave.

In fact, YC funds so many startups that your list is actually misleadingly short, unless you meant to argue that AI startups are a low percentage.

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

#77

Post by ludicity »

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…

Tecto AI is my favourite, as it forms the "AI for AI" ouroboros. Outrove also sounds confusing, because doesn't Salesforce already purport to have their own native AI features? And when I look them up, it seems they're just AI for recruiting, which is also what VoiceOS purports to do.

Looking up the founders is fascinating too. So many of them seem to have graduated and immediately started trailing what appear to be a string of back-to-back failed businesses, rarely with more than a year of staying power per attempt. It's hard to tell if that's "failing quickly" (desirable) or "frantically trying to get-rich-quick" (undesirable and what I run into in Melbourne most often).

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

#78

Post by mikert89 »

fullofideas wrote: post #68
thebigman433 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This really is not true, basically every engineering job in the Bay Area will set you up with enough money to live extremely well. YC startups are a bit above average, but still most startups fail. If you care about building wealth, taking a stable engineering position straight out of college and working hard is a great path

This. There is a huge opportunity cost, even more so for the “best and brightest” (by whatever definition). The odds of striking it rich are really not in your favor. You may be better off working at big tech for a few years, save up, let the money work for you while you explore your entrepreneurial urge. You have a cushion and maybe that will let you take on bigger and bolder bets than what you could when you come o…

No you want to take these bets when you are young, its the opposite, you go into stable careers when your appetite for risk and working around the clock has waned

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

#79

Post by dang »

wolfcola wrote: post #51

bad, ideologically-motivated idea when thiel did it, and bad, ideologically-motivated idea now

"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Jared's description about why YC is doing this now seems clear. If you know more or better, you're welcome to make a substantive argument. But please don't use this site for shallow putdowns—it's not what it's for.

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

#80

Post by edoceo »

nhumrich wrote: post #34
edoceo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you are talking about phase-1 and I was talking about a phase-2 of the process (of N phases).

We're just addressing different steps.

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