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How to Apply to Y Combinator

ycombinator.com

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Re: How to Apply to Y Combinator

#71

Post by newsio »

I read this, and I like your thinking about the types of people you are looking for.

But I have to say: You're asking for clarity, want applicants to avoid unnecessary or confusing language, etc. Why not practice what you preach? Why not include some of the "read between the lines" bits in your essay ("If this wasn't already clear, we're not looking for the sort of obedient, middle-of-the-road people that big companies tend to hire. We're looking for people who like to beat the system") and copy and paste them directly into the application form? It will make your life easier, and it will make it easier for YC applicants who are struggling with the process. Judging by the fact that you had to write this essay, people obviously don't know what you want.

Re: How to Apply to Y Combinator

#72

Post by bradhe »

ajju wrote: post #47
pg wrote: post #7

If anyone has any questions I didn't answer, please ask them on this thread. I still consider this essay a draft; if anything important comes up here, I'll incorporate it in the next version.

A question that is not directly related: You said My initial goal is to figure out what kind of group I'm dealing with. Three friends about to graduate from college? Two colleagues who work together at a big company and want to jump ship? Are they all programmers? A mix of programmers and business people? There are maybe 20 or 30 different configurations of founders, most of which I've probably seen by this point. Is…

Seconded -- very good question!

Re: How to Apply to Y Combinator

#73

Post by dhouston »

lacker wrote: post #14

It would be great to see previous successful applications, if they don't mind. (Unsuccessful ones would be interesting too but that might be weird for them.)

Hopefully I won't feel stupid posting this, but I wished someone had done the same thing when I applied. (pg -- if you'd rather I not share this, feel free to delete)

Original Dropbox YC app: http://files.getdropbox.com/u/2/app.html

Had to remove some names and one sensitive thing but otherwise unedited

Re: How to Apply to Y Combinator

#74

Post by brlewis »

pg wrote: post #68
yumraj wrote: post #58

How about someone who needs guidance more than money. Like, someone who is currently employed and wants to do something on the side till it makes sense to go solo and maybe would need funding at that point. Would YC be interested/willing to consider this model and engage with such founder(s) to help review ideas, business models etc.?

What would have to change for it to make sense to go solo?

Since the OP hasn't replied yet, I'll chime in with an example: Suppose his is the sole income supporting a family of 5, and he needs financial resources to feed, clothe, house, educate, and entertain 5x as many people as the typical YC founder. What would have to change would be the availability of said resources.

Re: How to Apply to Y Combinator

#76

Post by Mz »

jamiequint wrote: post #66
korch wrote: post #55

So let me get this straight--if you make it through the gauntlet of rather arbitrary, hype-driven judgements, you get a whopping $10k and you have to move to the Bay, which has among the highest real estate and cost of living in the country? How is this not a complete waste of time since it's so exploitive of developers? Oh, that's right, being part of the startup-hype bubble machine entitles you to a magic wand that…

YC for us was much more about the connections than the money. It makes getting in the door a lot of places much easier, VCs/Angels are big on referrals and YC is kind of an insta-referral to anyone you want to talk to. The value of YC also depends largely on what kind of company you want to start. If you're looking to start a small shop making $500k-$2M (max) a year in revenue with 2-3 people than YC probably isn't f…

How would one determine which category they likely fall in ($2M max or $10M+ potential)?

Re: How to Apply to Y Combinator

#77

Post by rms »

korch wrote: post #55

So let me get this straight--if you make it through the gauntlet of rather arbitrary, hype-driven judgements, you get a whopping $10k and you have to move to the Bay, which has among the highest real estate and cost of living in the country? How is this not a complete waste of time since it's so exploitive of developers? Oh, that's right, being part of the startup-hype bubble machine entitles you to a magic wand that…

http://www.paulgraham.com/equity.html

Re: How to Apply to Y Combinator

#78

Post by nostrademons »

dhouston wrote: post #73
lacker wrote: post #14

It would be great to see previous successful applications, if they don't mind. (Unsuccessful ones would be interesting too but that might be weird for them.)

Hopefully I won't feel stupid posting this, but I wished someone had done the same thing when I applied. (pg -- if you'd rather I not share this, feel free to delete) Original Dropbox YC app: http://files.getdropbox.com/u/2/app.html Had to remove some names and one sensitive thing but otherwise unedited

You had applied earlier (SFP05?) and been rejected, right? If you don't mind, it'd be really interesting to see the earlier app too and compare what changed between them?

Re: How to Apply to Y Combinator

#79

Post by andreyf »

pg wrote: post #44
andreyf wrote: post #27

I remember reading about a study which showed that, at least for certain companies, judging from first-decade performance, hiring based on interviews was less intelligent than hiring based purely on GPA [1]. The reasoning was that judgment during interviews is suceptible to various human biases to which GPA's are not. At least part of PG's reasoning seems susceptible to similar biases: for example, whether or not he…

We have lots of biases, but I don't think we're much influenced by how memorable usernames are. It's the comments that make a username memorable, not the name.

I don't think we're much influenced by how memorable usernames are

Well, by definition, biases aren't intuitively obvious. But I'd love to hear explicit introspection about this in the essay: what are your biases, and how do you eliminate their affecting your decisions?

Re: How to Apply to Y Combinator

#80

Post by pg »

cperciva wrote: post #46
pg wrote: post #7

If anyone has any questions I didn't answer, please ask them on this thread. I still consider this essay a draft; if anything important comes up here, I'll incorporate it in the next version.

It might be worth discussing the "are any of these the case" (sole founder, keeping an existing job, can't move, etc.) question a bit -- the form says that these are not automatically disqualifying, but if you can give an example in each case of when they would or would not be disqualifying (and thus give people some idea of where the grey area is) it would probably help some people.

The point of this question is just to alert us to go back and check the application for problems. Before we added it, we often used to miss these things.

Here's how the question is used in practice. We vote on applications without necessarily checking it. Then at the end when we have a ranked list, we go back and check to see whether any of the top ranked ones have any signs of breakage. (That's when we check the answer to this question.) If they do we dig deeper, maybe asking the founders questions. What we decide depends on that digging.

So it's not as if we have some kind of rule that if a startup answers this question yes, 30% gets subtracted from their score, or anything like that. This question acts more as a warning light.

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