101–110 of 116 posts
I noticed that the application asks for age of the founders. How does this factor into the equation?
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if people have that impression, i think they looking for an excuse and not looking at data.
If YC partner selection is anything like YC founder selection the data says YC is for white and asian men who went to Stanford or Harvard, with few exceptions. YC partners, being only human, will tend to be biased in favor of people who are like them. http://www.ycombinator.com/partners/ I'm pretty sure YC has not published any background diversity numbers. It would be good for the world if you did but I doubt you wo…
Note that originally YC was based around the idea of funding college students to try a startup instead of an internship over their semester break. At that point it was physically based near MIT & Harvard, with a winter (?) campus near Stanford.
As you'd expect, early intakes were dominated by people from those places (ie, mostly white and asian males who attended MIT, Harvard and Stanford). Also as you'd expect, success takes time, and so we are seeing those early successes moving into roles within YC.
I agree that increasing diversity of the YC partners, but it is important to understand the reasons why it is like that currently.
I think it is excellent that YC is aware of this problem, and is taking steps to correct it amongst the companies they fund[1][2].
[1] http://blog.ycombinator.com/diversity-and-startups
[2] http://www.forbes.com/sites/women2/2014/02/03/y-combinators-...
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As a solo founder from the w14 batch: I can tell you it feels more difficult to do everything yourself. I'd recommend if you can organically find someone to work with on the company, you should. Happy to answer any solo founder related questions, if you have them.
Yea, I know that it's much better if you have cofounder (there are so many tasks to do), but I believe it should be the right person, and wrong person can make much more damage then help. As a solo founder, how did you improve your productivity on early stage: what kind of tasks you usually delegated to someone else (like freelancer) if you did.
I had hired a sales guy right before yc, which helped somewhat. During yc, I basically bounced between growth tasks which was really difficult. I'm still figuring it out tbh.
We now have a larger team which helps a lot... But I still often miss the camaraderie of having someone who 100% has your back.
The other thing is a sense of impostor syndrome to fight against... I feel like I don't have anyone who will see a bigger picture totally, so I find myself doubting my decisions much more frequently.
- didn't get in first time (check, different company though). - weren't sure if good fit for b2b/ saas company (wrong). - questioned how much value YC could provide us (many times more than expected). for us going through YC, working with the partners, and joining the YC network were the best things we could have possibly done. Thinking back to life pre-YC (Dec-13) to now the rate of change (progress/ growth/ knowled…
hey Brian, just messaged you in linkedin, want to ask some questions if you have some time -Yousif
What about the single founder? I know the answer, but I guess I shouldn't apply til I find a co-founder?
We have some very successful single-founder companies, such as Instacart. We suggest finding a cofounder not for our benefit, but for your own. Startups are hard, and doing it alone makes it even harder.
I noticed that the application asks for age of the founders. How does this factor into the equation?
We ask founders what impressive things they've done: older founders have had more time to do things. I roughly take the quotient (amount of impressive achievements) / (age - 15).
I've got a startup with an almost ready product, a team that has started businesses before, and is bootstrapped with our own money. I'd love to give a presentation, but I'm based in Europe. Does YC do Europe? (I'm more than happy to fly. Question is whether you care where a firm is based.)