Why Y Combinator is a waste of time
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Why Y Combinator is a waste of time
1–10 of 79 posts
Re: Why Y Combinator is a waste of time
#2I think the author is missing part of the point. YCombinator is simply a way to make something that's very very hard to do just that much easier. Nobody should bank everything on getting accepted (I know I'm not). Just because you shouldn't bank on something doesn't mean it's not a valuable thing.
The author is right in that you should plan on doing it without YC help. My point is that you should still try to get YC's help. It'll be worth it.
Re: Why Y Combinator is a waste of time
#3Sour grapes? I dont know why people think it as though YC will spoon feed and get u stand up on your feet and will teach you walking and running. I see YC as a way of catalyst which nurtures, get you connections and give valuable advice. Again this is my perspective, i may be wrong but i really dont agree with the write up on scribd.com.
Re: Why Y Combinator is a waste of time
#4Re: Why Y Combinator is a waste of time
#5Premise is right, headline is wrong. If you look at the businesses that made people billionaires, the other point they have in common is that the owners aggressively pursued opportunities. So yes, Bill Gates slaved away for 6 years, with a variety of other products, before IBM came knocking. However, if he had turned them away, or been out of the office flying his plane like Gary Kildall, we'd be talking about the "Digital Research Monopoly" instead.
My startup initially wasn't going to apply to yCombinator. We have a solid team, a product that I really want to see exist, and we're making steady progress implementing it. But I figured that if we have a decent chance of success without yCombinator, we'll have an even better chance of success with yCombinator. So why not spend 4 days or so putting together an application and see if they accept us?
If they turn us down, fine, we go back to our original plan and keep working on the product. But if they don't, great! It's advice, connections, a set timetable for when I leave my day job and work full-time on the startup (for me, this is a question of when, not if: yCombinator would just make the decision for me), and a cool hacker environment where you get to bounce ideas off other equally-smart people.
Re: Why Y Combinator is a waste of time
#6(took out the first paragraph I had here. I should have read the full article!)
People that are applying for YC definitely are just seeing this as another possibility and not an end all to their idea. I'm sure that a very small amount of people are going to give up their business if rejected.
Re: Why Y Combinator is a waste of time
#7We believe so too and PG keeps deleting all links that point to sites that are not his own
Re: Why Y Combinator is a waste of time
#8Funny. And stupid.
Re: Why Y Combinator is a waste of time
#9(took out the first paragraph I had here. I should have read the full article!) People that are applying for YC definitely are just seeing this as another possibility and not an end all to their idea. I'm sure that a very small amount of people are going to give up their business if rejected.
I think the music parallel was right on, actually. You need users to tell you what they think of your product at least as much as VCs or execs. If users don't like your product, trying to pitch it to VCs is a waste of time.
Re: Why Y Combinator is a waste of time
#10No post body was provided.