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YC Fellowship

blog.ycombinator.com

31–40 of 399 posts

Re: YC Fellowship

#31
post #2

Kat from YC here. Sam, Matt Krisiloff and I are happy to answer any questions about the Fellowship. You can also send questions to fellowship@ycombinator.com.

Hi Kat, considering applying for a hardware-based startup. I have enough savings to quit my current job for 2 months but the 12k would be enough to build a few prototypes. Would you consider a robotics-based startup?

Re: YC Fellowship

#32

>We understand that $12,000 is not a lot of money, and this won’t make sense for everyone. But for some people, it may be the difference between going to work at a big company and starting the next Airbnb. Maybe if the founders of AirBnB had been given $12,000 they wouldn't have needed to make money though illegal spamming.

Interesting, I haven't heard about this. Could you speak more to the illegal spamming allegation?

Re: YC Fellowship

#34
post #2

Kat from YC here. Sam, Matt Krisiloff and I are happy to answer any questions about the Fellowship. You can also send questions to fellowship@ycombinator.com.

How many teams are you hoping to accept into the fellowship for the first round?

About 20 -- we want to keep it a small experiment for this test batch.

Re: YC Fellowship

#35

This is exactly why Y Combinator is the best. This is what leadership is (and what those other accelerators do, is follow the lead). > but as always we’ll consider solo founders too. Please be extremely open minded about solo founders. I feel that is one consideration that hasn't been adapted with the changing tech landscape.

> Please be extremely open minded about solo founders. I feel that is one consideration that hasn't been adapted with the changing tech landscape.

This is something I always worry about too. I have several really amazing people that I could partner with on a few different things but due to financial obligations there isn't anyway they'd be able to join full time unless there was an investment. So pitching as a solo always makes me nervous that I'll be immediately discounted even if I could bring in a partner shortly thereafter.

Re: YC Fellowship

#36
post #21
post #2

Kat from YC here. Sam, Matt Krisiloff and I are happy to answer any questions about the Fellowship. You can also send questions to fellowship@ycombinator.com.

Hi Kat! We're considering applying and wondering if you folks have a conception of companies that would be considered too far along for this program. In our situation, we're have not yet taken investment, but we would definitely love to and still have much to learn about getting ready for that. We're also somewhat beyond the prototype phase, but only to the extent that we're soon shipping a version 1 product to crowd…

It sounds like you may be far enough along to apply for Y Combinator (those applications open in late August). But I don't have quite enough information -- so if you're in doubt, you should go ahead and apply for the Fellowship. If you're working on hardware you'll have to illustrate how you plan to make progress with the limited amount of funding the fellowship provides.

Re: YC Fellowship

#37
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi! Matt here -- I'll be managing YC Fellowship. I'll be answering questions here throughout the day alongside Kat and Sam.

Hi, Matt and Kat. Cool to see the focus on helping more people start companies - I had written off an article bouncing around over the weekend alleging that rich families are the key to entrepreneurship [1]. Maybe it is true, but with enough YC fellowships it doesn't have to be. Question: my organization is a nonprofit co-op. I know YC recently started accepting nonprofits - what's your opinion on them for YC fellows…

Unfortunately we're not going to be accepting non-profits for this first experiment. If it goes well though, we hope to fund some this way in the future.

Re: YC Fellowship

#38
post #24

12k gets them first dibs on an individual and/or a team ... a smart idea. Essentially a variation of Cialdini's "reciprocity" principle (among others..) http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/six-principles-influe... People are free to do whatever they want with the grant and not go any further with YC but it's obvious that the good will and grant will cause a large percentage of them to not do that.

It will be up to the wider community to educate the young impressionable kids who take the money that they have no obligations to YC and that there is no such thing as loyalty in the valley. YC is sure as hell gong to chuck them to the road if they don't work out.

Unfortunately a lot of these kids will probably feel guilt over taking the money and feel like they have some kind of obligation to take deals that are much worse for them.

Re: YC Fellowship

#39
post #2

Kat from YC here. Sam, Matt Krisiloff and I are happy to answer any questions about the Fellowship. You can also send questions to fellowship@ycombinator.com.

How do you feel about teams with a year of college left?

good if you're willing to take the fall semester off.

Re: YC Fellowship

#40
post #14
post #2

Kat from YC here. Sam, Matt Krisiloff and I are happy to answer any questions about the Fellowship. You can also send questions to fellowship@ycombinator.com.

Great opportunity, thanks guys. I'll point out that first yc.submittable form is a bit confusing: http://imgur.com/ITk71jN I guess the "YC Fellowship Application" is a link to it? I wasn't sure where to click besides 'submit' and was a bit afraid it'd submit a blank form and lock me out of a real submission later! (It didn't, of course – the submit button is just an anchor tag pointing to https://yc.submittable.com/s…

Sorry about that -- it's definitely safe to click through that first button. The actual application page's submit button, however, will submit your application!

edit: we've changed it to link directly to the application form now. Thanks for pointing this out.

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