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1) This line: "We’ll encourage but not require that Fellows later apply to Y Combinator." Will this lead to YC fellowship being a pre-req to get into YC in the future years?
2) Will this garner similar scrutiny of getting into YC? if not can you share a few major differences in the selection criteria?
(Posting from a throwaway account) > for some people, [YCF] may be the difference between going to work at a big company and starting the next Airbnb This is me. I applied to the YC summer batch and was rejected (I applied late, as a single founder, with only an idea). I've tried to push ahead anyway with my idea/startup and built a small prototype, but in the end decided to find a job. I have just now gotten a job o…
Of course, you can decide to launch sooner. :)
I'm not sure why it is repeated over and over that 12k is small sum of money. 12k can easily pay off 2-3 months rent, server costs, marketing stuff, even a few flights. That's mental peace for 12 weeks to build something with 100% focus. That's an extremely high value priviledge. This should make sense for a lot of startups.
http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/networth/article/Average... 12k is a small sum of money in SF. Assuming the founders don't want to live together in a studio, looking at >5k month in just rent. Other costs of living are also high. This leaves almost nothing for any actual start up costs. Makes some sense if you're 22 and have no dependents, but 12k wouldn't be persuasive for a Bay Area founder with a family.
I've lived here for a while, and I wouldn't move here to do a startup today. Whatever marginal advantage there may have been to founding something here (and it was always small) has been more than consumed by the ridiculous costs. There's not even a recruiting advantage to locating here -- unemployment amongst software engineers in the SF bay area is like -150%. Every experienced engineer gets recruited on a daily basis, by startup companies that are basically indistinguishable. Startups here are increasingly hiring remote just to make it work (which seems like the worst of all worlds, really.)
Unless you're doing something where your customer base is in San Francisco (i.e. writing something for startups...or maybe tourism), you should definitely be somewhere else. Go where your customers are.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also if you look at the TOP tech companies of the last 20 years, they were all started with a dominant founder: Apple - Steve Jobs Amazon - Jeff Bezos Microsoft - Bill Gates (Google - Larry Page) So if you're looking for a runaway unicorn hit like that, perhaps having a very dominant founder and a founder with like 20% ain't half bad.
I think this is entirely misguided. People have selective memory: all but one of these companies had multiple founders. Hell, most companies we associate today with a single person had more than one founder. It's just that one held the most publicly visible role: Apple: Steve Jobs | + Steve Wozniak + Ronald Wayne Microsoft: Bill Gates | + Paul Allen Google: Larry Page | + Sergey Brin Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg | + Dus…
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.
But if you strike out alone, good luck! I can't speak for everyone obviously and I can't generalize and say it only works this way. Just giving my two cents.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Means testing adds a lot of bureaucratic overhead, especially if it's international, and it could dissuade some marginal people from engaging if they have to produce a bunch of documentation.
One option I've seen, though it's not bullet-proof, is to just have an explanation of who the money is intended for, and require applicants to sign a statement about their financial condition. Someone could always lie about it, but most people won't (especially since lying on an application for money is illegal).
People lie to each other on business contracts every minute of every day, nearly all of it ends up as a civil offense.
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! Matt here -- I'll be managing YC Fellowship. I'll be answering questions here throughout the day alongside Kat and Sam.
I am a grad student working on a purely research based concept that I feel could make a good start to a company. However, I'm fully committed to the research at the university for the next year. The YCF would be used to get this project from just a thesis to an applicable concept. Would this be a good start to what YC is looking for?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also if you look at the TOP tech companies of the last 20 years, they were all started with a dominant founder: Apple - Steve Jobs Amazon - Jeff Bezos Microsoft - Bill Gates (Google - Larry Page) So if you're looking for a runaway unicorn hit like that, perhaps having a very dominant founder and a founder with like 20% ain't half bad.
I think this is entirely misguided. People have selective memory: all but one of these companies had multiple founders. Hell, most companies we associate today with a single person had more than one founder. It's just that one held the most publicly visible role: Apple: Steve Jobs | + Steve Wozniak + Ronald Wayne Microsoft: Bill Gates | + Paul Allen Google: Larry Page | + Sergey Brin Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg | + Dus…
I don't understand why there are so many downvotes on something that is, indeed, a verifiable statistical fact. Can you downvoters write a message that elaborates on why you have such a strong reaction to this data?