I find it interesting that people are finding issue with the $12K. Personally I have kids and mortgage and I will be applying with my healthcare startup which as it happens is in very early stages.
I would have applied even if there was no $12K since, YC is not taking any equity in this case, and, is providing access to its network which is worth much much more than $12K to me.
YC Fellowship
351–360 of 399 posts
Re: YC Fellowship
#352going thru the comments, its seems that the remote consideration is going to be the charm as well as the biggest challenge.
Re: YC Fellowship
#353I find it interesting that people are finding issue with the $12K. Personally I have kids and mortgage and I will be applying with my healthcare startup which as it happens is in very early stages. I would have applied even if there was no $12K since, YC is not taking any equity in this case, and, is providing access to its network which is worth much much more than $12K to me.
>access to its network which is worth much much more than $12K
Very true. But do not forget that this time there would be aspiring candidates from outside USA too. For them $12K would be a huge enabler (Ex.: adjusted for purchasing power $12K = ~$75K, for somebody who is in India).
Re: YC Fellowship
#354Kat 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.
Hey Kat (Sam and Matt too)! I am a grade 11 High School student from Singapore, and I’m considering applying with my buddy. The problem is that we have our End-of-Year / Promotional exams from 23 Sept to 30 Sept, and we won’t be able to get excused from school for this. However, we will be able to skip school and commit for the whole of October + November + December.
Can I still apply?
Re: YC Fellowship
#355I started my first business (web design) at 15 with a £1,000 grant from The Prince's Scottish Youth Business Trust. It was a very significant amount for me. Without it I wouldn't have been able to start. My family were on income support so the money went straight on a PC, internet, phone line, business cards and public transport to reach my clients to pitch them. Thankfully I still lived with my parents: no rent unti…
The effort involved in means testing, including verification, would be extremely taxing for an organization the size of YC and doubly so in relation to the size of the money involved. I have to suspect they never seriously considered it because it'd be so impractical, and there would be inevitable abuse (each layer of complexity makes such things worse, for YC simplicity has always been integral).
For my grant I was asked to sign a simple declaration of means. There was no verification. It was more to do with the aspiration of the Trust rather than an ironclad requirement (I was funded age 15: the minimum was supposed to be 16).
There would be no additional burden on YC to say 'we want to encourage more people from underprivileged backgrounds to start a company'.
At this level of funding YC's impact is going to be much greater for that demographic than those whose parents can afford to seed their startup just as they'd buy them their first car.
Re: YC Fellowship
#356I started my first business (web design) at 15 with a £1,000 grant from The Prince's Scottish Youth Business Trust. It was a very significant amount for me. Without it I wouldn't have been able to start. My family were on income support so the money went straight on a PC, internet, phone line, business cards and public transport to reach my clients to pitch them. Thankfully I still lived with my parents: no rent unti…
I find this an interesting point to bring up. My family were also on income support when I was younger, and I also applied for the Youth Opportunity Funding grant in the UK and was awarded £1,250. Similar to drsim I intended to start my own media business using the money, so I purchased a cheap PC, a camera, business cards, etc In order to apply for the money I had to go through what was quite a lengthy process, whic…
That is a crazy amount of bureaucracy. I doubt I'd have applied if I'd hit that.
All I had to do was two interviews, sign a simple declaration and then present receipts for purchases.
Re: YC Fellowship
#357I compiled some Q&A from YCombinator partners that were relevant for me.
Is this US-only?
Nope, welcome to apply from anywhere. But..
Unfortunately we don't have the bandwidth to get involved with visas before or during the program :( If you can't do it from the Bay Area though, you can still apply to do it remotely--we want to try working with remote teams!
-------------
"We encourage you to come to Mountain View if you can make it, but remote interviews over video chat will be okay too ..." For remote teams with viable ideas that YC is interested in funding, how remote can such teams be? Can teams apply from outside the US; from Europe, Asia or Africa?
Yes absolutely. Teams from anywhere in the world are welcome to apply. We just ask that you have a strong internet connection that allows for clear, reliable video chats.
-------------
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.
-------------
What are key differences b/w the fellowship and the YC incubator?
It's a 12k equity-free grant, it lasts for 8 weeks, you can do it remotely, and it's primarily meant for idea and prototype-stage companies. No dinners and no formal Demo Day, but there will be kickoff and end events in Mountain View where teams will present to the YC community. We'll fly out remote teams for those.
-------------
Will we have to pay taxes on the grant?
If you’ve already incorporated, you shouldn’t have to; as long as you are spending the grant on expenses for your business, you should be able to write it off. If you have not yet incorporated, you will have to pay some taxes. We’ll go over this in more detail with accepted teams.
-------------
What kind of progress do you expect founders to make by the end of the Fellowship? Put another way, if the goal of participation in Y Combinator is for companies to build enough traction to become top-tier candidates for an institutional fundraise, what is the outcome that participants in the Fellowship should hope to achieve?
We'd like teams to make as much progress as possible during the 8-weeks of the fellowship. If you have a prototype, that would mean launching and getting your first customers. If you're at idea stage that would mean building a prototype and talking to users. At the end of the 8-weeks we hope the teams will be ready to apply for YC W16 (it's not a requirement -- but we'll encourage it).
-------------
What qualities do you look for in founders? Is it the same set of qualities you look for in the normal YC application? A little bit more relaxed? A little bit more strict?
It's the same. Read this: http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html
-------------
Re: YC Fellowship
#358For me, the key is that they are even considering remote. I think that really is the part that is needed to get to another 10x. I am not saying remote work is intrinsically 10x better in quality or quantity, I am thinking about it more from the point of view of people who cannot or will not travel, new people that can be reached this way. Take myself for example: I do have this thing that I am working on.. but I also…
Well put. Geography is vastly underestimated as a limiting factor. Not simply for $ – living in the Bay Area is barely feasible for a young person without dependents – but also the many quality-of-life trade-offs that come with a move. I hope this is a successful experiment.
About living expenses, there are a few possibilities to save a little money, from couchsurfing (seems unreal, but I know a guy who lives through CS almost 2 years))) to housesitting (I saw a house, a cat sitter was needed, about in 20 miles from SF for 2 months). Or, the most popular, a flatshare - that's what we're going to do))
Re: YC Fellowship
#359Kat 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.
Hi Matt! As I know it is not required to move to the Bay Area for the program. Will be possible to join in person in 2-3 weeks later, let's say, in October? Thanks
Re: YC Fellowship
#360This is a good idea and a great opportunity for many people. And I think it's fantastic that YC is doing this. However, I can't help feeling it really is intended for young people recently out of school, who have no other immediate financial obligations. I would really love to see an option for people who are not in this group. Let's imagine someone who is married, with a couple of kids and a mortgage. Right away, YC…
If you're a successful engineer in your 40s and have a full-time job, a family, and a mortgage in the developed world, you probably don't need $12k. That's at most two months' worth of regular salary for an experienced engineer in the U.S, and more likely just one month. You can easily save up or take out a loan with favorable interest rates if you're really passionate about doing something. The problem is that since…
You are not an entrepreneur. Clearly.