Reflections on my time in Y Combinator
chrisfrantz.com
Reflections on my time in Y Combinator
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Re: Reflections on my time in Y Combinator
#2Great read Chris! I was in the S21 batch and definitely relate to a lot of the things you posted. Especially re: batchmate quality.
One big thing that YC did for me is it was an ambition multiplier. Pre-YC I thought it'd be cool to make software that could just pay my bills. A year post-batch and I find my default state is much more ambitious than before.
It's a crazy feeling seeing so many people start from 0 and the progress they can make in just 3 months. YC helped me and my company tremendously.
Re: Reflections on my time in Y Combinator
#3Great read Chris! I was in the S21 batch and definitely relate to a lot of the things you posted. Especially re: batchmate quality. One big thing that YC did for me is it was an ambition multiplier. Pre-YC I thought it'd be cool to make software that could just pay my bills. A year post-batch and I find my default state is much more ambitious than before. It's a crazy feeling seeing so many people start from 0 and th…
Thanks! Yeah, sounds like we shared a similar experience. YC definitely starts to make anything feel possible. They give you the tools, it’s up to you to take it from there.
Re: Reflections on my time in Y Combinator
#4Great read Chris! I was in the S21 batch and definitely relate to a lot of the things you posted. Especially re: batchmate quality. One big thing that YC did for me is it was an ambition multiplier. Pre-YC I thought it'd be cool to make software that could just pay my bills. A year post-batch and I find my default state is much more ambitious than before. It's a crazy feeling seeing so many people start from 0 and th…
I’m at my third YC company and it seems like each time what I thought my career was completely changed. I’m leading a whole company engineering team where at my last job I was a principal engineer who spent Covid working (sadly) alone.
My first I thought I’d be lucky to land a entry level gig and did so well I become the lead engineer over a couple of guys within a month (as soon as we found them.)
I would never have gotten that experience that fast. Sure looking bad I was a senior at entry level because I had practiced so much: but at a traditional corp I would have had to wait years to get to that level of experience where YC basically throws you at it and hopes you don’t fail
Re: Reflections on my time in Y Combinator
#5Great read! Applied for W23, so it was super relevant and interesting for me to read. :)
Re: Reflections on my time in Y Combinator
#6> But, we got to the 2 week mark with 0 revenue and we still didn’t have a completed product. That’s not really an excuse that flies in YC
What are they going to do, take their money back because you didn't meet their ludicrous immediate-term expectations?
Re: Reflections on my time in Y Combinator
#7> But, we got to the 2 week mark with 0 revenue and we still didn’t have a completed product. That’s not really an excuse that flies in YC What are they going to do, take their money back because you didn't meet their ludicrous immediate-term expectations?
Hah, well they didn’t! But the high expectations definitely encouraged us to perform at a higher level, even if we didn’t hit the initial goals.
Re: Reflections on my time in Y Combinator
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Re: Reflections on my time in Y Combinator
#9This was a great read, but after reading it and how the group got funded with just an idea and a mock-up that took 15 minutes to make would make me less likely to apply for YC in the future. Imagine you're building a business and put a lot of thought into the the product and start building it out. And you're basically getting the same deal as someone who just came up with an idea and wung the whole process?
Sure, you're investing in the person, but you either have the right experience or not. If you had the right experience and a product, you should probably look to bootstrap or other funding options.
A stat I read before is that 29% of the batch has just an idea while 10% had more than $50k of monthly revenue when accepted. Imagine being that guy that grinded to create a business that's generating a million a year and getting the same terms as some dude with just an idea and "the right experience"?
https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/meet-the-yc-winter-2022-bat...
Re: Reflections on my time in Y Combinator
#10This was a great read, but after reading it and how the group got funded with just an idea and a mock-up that took 15 minutes to make would make me less likely to apply for YC in the future. Imagine you're building a business and put a lot of thought into the the product and start building it out. And you're basically getting the same deal as someone who just came up with an idea and wung the whole process? Sure, you…
I understand the sentiment. The reason the mock-up was quick to create was because the entire thing was already done in my head. There were plenty of folks with very little experience and some with quite a bit of experience. I can’t say that I have any real idea what goes on in the minds of the folks making the decisions, but they do seem to pick an outsized number of winners. Whether we’re in that bucket or not remains to be seen.