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Do YC after you graduate: Early decision for students

ycombinator.com

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Re: Do YC after you graduate: Early decision for students

#101

Post by neilv »

yaacov wrote: post #91
neilv wrote: post #44

If the funding is available immediately (not just an immediate commitment for funding once they start a batch), would it address the following problem I've run into a few times? In the last year alone, I've had to bow out of co-founding two promising startups with good biz co-founders, because first-year MBA students wanted to finish their degree before they sought funding. Two ways funding could help: 1. I couldn't…

If your cofounder isn’t full time, that’s not your cofounder. That’s a part time contractor who owns 50% of your company.

Mostly I agree. But I also think that someone who is very good, and in a very good MBA program, can do their share of contributions, iff they're committed fully to the startup upon graduation.

But if the follow-through doesn't happen, then the whole thing was probably a huge waste for non-MBA-student co-founders. (Unless those co-founders weren't really committed themselves.)

Re: Do YC after you graduate: Early decision for students

#102

Post by dang »

_--__--__ wrote: post #17
cassonmars wrote: post #3

Does YC ever intend to revisit doing remote batches again? There's many founders in the country who are just as driven and motivated, but have real-world situations that cannot allow uprooting themselves for several months, two very common ones: - new parents - disabled family members, or are themselves physically disabled The discourse on Hacker News has frequently chastised companies demanding RTO, and some of the…

People in those situations can and should start companies without an accelerator (or at least without this one). The joke around the SF scene is that even a founder with a boy/girlfriend is a sign of a startup doomed to fail, and YC doesn't seem particularly invested in changing that culture.

This doesn't resemble anything I've ever heard at YC in the many years I've been here. People don't think or talk that way at all...they're far more normal and decent than that.

Re: Do YC after you graduate: Early decision for students

#103

Post by user_7832 »

repeekad wrote: post #82
snowmaker wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We might, and I'm sure you're right that there are many great founders not applying to do YC because they don't want to move here. But I think it would be a better analogy to compare YC to a university, rather than to a company. It's true that many companies operate remotely very effectively. But essentially zero universities have stayed remote since the early days of the pandemic.

There are plenty of remote schools, always have been, they’re just lower quality and solve a different problem than traditional in person university

I agree, to add on - I think places like Open University are absolutely fantastic for folks who want to learn but have other "real world" responsibilities. The last time I heard a out OU was when a new parent was happy having being able to get a degree from there (while I think studying at night).

Re: Do YC after you graduate: Early decision for students

#104

Post by cde-v »

dang wrote: post #75
cde-v wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% at this point. The industry's leading AI for start-up ideas has run out of AI for _____ suggestions. It was pretty obvious they were scraping the bottom of the barrel a month ago when I made this list from their current batch: Acrely — AI for HVAC administration Aden — AI for ERP operations AgentHub — AI for agent simulation and evaluation Agentin AI — AI for enterprise agents AgentMail — AI for agent email infr…

Please don't spam the threads with massive lists. It's enough to link to the information. I'm not sure what this is supposed to show, other than that YC funds a lot of startups and a lot of them are working in AI, which is what you'd expect during any major tech wave. In fact, YC funds so many startups that your list is actually misleadingly short, unless you meant to argue that AI startups are a low percentage.

You should create a startup based around an AI for collapsing lists if clicking [-] is too difficult and they are so annoying.

110 of those were from their summer 2025 batch of 170, so your statement is actually misleading unless you meant to argue that 65% is a low percentage.

Re: Do YC after you graduate: Early decision for students

#105

Post by dcreater »

mikert89 wrote: post #35
dcreater wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For people who took a second to get this (like me), @fijiaarone means it is. And I concur - in this AI hypecycle more than ever it seems to be about how can peacock the best. Its neck and neck with the crypto hypecycle a few years ago for the incidence rate of vaporware and snake oil. Sure there are some legit founders building meaningful product but they seem to be a small minority.

dude we just invented computers you can talk to

yeah and its amazing, that doesnt mean you dont have charlatans, hucksters, hustlers, opportunists etc. come for the gold rush. In fact, you should expect them to

Re: Do YC after you graduate: Early decision for students

#106

Post by raspasov »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #100
raspasov wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's all about the opportunity cost. There are always assumptions that need to be made, but it will be hard to argue that lottery tickets are better than startups. I don't think they are. A more useful comparison would be a serious statistical analysis between startups and other occupations.

I am not spending years of my life trading money for lottery tickets, startups are worse than lottery tickets

I said "serious".

Re: Do YC after you graduate: Early decision for students

#107

Post by raspasov »

__loam wrote: post #81
deadbabe wrote: post #76

I think this is oddly predatory, and sends the wrong idea to graduating students who have not even entered the real world. There is no need to rush to get into YC, and it would help to get actual experience in a job before setting out to build a whole company.

Putting inexperienced kids with good credentials who are amenable to listening to a board in charge of these things is part of the yc business model.

YC doesn't take board seats.

edit: removed snarky attack

Re: Do YC after you graduate: Early decision for students

#108

Post by in_cahoots »

koolba wrote: post #92
bix6 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More than 50% of companies are still alive after 10 years I’d rather have a 50% chance at my own startup being alive after 10 years than go work some big corp job.

If you work for 10 years in big tech and save your money, you’d have enough for a lifetime of chasing startup ideas.

This is the part I think young people don't understand. My husband and I worked around 16 years combined in tech. We started pretty late, since we both have PhDs, and we're not engineers so we aren't making top of the market. We still had enough money after that time to buy a house, have 2 kids and go on a multi-year sabbatical. And most of this working period was not at FAANGs.

If you're young, talented, single and bringing home $200k a year including RSUs, you are on track to basically do whatever you want in a decade. Make it to senior manager / Staff level and you should be clearing $400k a year at least. And if you do it smartly you're working 9-5, not some 996 bullshit. That's a ridiculous amount of money.

It's not as sexy as building a startup. But at least for me the ROI has been incredible. And I'm not super smart- my whole college career I looked down at people who spent their lives in front of a computer. I completely missed the trend of tech and Silicon Valley, and I definitely don't work any harder than the next guy. But if you do good work I've found that it tends to pay off.

Re: Do YC after you graduate: Early decision for students

#109

Post by nivertech »

neilv wrote: post #101
yaacov wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your cofounder isn’t full time, that’s not your cofounder. That’s a part time contractor who owns 50% of your company.

Mostly I agree. But I also think that someone who is very good, and in a very good MBA program, can do their share of contributions, iff they're committed fully to the startup upon graduation. But if the follow-through doesn't happen, then the whole thing was probably a huge waste for non-MBA-student co-founders. (Unless those co-founders weren't really committed themselves.)

Maybe a 18-24 months cliff would solve it?

Re: Do YC after you graduate: Early decision for students

#110

Post by tomhow »

raspasov wrote: post #107
__loam wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putting inexperienced kids with good credentials who are amenable to listening to a board in charge of these things is part of the yc business model.

YC doesn't take board seats. edit: removed snarky attack

> You don't know what you're talking about.

Please don’t comment like this on HN. Your point would carry more weight without the snarky personal attack.

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