Earlier quoted context omitted.
$20K is a LOT of money. You can form an LLC for a hundred bucks, lease a server for another hundred, and do your own graphic design at the outset (or hire a student for a couple of hundred). To hire a sales guy, just use the money from all the sales that are taking up so much of your time you need to hire someone else to handle them. That comes a little bit later...
$20K is NOT a lot of money. Consider that hiring anybody will cost you at least $40K/year. Hiring a senior level programmer will cost you $130-180K/year (counting his salary, benefits, taxes, accounting, work place).
Applications Open for Winter 2012 YC Funding
121–126 of 126 posts
Re: Applications Open for Winter 2012 YC Funding
#122How do people start up with less than $20K? That's barely enough to cover basic icorporation + lawyer + equipment + website graphic design. If you need to hire somebody professional (like sales guys), what do you do?
Re: Applications Open for Winter 2012 YC Funding
#123From this thread, it almost seems that a founder dating section of HN would be pretty beneficial to a lot of people. Granted, there are already too many find-a-cofounder sites out there, but the caliber of people and ability to see the past posting history of a potential cofounder on HN seems to be potentially valuable.
Re: Applications Open for Winter 2012 YC Funding
#124I started looking for a cofounder about a month ago. I am not sure if I will find one by October 31st but the search is on. How is this evaluated on the application? Also, there was a recent clarification by the USCIS that a H1-B visa holder can work for his/her own company. Is YC cognizant of this and can it help the visa holder jump through any hoops (legal or otherwise) to be a H1-B start-up founder?
Do you have a link to this USCIS clarification?
Re: Applications Open for Winter 2012 YC Funding
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Do most YC company founders go in debt / use savings / use most of the YC money, to cover personal expenses while they do this? For us Yuri and SV money investments covered everything and gave us enough to stash.
If you feel comfortable doing so, can you share what additional percentage of equity you traded for the additional investment. (A range is fine)
Re: Applications Open for Winter 2012 YC Funding
#126We are already a registered Ltd company in the UK, is this going to cause problems? I understand you must incorporate in the USA.