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…
To be fair, it is a 3mo batch. The better analogy would be a long business trip or on site project, not a remote vs. in office job.
Moreover, for better or worse, the all day every day work culture typical of venture-backed startups isn't really compatible with being a new parent etc. anyway.
I can't quite put my finger on it, but this announcement gives me bad vibes.
The number of people we are talking about as a percentage of CS like graduates is tiny. They aren’t kids either. It seems like a low risk experiment on both sides.
Paul Graham Essay and early YC: live your life, don’t start a company in your 20s. You are young only once. Post Paul Graham YC: reserve your YC spot now. There’s no downside!
Gives me weirdo Thiel vibes who pays (or used to pay) kids to drop out of college and start a company for him.
It seems kind of the opposite to me. YC is allowing you to finish school. You don't need to drop out.
Seems like a good thing for founders, doesn't force them to quit school to start a funded startup. Especially for under-privileged youths who might not be able to miss a high paying job opportunity or have no income for months.
Seems like a bad signal for YC though - if you aren't committed enough to quit school or at the very least reject job offers and do your startup anyway - feels like you might not be committed enough to do what it takes?
But if anyone does, YC knows how to pick founders with the right mindset.
Paul Graham Essay and early YC: live your life, don’t start a company in your 20s. You are young only once. Post Paul Graham YC: reserve your YC spot now. There’s no downside!
As startup valuations have gone up quickly and the YC offer largely remains the same, YC has naturally moved downmarket. They have gone from being an exclusive, premium product aimed at people who have a serious chance of building a unicorn to a finishing school for venture-backed entrepreneurs. In my opinion, this is a great thing for YC because it's a more natural fit for their main value proposition, but it also means that the best time to do modern YC is essentially straight out of school.
This is basically ensuring YC starts to get more absolute top graduates. Entrepreneurship is more and more seen as the default path for top people in the USA. All other career paths are for people that want to take the risk of ending up in a 50 year assembly line. This is probably good for society If you want to get rich by 30, you basically have to start a startup or get into a top small hedge fund out of undergrad.
Why is everyone equating "best and brightest" with "rich by 30"? Were Kernighan and Ritchie rich by 30?
I like how other than being triggered by the word rich fucks your reply has nothing to do with universities being remote or in person, just you bragging about personal accomplishments? I mean congratulations, but universities are still going to charge more by requiring you to go on location.
I was triggered because people rationalize why they fail because of “other people”. But the reason you fail has nothing to do with universities
Paul Graham Essay and early YC: live your life, don’t start a company in your 20s. You are young only once. Post Paul Graham YC: reserve your YC spot now. There’s no downside!
As startup valuations have gone up quickly and the YC offer largely remains the same, YC has naturally moved downmarket. They have gone from being an exclusive, premium product aimed at people who have a serious chance of building a unicorn to a finishing school for venture-backed entrepreneurs. In my opinion, this is a great thing for YC because it's a more natural fit for their main value proposition, but it also m…
I don't think this is a valuations vs. stagnant offer scenario. I think it has more to do with YC scaling up from dozens to hundreds and thousands of investments in a very competitive landscape. From a few early successes when no one was doing what they did, to having way more money to invest than there are good ideas and now it's spray & pray; trade on the YC name and with some luck hope there's a pay-off. If we start with the apocryphal "VCs look for 1 in 10 home runs", well the earliest YC classes only had like ten in a batch, so they had the time, energy and NEED to have a success. YC added a lot of partners who had a successful exit - or didn't - and surprise, they look like every other VC partner in the industry, at least minus the identical headshots in navy blue suits.
I can't quite put my finger on it, but this announcement gives me bad vibes.
I think a few things: Wanting to finish school is a negative signal. Also > Also we know that many students spend a lot of time in Fall or during their final year applying for jobs or internships. Early Decision gives students another option: apply to YC and bet on yourself. So now YC is an alternative to searching and apply for jobs? I think if you're marginal on trying to find a corporate job or starting something,…