YC's Startup School Relaunching as Continuous Program • Hacker News Board

Re: YC's Startup School Relaunching as Continuous Program

#21

Post by zomglings » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 5:53 PM UTC

thecupisblue wrote: post #18

This seems mostly aimed at SaaS/Uber4X type of startups where you can bootstrap an MVP in a weekend and have a customer by the next one. Where's the content for startups doing innovative stuff in the long run?

Have gone through startup school, and it is not at all how it seems to you.

We met companies that were making hardware and companies that had been building complicated enterprise products for years. I don't think we met a single MVP in a weekend type of company.

All in all, a valuable experience - at the very least it gives you access to a bunch of nice deals (AWS, GCP credits and the like).

Re: YC's Startup School Relaunching as Continuous Program

#22

Post by vikramkr » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 5:55 PM UTC

thecupisblue wrote: post #18

This seems mostly aimed at SaaS/Uber4X type of startups where you can bootstrap an MVP in a weekend and have a customer by the next one. Where's the content for startups doing innovative stuff in the long run?

Having gone through SUS/winning a grant with a biotech, I'll say the style of thinking and the community/accountability was universally applicable. Getting to the killer experiment as quickly as possible to have a solid foundation to build on/raise money off of is a very similar and useful style of thinking to get an MVP launched asap. The more tactical content was sorely lacking for biotechs/hartechs/moonshots though. For bio and hardware, it would have been nice to have some co tent specifically around challenges with capital raising/capital efficiency, how to think about designing experiments. Maybe for hardware, a how to do kickstarter lecture (since there were some very granular tactical software lectures), and maybe a lecture on how to manage a supply chain/inventory. For moonshots, I dont know if theres a playbook that applies since by definition they're very different, but perhaps similar themes to biotech of how do you derisk as quickly as possible. Hopefully theres an opportunity to add content along those lines as they build out the next gen of SUS

Re: YC's Startup School Relaunching as Continuous Program

#23

Post by thecupisblue » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 6:04 PM UTC

iheartblocks wrote: post #19

thecupisblue wrote: post #18

This seems mostly aimed at SaaS/Uber4X type of startups where you can bootstrap an MVP in a weekend and have a customer by the next one. Where's the content for startups doing innovative stuff in the long run?

What gave you the impression that that was the focus?

That in 8 weeks you have to watch all the curriculum content - it seems like the focus is to go through the content and launch/be ready to launch/find customers. But the other comments prove me wrong, it seemed like that from the FAQ :)

Re: YC's Startup School Relaunching as Continuous Program

#24

Post by thecupisblue » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 6:06 PM UTC

vikramkr wrote: post #22

thecupisblue wrote: post #18

This seems mostly aimed at SaaS/Uber4X type of startups where you can bootstrap an MVP in a weekend and have a customer by the next one. Where's the content for startups doing innovative stuff in the long run?

Having gone through SUS/winning a grant with a biotech, I'll say the style of thinking and the community/accountability was universally applicable. Getting to the killer experiment as quickly as possible to have a solid foundation to build on/raise money off of is a very similar and useful style of thinking to get an MVP launched asap. The more tactical content was sorely lacking for biotechs/hartechs/moonshots thoug…

Thanks for the experience, your post is encouraging, might apply! The lack of "more tactical content" is what I noticed and that is what caused me to have that kind of a perspective at this being aimed at quicker-moving startups.

Re: YC's Startup School Relaunching as Continuous Program

#25

Post by joshgachnang » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 6:09 PM UTC

andy_ppp wrote: post #6

I was in the first version of the MOOC and it was better for me meeting the same people over the duration of the time (currently I believe you interact with different groups each time?). I found it both interesting seeing how people had evolved during the programme as well as not wanting to let people down by being late or not attending. I would suggest using some kind of Karma to improve the experience while still k…

I've done Startup School for the past two iterations. I really enjoyed meeting so many random founders in each meeting, but we spent more than half of the meetings just getting to know each other. Some of my meetings had 7 teams! And then the next week, you wind up with new founders and you do it all over again. As time went on, I got less and less from the group meeting, where they were my favorite part at the start. Having the same group over and over would be fabulous, since we could really talk about what we did last week, whether we did it, what's up for next week, continuing talk about issues we're having, etc.

Re: YC's Startup School Relaunching as Continuous Program

#26

Post by vikramkr » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 6:26 PM UTC

thecupisblue wrote: post #24

vikramkr wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having gone through SUS/winning a grant with a biotech, I'll say the style of thinking and the community/accountability was universally applicable. Getting to the killer experiment as quickly as possible to have a solid foundation to build on/raise money off of is a very similar and useful style of thinking to get an MVP launched asap. The more tactical content was sorely lacking for biotechs/hartechs/moonshots thoug…

Thanks for the experience, your post is encouraging, might apply! The lack of "more tactical content" is what I noticed and that is what caused me to have that kind of a perspective at this being aimed at quicker-moving startups.

It's not an application anymore I dont think, it's more of a just sign up to participate, but you have to actually participate to get the benefits sort of thing

Re: YC's Startup School Relaunching as Continuous Program

#27

Post by josh_t » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 6:41 PM UTC

Really excited to see this being offered as a continuous program. I’ve participated in and followed SUS since its launch and I can’t recommend this program enough!

I’m particularly interested in the addition of streaks as a way to increase accountability and unlock additional opportunities, have you considered further gamifying the program with similar metrics?

Re: YC's Startup School Relaunching as Continuous Program

#28

Post by vikramkr » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 6:46 PM UTC

chrisaycock wrote: post #16

I did Startup School in 2018 and was one of the inaugural grant winners. The program was extremely helpful for getting me through to the launch. My product is a moonshot sold to enterprises , so it took an enormous amount of work upfront to get something into users' hands. The accountability of a cohort was critical for the lonely days of coding something that is both ambiguous and ambitious. Also, constantly being f…

Seconded. Was also one of the grant winners as a biotech, and went through it again later mainly for the practice in pitching/ability to connect with the local startup ecosystem. I actually liked that in the second run through, there were not that many other biotech startups, it was nice to have a community of diverse companies (both in terms of fields and to an extent founders, since I think the cohort was a lot more diverse than the startup space as a whole), and I actually particularly enjoyed one of the group sessions where I somehow ended up grouped with companies in Chile. I wish there was a "don't group me with similar companies" option since it was almost more interesting and more useful to have a conversation with a Chilean legal tech company and learn about how they approach problems they face than talk to another biotech. It was a really interesting experience, and the deals weren't that bad either.

Re: YC's Startup School Relaunching as Continuous Program

#29

Post by vikramkr » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 6:49 PM UTC

joshgachnang wrote: post #25

andy_ppp wrote: post #6

I was in the first version of the MOOC and it was better for me meeting the same people over the duration of the time (currently I believe you interact with different groups each time?). I found it both interesting seeing how people had evolved during the programme as well as not wanting to let people down by being late or not attending. I would suggest using some kind of Karma to improve the experience while still k…

I've done Startup School for the past two iterations. I really enjoyed meeting so many random founders in each meeting, but we spent more than half of the meetings just getting to know each other. Some of my meetings had 7 teams! And then the next week, you wind up with new founders and you do it all over again. As time went on, I got less and less from the group meeting, where they were my favorite part at the start…

I'm torn on this a bit since I enjoyed having to practice pitching concisely to new companies outside of biotech to improve that aspect, and to get new perspectives on problems from different people, but I also did enjoy the times that we accidentally (or deliberately?) got regrouped with companies from the prior week and could catch up on progress made. Both have their place and their use, but some level of deeper relationships (as built in the first version that I went through when there were set cohorts) are definitely lacking in the current iterations. Part of it might be taking initiative to stay in touch on your own I guess.

Re: YC's Startup School Relaunching as Continuous Program

#30

Post by catherynl » Wed, Jun 17, 2020, 6:56 PM UTC

blhack wrote: post #8

Awesome news. If you haven't done startup school, I'd highly recommend it. We got paired with lots of people from our local city (which surprised me since I didn't know there was this much activity around here). Seriously startup school is great. Cannot recommend participating enough. And also: do it no matter what stage you are at. Full disclosure: the project that our team was working has been put on hold by us[1]…

So happy to hear you had a great experience! We've added a new concept of "company stage" to improve the relevance of curriculum content and group session matches, hopefully that will make your point of "do it no matter what stage you are at" even more true. :)