21–30 of 34 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> As though formal training will help you make the hard decisions you face as a founder. Formal training means a way to structure your thoughts and assess risks. Don't dismiss it out of hand.
Point taken. Education is of course a valuable thing - but a year's worth of instruction on entrepreneurship after you've already got a degree?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why not? If someone has a degree in something technical I could imagine following a curriculum consisting partly of corporate finance management, fundraising, HR and other corporate issues for a year could be valuable, especially if they offer night classes or something like that so that you can still be working on your main idea. Most college new grads are not exactly CEO material from the get-go.
I would assert that a recent graduate who wants to be an entrepreneur is mostly doing themselves a disservice by studying those things. It focuses your thoughts on how to run a business rather than how to solve a problem or turn an industry on its head. Sure, many of those things could come in handy in the future - but there are far more difficult things which you also have to learn "as you go".
Lots of people just want to be their own boss and run a viable business.
Like, spending four days and $4000 to have a dozen short conversations with Anna Salamon is probably a good buy. It's rather hard to evaluate, since you're getting things that are difficult to buy with money.
I don't have any experience with YC, but I imagine that it's a similar sort of deal - especially since I've heard that they focus on community-building.
A not-so-obvious excerpt I took away is this... >Before joining YC, I had been working on my startup for 6 months and a few of my customers were YC companies. I think most people are aware that the startup market is quickly growing, and it is not what the author suggested by any means, but I think entire startups can be created to cater to the startup market...in fact YC is probably so large that a startup could prob…
Funny enough, there's a YC-funded company that does exactly that: https://www.clerky.com The list of customers on their homepage is mostly YC companies.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why not? If someone has a degree in something technical I could imagine following a curriculum consisting partly of corporate finance management, fundraising, HR and other corporate issues for a year could be valuable, especially if they offer night classes or something like that so that you can still be working on your main idea. Most college new grads are not exactly CEO material from the get-go.
I would assert that a recent graduate who wants to be an entrepreneur is mostly doing themselves a disservice by studying those things. It focuses your thoughts on how to run a business rather than how to solve a problem or turn an industry on its head. Sure, many of those things could come in handy in the future - but there are far more difficult things which you also have to learn "as you go".
>YC is at its core a group of great people. Correct me if I'm wrong but I actually thought that was the obvious reason to most applicants. A $120k investment from YC doesn't provide that much runway. That kind of money doesn't give much wiggle room for founders to splurge on luxuries like Aeron chairs and fancy cappuccino machines. That amount is to allow a small team to live in near-poverty in the SF Bay area for ~6…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would suspect that this is non-obvious to people who view YC as a structured, semi-guaranteed route to success, the way many people view a degree from a prestigious university. I know many people who are 'interested' in startups and crave some kind of validation that they are a real entrepreneur before sinking their teeth in. My university even offers a 1 year diploma in entrepreneurship. Madness! As though formal…
> My university even offers a 1 year diploma in entrepreneurship. Wouldn't it be cheaper and more educational to just launch a side-business and keep it running for a year?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ehhhh... Aren't there syndicates standing ready with millions for every YC startup on Demo Day? I think YC acceptance is worth at least 10 million in funding.
That's... not true. I may have missed sarcasm here, but do you really think every company at demo day gets $10 mil?
>YC is at its core a group of great people. Correct me if I'm wrong but I actually thought that was the obvious reason to most applicants. A $120k investment from YC doesn't provide that much runway. That kind of money doesn't give much wiggle room for founders to splurge on luxuries like Aeron chairs and fancy cappuccino machines. That amount is to allow a small team to live in near-poverty in the SF Bay area for ~6…
I would suspect that this is non-obvious to people who view YC as a structured, semi-guaranteed route to success, the way many people view a degree from a prestigious university. I know many people who are 'interested' in startups and crave some kind of validation that they are a real entrepreneur before sinking their teeth in. My university even offers a 1 year diploma in entrepreneurship. Madness! As though formal…
(This radar often goes off when I hear someone refer to YCombinator as 'the Harvard of Incubators.')
I think to be a great founder you have to not only know how to handle failure, but to also be OK with everyone dismissing your venture as a failure, as something even laughable.