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How YC Has Changed

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: How YC Has Changed

#31

Post by mwseibel »

zackmorris wrote: post #29

Hey it's Friday and I always wanted to ask: what do the people at YC think about bringing back some kind of smaller-scale investment for a larger number of applicants? There was a time in my life after I graduated in college in '99, after the dot bomb, before the housing bomb, before YC, when I could have made just about any app/website in 6 months for $10,000. I wasn't driven by money, I just needed basic living exp…

That is what we are doing in Startup School - https://blog.ycombinator.com/announcing-startup-school-2018/

Re: How YC Has Changed

#32

Post by resu_nimda »

andygcook wrote: post #10

Surprised Stripe didn't explicitly make the list of notable startups from over the years. Bigger than even Dropbox by valuation (obviously not apples to apples vs. public market cap) and arguably has had a bigger positive impact on the world than any other YC startup by actively increasing the GDP of the internet.

Seems like kind of a weird thing to really take note of, but it wasn't just a general list, both parts had criteria that exclude Stripe ("household name" [i.e. consumer brand] and "funded in the last five years," respectively).

Re: How YC Has Changed

#33

Post by fahimulhaq »

andygcook wrote: post #10

Surprised Stripe didn't explicitly make the list of notable startups from over the years. Bigger than even Dropbox by valuation (obviously not apples to apples vs. public market cap) and arguably has had a bigger positive impact on the world than any other YC startup by actively increasing the GDP of the internet.

It's probably because Stripe didn't go through the traditional YC program.

"What’s interesting is that unlike 99% of YC companies, Stripe didn’t actually go through the standard startup bootcamp process. Patrick had already been through it once and didn’t feel the need to do it again. The amount YC invested was in the $20k-$30k range." [1]

[1]: https://www.startupgrind.com/blog/the-collison-brothers-and-...

Re: How YC Has Changed

#34

Post by notadog »

Retric wrote: post #30
zackmorris wrote: post #29

Hey it's Friday and I always wanted to ask: what do the people at YC think about bringing back some kind of smaller-scale investment for a larger number of applicants? There was a time in my life after I graduated in college in '99, after the dot bomb, before the housing bomb, before YC, when I could have made just about any app/website in 6 months for $10,000. I wasn't driven by money, I just needed basic living exp…

I suspect it costs them ~10,000$ to hand out XX,000$. If nothing else they want some due diligence to avoid harming their brand. On top of that 10,000¥ in 2019 does not go as far.

> I suspect it costs them ~10,000$ to hand out XX,000$. If nothing else they want some due diligence to avoid harming their brand. On top of that 10,000¥ in 2019 does not go as far.

10,000 yen is only $87.96, so I expect not. :P

Re: How YC Has Changed

#35

Post by Balgair »

koolba wrote: post #18

> In 2007, if you had a B2B startup, you had to reach out cold to potential customers. Now there are over 1000 YC companies you can sell your service to and all of their contact information is in Bookface. As a result, YC alumni companies are often over 50% of your new sales during YC. This alone would be an interesting angle if you consider the equity given to YC purely marketing and sales spend.

Network Effects, cool!

I get this vibe of FB back when you could connect to people just in your classes. I mean, if corporations are people, then they should have their own version of FB, right? =P

Re: How YC Has Changed

#36

Post by mbesto »

andygcook wrote: post #10

Surprised Stripe didn't explicitly make the list of notable startups from over the years. Bigger than even Dropbox by valuation (obviously not apples to apples vs. public market cap) and arguably has had a bigger positive impact on the world than any other YC startup by actively increasing the GDP of the internet.

> YC startup by actively increasing the GDP of the internet

Sorry, but what does this actually mean? Before Stripe existed, you most certainly could process a payment online, so why would Stripe's existence increase the overall market for goods and services online?

Re: How YC Has Changed

#37

Post by jedberg »

I've been going to Demo Day off and on since 2007, and one big thing I've noticed is a change in who gets accepted. I see a lot more "sure bets" and a lot fewer "long shots". When I go to demo day now, I see a lot of companies that are fairly interesting, founded by an amazing team with a lot of accolades and/or exits or previous experience, and most of the companies have already launched and have revenue.

What I don't see a lot of anymore are two people who just finished college (or maybe they didn't even finish yet) working on something that could be amazing or a spectacular failure, who haven't launched yet or have no revenue yet. Look at Dropbox, reddit, and even your own startup, JTV, which of course morphed into Twitch. All of them founded by guys just out of college, all of them now worth over a billion dollars (and unless I'm mistaken, all of them pre-revenue at demo day). And while AirBnB was started by guys who had a couple of years work experience, they didn't have much experience with running a company or anything other than a few years working in industry (and of course also worth well into the billions).

It feels like for the most part the risk analysis has shifted from "a couple of folks just out of college with an amazing idea" to "a couple of folks with a proven entrepreneurial track record and an amazing idea".

I'm not saying it's good or bad, but it's definitely different.

Re: How YC Has Changed

#38

Post by threeseed »

anupgosavi111 wrote: post #4

As you have scaled other things, can't you scale feedback for companies? Atleast, for what you consider top 10% or so? We applied last batch and got a question around a competitor that had just gotten funding. Not sure if that was the reason of the reject.

This documents a lot of the mistakes startups make when applying to YC:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yiOcCPvyNE

Re: How YC Has Changed

#39

Post by threeseed »

NkenuTimothy wrote: post #9

Interesting. Personalized rejections (one worded statements given the quantity of applications) would be great.

Something that might scale better is just having a rating out of 5 for each of the different areas e.g. team, progress to date, risk, potential reward, quality of idea etc.

At least it would allow them to focus on specific areas.

Re: How YC Has Changed

#40

Post by mwseibel »

jedberg wrote: post #37

I've been going to Demo Day off and on since 2007, and one big thing I've noticed is a change in who gets accepted. I see a lot more "sure bets" and a lot fewer "long shots". When I go to demo day now, I see a lot of companies that are fairly interesting, founded by an amazing team with a lot of accolades and/or exits or previous experience, and most of the companies have already launched and have revenue. What I don…

We still fund a lot of young early stage founders. I think there are two things that make them stand out less on Demo Day. First, batches are much larger and the average age of the batch has increased. Second, these founders are much less likely to be starting consumer startups and therefore they blend in better with the other startups.

Another important change over the past 10 years is that many talented young potential founders are being vacuumed up by the big tech companies once they graduate from college (or before in college internship programs). Essentially, the big companies are pre-hiring their future competition. The combination of these actions and the strangling of distribution channels (messaging, social networking, and email) is preventing consumer startups from getting a foothold. And by and large young founder tend to be attracted to consumer startups.

We are doing a number of things to counteract the recruiting efforts of big companies including YC Early Decision: https://blog.ycombinator.com/early-decision/ and YC Startup School: https://www.startupschool.org.

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