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YC Fellowship

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: YC Fellowship

#321

Post by sandGorgon »

I'm not sure about the US, but in India this would be huge. The early stage ecosystem is fairly broken, but the startup scene is crazy hot - everyone is doing a startup and the talent pool is huge.

Early stage investors put around 20-50K USD and take 30% of equity (yes equity - convertible notes are shunned in India).

A USD 12K grant and the YC cred, would go a long way in rebalancing the ecosystem.

I personally believe that early stage pre-prototype money is so easy in the US... or the Kickstarter ecosystem is so effective (cant do a kickstarter from India).... or the university aided startup infrastructure is so mature, that this would not materially impact as many people as it would in India/Asia.

Re: YC Fellowship

#322

Post by trent09 »

sandGorgon wrote: post #321

I'm not sure about the US, but in India this would be huge. The early stage ecosystem is fairly broken, but the startup scene is crazy hot - everyone is doing a startup and the talent pool is huge. Early stage investors put around 20-50K USD and take 30% of equity (yes equity - convertible notes are shunned in India). A USD 12K grant and the YC cred, would go a long way in rebalancing the ecosystem. I personally beli…

I was thinking the same thing as I read the post. This would be huge in Nigeria and other African countries. I'm rooting for this to be a success.

Re: YC Fellowship

#323

Post by tjculbertson »

kapitalx wrote: post #228
TheMakeA wrote: post #4

This seems really close to what YC started as. Why the spinoff?

I think as the popularity and # of applications of YC has increase over the years, YC has naturally leaned towards startups who were further along. This way they can make that shift official without losing the original vision of YC.

I like this idea. But I agree, it's a problem and this is probably one reason for experimenting with this. It sounds like the number of apps are already crazy, so not sure how YC will be able to sort through them all with more than a crap shoot probability of success.

According the PG, the big ideas are not obvious at first, so how can you make good decisions on so many ideas in so little time? Probably YC is going to filter the apps through 1-2K YC founders or something and then have a score sheet, silos of expertise, etc. Basically selection by committee.

Though I like the concept, I am skeptical of the judging, as well as the sheer number of apps coming in worldwide - too much white noise which hurts the ability of the many US based startups trying to get a seat at the table.

Re: YC Fellowship

#324

Post by mikekchar »

hbhakhra wrote: post #113
tstactplsignore wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you feel about teams with a year of college left?

As Sam said, take a semester off. I did that during college just for some personal exploration and its one of the best decisions I ever made. Once you get started with work, taking a 6 month break is MUCH harder - aka it'll never be this easy to get time off again.

If you work for startups taking time off is not hard at all! Startups fail all the time and it is an ideal time to take 6 months off. There is a bit of a stigma to taking too much time off between jobs, but if you can show that you actually built something during that time, it isn't hard to overcome. I even took off 8 months after I quit a job to write free software. I simply showed prospective companies the code I wrote during that time.

The main thing is to save money while you are working! It gives you freedom.

Re: YC Fellowship

#325

Post by dschiptsov »

IsaacL wrote: post #304
dschiptsov wrote: post #297

BTW, there are places, like Nepal, where $12k could buy a lot more for a team. Kathmandu could be a hub for backpacker coders and small teams. It is an ideal place for coding camps and sprints - rentals are cheap. Also it is an education hub of a small country, so there is no shortage of English speaking CS students. Nepal needs new visitors after earthquake.

I'm in Chiang Mai, Thailand right now, and $12k would also go a lot further here. Maybe I'll look at Nepal next, and it would be interesting both for personal adventure and to help the local economy recover... but what puts me off is the internet speed - how fast is it out there?

It is rather slow, due to limited bandwidth (Hymalayas) and lots of customers, but it is good-enough for web, git and ssh.)

Re: YC Fellowship

#326

Post by Schwolop »

hazzajay wrote: post #305
Schwolop wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any plans to do a normal YC program (7%/$120k) but also be inclusive of remote teams? 0% for $12k is obviously a great deal, but my main stumbling block has always been the loss of income from dropping paid work, and $12k over two months is barely half an engineer's salary - let alone to cover multiple team members. That said, it may well be enough to make someone like me think "well, at least I won't be ea…

You aren't "earning 12K" you are using that 12K to kick start your idea.

Ok, rephrase that as "at least I'm only losing 80% of my salary instead of 100%".

Plenty of people who could create great things are also saddled with families and expenses that run to 80+% of their disposable incomes. It's all well and good to suggest that an individual can live on ramen noodles, but a family and young children cannot and should not have to. That leaves only a few options left for such people to start a company: do it on the side in evenings/weekends; and save up a nest egg then quit/reduce your job to work on the startup.

Suggesting that willingness to forgo having a family is a pre-requisite for entrepreneurship is fallacious.

Re: YC Fellowship

#328

Post by Tunecrew »

A silly question, but do you have exact dates for kickoff, etc? This is both awesome and serendipitous, but I have a family wedding in roughly mid-September :)

Re: YC Fellowship

#330

Post by meteor »

$12k might not seem to be a lot of money for many. But, from the place where I come from(India) it really means a lot. We are a team of two at concept stage. We have around $20k in savings. Assuming a worst case that we don't make any revenue for an year, we would need an other $30k for our runway. I was thinking about raising this money from F&F round. But now, applying to YC seems to make more sense to me. Though the money will not cover our expenses for an year, I am excited about the acquaintance we will be gaining through this program.
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