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YC's Startup School Relaunching as Continuous Program

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: YC's Startup School Relaunching as Continuous Program

#51

Post by chrisaycock »

thomasrognon wrote: post #45
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…

I've been working on an enterprise SaaS startup and have the same challenges. Explaining a general purpose tool and new capabilities that no one has seen before is really daunting. I'd love to hear more about your experience and how it turned out, especially the sales side.

I was pretty bad at explaining Empirical in the beginning. During alpha testing, I emphasized the technical merits (statically typed Dataframes!) rather than an application domain. Once I figured-out I needed to push time-series analysis, then the user feedback became more focused.

After starting the public beta, I heard the following sentence several dozen times: "This looks amazing! Does it handle streaming?" And thus began the quest I am currently on.

About the only advice I can give is to keep practicing and keep an open mind. The feedback will get less negative the more you hone your pitch.

Re: YC's Startup School Relaunching as Continuous Program

#53

Post by Invictus0 »

benjaminjosephw wrote: post #34

Astounding strategic play from YC here. Start up School has become popular enough to be viable as a social network. Imagine a VC having a live and data rich directory of most investment hungry early stage tech startups where that startup has shared its progress from the earliest stages of its development. What an incredible advantage that is as a VC firm. Even though I love YC, I find that idea quite worrying. I've b…

The whole notion of startups is new ideas disrupting entrenched stalwarts. If it turns that there is a way to do things outside YC dogma, I'm sure a new VC will come along and disrupt them too.

Re: YC's Startup School Relaunching as Continuous Program

#54

Post by andrewnc »

chrisaycock wrote: post #51
thomasrognon wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been working on an enterprise SaaS startup and have the same challenges. Explaining a general purpose tool and new capabilities that no one has seen before is really daunting. I'd love to hear more about your experience and how it turned out, especially the sales side.

I was pretty bad at explaining Empirical in the beginning. During alpha testing, I emphasized the technical merits (statically typed Dataframes!) rather than an application domain. Once I figured-out I needed to push time-series analysis , then the user feedback became more focused. After starting the public beta, I heard the following sentence several dozen times: "This looks amazing! Does it handle streaming?" And…

Big fan of Empirical! I'm excited to continue following the development.

Do you have customers, or potential customers in the pipeline?

Re: YC's Startup School Relaunching as Continuous Program

#55

Post by chrisaycock »

andrewnc wrote: post #54
chrisaycock wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was pretty bad at explaining Empirical in the beginning. During alpha testing, I emphasized the technical merits (statically typed Dataframes!) rather than an application domain. Once I figured-out I needed to push time-series analysis , then the user feedback became more focused. After starting the public beta, I heard the following sentence several dozen times: "This looks amazing! Does it handle streaming?" And…

Big fan of Empirical! I'm excited to continue following the development. Do you have customers, or potential customers in the pipeline?

The business model I've eyed is to license to service providers, like securities brokers and data vendors in the finance industry. That way, their customers can execute queries in the cloud.

For example, a crypto broker wants their traders to write their own models. A stock-exchange advisor wants their asset managers to compute their own transaction costs. Etc.

Basically, Empirical will be a value-add component for existing customers of these larger providers. Instead of shuffling market data over the Internet, the user will "send the query to the data."

Every firm I've shown Empirical to has had the same word-for-word response that most end users have had: "Does it handle streaming?" I put the sales calls on hold while I try to get this done.

Re: YC's Startup School Relaunching as Continuous Program

#56

Post by verdverm »

benjaminjosephw wrote: post #34

Astounding strategic play from YC here. Start up School has become popular enough to be viable as a social network. Imagine a VC having a live and data rich directory of most investment hungry early stage tech startups where that startup has shared its progress from the earliest stages of its development. What an incredible advantage that is as a VC firm. Even though I love YC, I find that idea quite worrying. I've b…

I honestly like it far less now that it has been continuous for many months. Far less participation that made the semi annual so great. Probably leaving soon myself... it's been fun

Re: YC's Startup School Relaunching as Continuous Program

#57

Post by M5x7wI3CmbEem10 »

benjaminjosephw wrote: post #34

Astounding strategic play from YC here. Start up School has become popular enough to be viable as a social network. Imagine a VC having a live and data rich directory of most investment hungry early stage tech startups where that startup has shared its progress from the earliest stages of its development. What an incredible advantage that is as a VC firm. Even though I love YC, I find that idea quite worrying. I've b…

do you have any info on the Delaware vs your home state debate?

Re: YC's Startup School Relaunching as Continuous Program

#58

Post by brainless »

benjaminjosephw wrote: post #34

Astounding strategic play from YC here. Start up School has become popular enough to be viable as a social network. Imagine a VC having a live and data rich directory of most investment hungry early stage tech startups where that startup has shared its progress from the earliest stages of its development. What an incredible advantage that is as a VC firm. Even though I love YC, I find that idea quite worrying. I've b…

I really loved reading this. I am a veteran failure for lack of a better phrase and I am trying again. I have been in mental burn out for years primarily because I was chasing leaders.

After going through counseling, I figured I still want to build something and I want to gobble up advice, but I ponder on them and see if they fit my lifestyle.

I am nomadic now (Asia but could be anywhere) and want to stay indie (bootstrapped, perhaps angel investment). I can not give into the pressure that YC lectures sometime make me feel. I am happy and for the first time I am on a product where I just got two clients (first time in my life, 14 years professional experience).

Startup School has incredible value and I will take out what I need out of it. I will incorporate where I want and am happy if YC does not care. Find your own way, I know I want to.

Re: YC's Startup School Relaunching as Continuous Program

#59

Post by benjaminjosephw »

M5x7wI3CmbEem10 wrote: post #57
benjaminjosephw wrote: post #34

Astounding strategic play from YC here. Start up School has become popular enough to be viable as a social network. Imagine a VC having a live and data rich directory of most investment hungry early stage tech startups where that startup has shared its progress from the earliest stages of its development. What an incredible advantage that is as a VC firm. Even though I love YC, I find that idea quite worrying. I've b…

do you have any info on the Delaware vs your home state debate?

Should companies should be founded wherever the financial and legal friction is lowest or are there other important factors? What about the social responsibility a company has towards the community, city and even country that that company was created in?

I think there are a number of factors to consider here which will be specific to each individual context but just pointing out that the answer is only obvious if you've already decided what the important considerations are. VCs will always have a bias towards ruthless efficency but founders need to be more thoughtful. Not every decision is about the bottom line.

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