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So you didn’t get a YC invite, what next?

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Re: So you didn’t get a YC invite, what next?

#51

Post by BSousa »

riteshpatel wrote: post #18
robertandy wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree! The entire process is rigged against solo-founders and you CANNOT deny that fact. Even your own last sentence in the end contradicts you. > why don't you get a cofounder. Dude what about this: I don't want to marry. I do not want to own a house. I do not want a co-founder.

The reason single co-founder companies are less likely to be accepted is that, once you start to get to a certain scale, there's just FAR too much work for one person to do. We're already experiencing this. There are two of us and we need an extra 24 hours in the day to get everything done. Get a co-founder if at all possible, it'll save your sanity.

The idea is to hire as you grow. You can be one founder or 10, at a point, you hire for what you need.

I do agree with GP a bit on the solo founder. Here is the thing, I have enough contacts in the industry that if I wanted, I could form a very good team if I had the money to pay them (thus, the idea of getting investment money as a solo founder), but none of those people would agree to be co-founders as they know the chance of striking it big are very very small and they can clear very very good salaries as employees. Sure, if you are 22 and have a few friends just graduating at the same age, you will find co-founders, but if you are 35+, have 15 or more years under your belt, and most of your network as well, they won't leave very high paid jobs to be co-founders, and honestly, after working with them and knowing what they are capable, I wouldn't want a 22 fresh graduate as a co-founder either (unless he was truly exceptional)

Re: So you didn’t get a YC invite, what next?

#52

Post by richardbrevig »

neonbat wrote: post #45

A lot of the rejected companies are confused as to why they didn't get into YC or are behaving as if it's some great mystery. Looking at some of their websites though it kind of seems like they just didn't read Paul's essays. If I can't visit your website and immediately understand your business that is a red flag. People are always fancy-fying and abstracting the descriptions of their businesses. Most of the busines…

I love your apple/fruit example. This is a major problem I see in many startups, their unique value proposition is absolutely confusing. It's hard to get right, but is a very important step for a web business these days.

Re: So you didn’t get a YC invite, what next?

#53

Post by aliakhtar »

Frondo wrote: post #36
aliakhtar wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fact that you are so adamant about not wanting a co-founder is detrimental in that it signals that you are missing the point about how a company is mostly about building a good team that can execute I disagree. Having a team of employees is quite different from giving up 50% of your equity. Its been said by YC partners themselves that co-founder disputes are a major reason why startups fail. A co-founder just m…

Simply put: being able to build the product is less than half of building a business. If you can make the product, market it, keep your customers happy, continue to improve it as competitors spring up, build partnerships, and take care of the day-to-day of running a business, all on your own, then great. You could probably also make a fortune selling the device that's giving you an extra 100 hours in a week.

When it gets to that point, you can take on employees.

Re: So you didn’t get a YC invite, what next?

#54

Post by joelrunyon »

mpdehaan2 wrote: post #30

I never even thought to apply. Why? The San Francisco requirement was against my ideals that tech exists everywhere, and that's not how I wanted to build a company. More so, the stake they required relative to funding was pretty huge. I would now, to a degree, put YCombinator kind of in the same vein as Shark Tank in outside perceptions - allegedly that show takes 3% of your company whether you get a deal or not. Cle…

> llegedly that show takes 3% of your company whether you get a deal or not.

I think this was the deal in season 2. Cuban made them change it though & they fixed everything retroactively as he argued it would push away quality deals.

Re: So you didn’t get a YC invite, what next?

#55

Post by robertandy »

quadrature wrote: post #44
robertandy wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> usually fail because they are bad at convincing anyone of anything. Without any data on usually vs. unusually a debate is lost anyway! FWIS there are enough stories of successes from solo-founders to contradict your theory - flat on its face. > can't even convince one more person to join you ... is not the same thing as don't want another person in the founding team. I still do not see how that 10 year old logic of…

Could you share your data on sucessful solo founders vs teams of 2 or more ?

Notable ones that come to my mind are eBay, Balasmiq, Khan Academy, Amazon but there are definitely more stories out there.

Re: So you didn’t get a YC invite, what next?

#56

Post by crdb »

tyang wrote: post #49
crdb wrote: post #20

We were rejected last year after doing a very late application and probably because we hadn't quit our jobs nor built a prototype, or even lived in the same city (I hired my co-founder on a remote team before, and took him with me when I left). We probably ticked all the reject boxes. We kept pitching other investors for a while, then quit and bootstrapped the prototype by taking on consulting work. Pitching was hard…

Exactly. $1.7M premoney valuation and a chance to get advice from PG and others who have helped 6 unicorns come about and, per @sama, 22 others who can get there is pretty darn good, IMO.

On top of that:

- the brand is enormous. All my funding discussions have been warm intros or a network I built myself, slowly (same for client work with one exception). Saying "we're YC" enables cold emails to actually get read. Same as having candidates to a job ad from MIT, Stanford, Harvard... it gets them a phone call and some attention. It helps not just with funding, but with hiring and even B2B sales (I personally looked at Heap's product for a client and talked to their sales team, only because I heard it was YC funded).

- valuation, according to a better connected and experienced friend, jumps around 4x post-acceptance on any future funding rounds. Related to first point. If our valuation had gone up that much, the maths wouldn't work out in favour of bootstrapping.

But what makes it really special is the lack of control. For example, I went into the final stages (10+ meetings, legal docs being drafted) of a $400k round... for 30%, with veto rights on practically everything and someone injected into management. It was tempting, especially pre-launch, but would have guaranteed no further rounds and misaligned incentives between us and investors.

Even the This, I think, was the major innovation brought about by YC. We're far from the days of Georges Doriot and DEC...

(As an aside Terrence, since you're reading this - you American angels should pop over to other countries some time, valuations are much friendlier!)

Re: So you didn’t get a YC invite, what next?

#58

Post by BatFastard »

BSousa wrote: post #51
riteshpatel wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason single co-founder companies are less likely to be accepted is that, once you start to get to a certain scale, there's just FAR too much work for one person to do. We're already experiencing this. There are two of us and we need an extra 24 hours in the day to get everything done. Get a co-founder if at all possible, it'll save your sanity.

The idea is to hire as you grow. You can be one founder or 10, at a point, you hire for what you need. I do agree with GP a bit on the solo founder. Here is the thing, I have enough contacts in the industry that if I wanted, I could form a very good team if I had the money to pay them (thus, the idea of getting investment money as a solo founder), but none of those people would agree to be co-founders as they know th…

Everyone over 30 had been thru this cycle before. I brought a number of great co-founders in when I started my first virtual reality start-up in 2000. Then of course we all got burned when the markets crashed in 2001. I even managed to convince some of them to return in 2004 when we got a large contract. We built the company into one of the best in the world in virtual reality product in the world. Only to be screwed by a partner with a much much larger legal budget. I have come to realize the contract disputes are usually won by the party with the larger legal budget. At this point they all just want to ride their companies into retirement.

Re: So you didn’t get a YC invite, what next?

#59

Post by tyang »

crdb wrote: post #56
tyang wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. $1.7M premoney valuation and a chance to get advice from PG and others who have helped 6 unicorns come about and, per @sama, 22 others who can get there is pretty darn good, IMO.

On top of that: - the brand is enormous. All my funding discussions have been warm intros or a network I built myself, slowly (same for client work with one exception). Saying "we're YC" enables cold emails to actually get read. Same as having candidates to a job ad from MIT, Stanford, Harvard... it gets them a phone call and some attention. It helps not just with funding, but with hiring and even B2B sales (I person…

Great points, thank you.

Re: So you didn’t get a YC invite, what next?

#60

Post by BatFastard »

evook wrote: post #42
mpdehaan2 wrote: post #30

I never even thought to apply. Why? The San Francisco requirement was against my ideals that tech exists everywhere, and that's not how I wanted to build a company. More so, the stake they required relative to funding was pretty huge. I would now, to a degree, put YCombinator kind of in the same vein as Shark Tank in outside perceptions - allegedly that show takes 3% of your company whether you get a deal or not. Cle…

> without the weird investment ecosystem that does exist in the bay area, I don't think many of them would exist Probably the wisest words spoken regarding the startup business on HN for months. If you are not able to launch a company without external money, there are two possible reasons behind that. Either you aren't ready to build a company, or your idea is not worth your efforts and there was never an expectable…

This is SO not true! The only ideas you can launch with no money as VERY small ones. Could Tesla or SpaceX launch with no money? Could any project that takes over 3-6 man months of labor? So basically you are just writing off anything but simple web projects.
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