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YC Interviews in NYC

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: YC Interviews in NYC

#61

Post by farazbabar »

m0th87 wrote: post #2

I remember going to YCNYC nearly 10 years ago, and pg made the argument that anyone starting a company should just move to the Bay Area because it was that much better. I guess NYC has come a long way, or YC has, or both :)

Warning, unpopular opinion coming up. Bay area may have the critical mass for investors and technologists but I think we owe it to ourselves to have some diversity of thought and ambition. I am on the west coast but have avoided moving to bay area due to the lack of intellectual diversity. I know my venues are much more limited in some ways but my experiences and interactions are much richer in others (I know this because I have split my time 50/10/40 between bay area, new york and southern california for nearly a decade since 2010). Weather, access to money and talent are very strong and influential variables but to me, diversity of thought (and approach to capital) are more valuable. Clearly, this is anecdotal, so take it with a rock of salt.

Re: YC Interviews in NYC

#62

Post by jmknoll »

OoTheNigerian wrote: post #6

Great first steps. Any plans to have one in a "no visa required" location for people from other parts? The struggle and stress attending YC interviews puts on Nigerian founders is - to put it mildly, very unfair. Rwanda, Ethiopia and Kenya are 2 countries with visa on arrival for everyone and a great air network.[1] [1] https://www.passportindex.org/byWelcomingRank.php

That’s an excellent point (and a pretty cool website). Looks like there are direct (and cheap!) flights to Addis Ababa from London, Shanghai, and Mumbai. And visa-free or visa-on-arrival for almost everyone. It’s not super-accessible from North America, but I don’t think that’s the issue here.

If YC is serious about finding the next wave of Unicorns, they should really be doing a lot more to accommodate Indian and African founders.

Re: YC Interviews in NYC

#63

Post by mav3rick »

rdl wrote: post #35
srsimon wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something we've been searching for solutions to, and was part of our thinking in trying this out. We'll be releasing new locations as we finalize them - stay tuned.

I'd recommend Qatar. Qatari government would probably be willing to cover costs/admin and potentially deep discounts on QR flights. You might even be able to do it all airside at Doha Airport, otherwise they'd do hotel + meeting rooms.

I don't think the Optics of dealing with the Qatari govt. are good for YC.

Re: YC Interviews in NYC

#64

Post by mav3rick »

sudosteph wrote: post #46
wenc wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pg wrote an article called "Cities and Ambition"[1] which greatly influenced my thinking on the importance of being around a critical mass of like-minded people, not just for the 1st-order effects of having the right networks and opportunities, but also for the 2nd-order effects of being subtly influenced by the intellectual energy around you. (Side note: Eric Weiner wrote a Malcolm-Gladwell-like book "The Geography…

Wow, good links, thanks. It's interesting to read that PG essay and realize just how drastically things must have changed in the past decade for SV people. Like this snippet: > How many times have you read about startup founders who continued to live inexpensively as their companies took off? Who continued to dress in jeans and t-shirts, to drive the old car they had in grad school, and so on? Maybe it was doable in…

Seattle has many many people working on their own thing and side projects. It has an excellent talent pool of varying skills. Raleigh is nowhere near in scale right now

Re: YC Interviews in NYC

#65

Post by rdl »

mav3rick wrote: post #63
rdl wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd recommend Qatar. Qatari government would probably be willing to cover costs/admin and potentially deep discounts on QR flights. You might even be able to do it all airside at Doha Airport, otherwise they'd do hotel + meeting rooms.

I don't think the Optics of dealing with the Qatari govt. are good for YC.

They are probably better than a lot of their neighbors. It is a consideration though.

Re: YC Interviews in NYC

#66

Post by sudosteph »

mav3rick wrote: post #64
sudosteph wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, good links, thanks. It's interesting to read that PG essay and realize just how drastically things must have changed in the past decade for SV people. Like this snippet: > How many times have you read about startup founders who continued to live inexpensively as their companies took off? Who continued to dress in jeans and t-shirts, to drive the old car they had in grad school, and so on? Maybe it was doable in…

Seattle has many many people working on their own thing and side projects. It has an excellent talent pool of varying skills. Raleigh is nowhere near in scale right now

Everyone I know with talent here is too overworked at their main job to sustain side projects. That, rampant seasonal depression and a pervasive weed and drinking culture to deal with it all make it incredibly to hard to connect with people who actually want to collaborate on things on the side. It's the seattle freeze culture - it just isn't conducive to organic networking and small scale innovation. At least the Bay has nice weather to lift moods a bit.

Raleigh has plenty enough talent, from far more diverse backgrounds than Seattle, and just keeps growing. I don't need 10,000 engineers for a startup - I just need 10 really good ones and a pipeline for more. I've already got that network and I know the culture is better for me to find more, so I'm ready to go for it. It's a risk in some ways, but I gave Seattle a real try - it just isn't as uniquely conducive to building new things as people would like to believe.

Re: YC Interviews in NYC

#67

Post by mav3rick »

sudosteph wrote: post #66
mav3rick wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seattle has many many people working on their own thing and side projects. It has an excellent talent pool of varying skills. Raleigh is nowhere near in scale right now

Everyone I know with talent here is too overworked at their main job to sustain side projects. That, rampant seasonal depression and a pervasive weed and drinking culture to deal with it all make it incredibly to hard to connect with people who actually want to collaborate on things on the side. It's the seattle freeze culture - it just isn't conducive to organic networking and small scale innovation. At least the Ba…

Let's see what startups come out of Raleigh vs Seattle.

Re: YC Interviews in NYC

#68

Post by btilly »

jkaplowitz wrote: post #55
btilly wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me a bigger deal is that New York law by default grants copyright on work done in your spare time on your own equipment to your employer. Therefore if you try to grow a side hustle into a business, you can unexpectedly find that you don't actually have what you thought you had. I know multiple people, directly and indirectly, who have been caught by this. Knowledge of this problem contributed to my desire to move…

As of last time I checked a few years ago, NY law was silent on rules for the copyright ownership scenario you describe. That leaves the federal default in place of "creator keeps the copyright when there is no explicit assignment unless it qualifies as a work for hire." Only work done within the scope of employment would be employer-owned by default, not unrelated spare time projects. However, indeed NY's legal sile…

As of 2002, the advice of a lawyer specializing in intellectual property law to me was that work created by a professional employee on their own time is by default a work for hire, and I was a professional employee. I later met other people who were in the same situation.

Telling whether I was a professional employee was simple. The three categories are contractor or hourly. If you don't know yourself to be a contractor, and you don't punch a clock, then you are a professional employee. Most software developers in New York are either contractors or professional employees.

New York law could have changed since then. This is not legal advice, and I am not a lawyer. However it is my understanding of legal advice that I actually received.

As you note, California law is much stronger. The one catch is that your employer can claim ownership of anything related to what they do. Not what you do for them, but what they do. If your employer has their fingers in a lot of pies, like Google and Amazon do, you may not realize that what you're doing is related to something that they do.

Re: YC Interviews in NYC

#69

Post by btilly »

sambroner wrote: post #54
btilly wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me a bigger deal is that New York law by default grants copyright on work done in your spare time on your own equipment to your employer. Therefore if you try to grow a side hustle into a business, you can unexpectedly find that you don't actually have what you thought you had. I know multiple people, directly and indirectly, who have been caught by this. Knowledge of this problem contributed to my desire to move…

Do you have a reference for this? And are there similar or opposite laws affecting other states?

I have personal experience relating to this.

It is worth noting that awareness of this issue is why the FSF explicitly requires copyright assignment and a disclaimer of any work-for-hire ownership claims by the programmer's employer. Because employees often do not realize that their employer could have a copyright claim, and the FSF is very careful. See https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.en.html for verification.

Re: YC Interviews in NYC

#70

Post by yeukhon »

snowmaker wrote: post #53
yeukhon wrote: post #42

Wow this is so sudden. Sigh. One of my cofounders can't move to the U.S. due to personal responsibility. I guess YC ain't for us! Good luck everyone.

That's not necessarily a deal-breaker. We often work within constraints like that - it depends on the details of your team.

Thanks for the reply! It's good to know it's still a possibility.
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