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Best case scenario - you end up having a company that's registered in US, would be paying taxes in US when it comes to that but you yourself wouldn't be allowed to set foot on the US soil, and even if that, would be shuttling for visa renewals every now and then.
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I had ambitions of cranking out an MVP and pitching it to VCs in my late 20s. After a year of solid rejection ( including YC not even responding), I gave up. You end up spending alot of time trying to pitch your work. I've had a few idea guys expect me to build MVPs for free with an offer of like 1% or something silly like that. Never any pay, poorly thought out concepts. I've accepted I'm never going to be rich, it'…
The filters are self-fulfilling. For twenty-somethings ideas are easy and all opportunity is in front. Might as well swing for the fences and yes people do hit home runs. At this stage, debating the actual statistics is misguided use of energy. Because justifying a reason not to play still means you're not playing. And the older you get the more gray this calculus is. There's more reasons not to do something. We put…
It's the equivalent of singing with a guitar outside of Columbia records. It's not like Paul McCartney is going to just tell you to step into his office and record a demo.
I do plan on taking some time off to work on my side projects though. Maybe I'll try again...
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The LinkedIn page for a lot of these companies showing you "Where they studied" can be a bit intimidating. Chockablock with Stanford and Ivy League. I was filling out the Co-Founder matching service application and it has a required text area for education. The placeholder text examples? Standford MS in Comp Sci, NYU BS in Physics. As a college dropout with "some college" but a 14+ year career in systems/software eng…
I'm with you and wish that we were more careful with this sort of signaling risk. However, there are tons of college dropouts and uncredentialed software people who make it in to YC. What I'm basically trying to tell everyone, and hoping to convince a few, is: don't listen to any of this, just do it.
Gates, Jobs, and Zuck all famously dropped out of college of course.
It's an interesting and tricky social dynamic matching within and between these somewhat distinct groups.
YC is totally a non starter for non US aspirants and it's not YC's fault. Best case scenario - you end up having a company that's registered in US, would be paying taxes in US when it comes to that but you yourself wouldn't be allowed to set foot on the US soil, and even if that, would be shuttling for visa renewals every now and then.
Edit: I want to emphasize this. Being an international founder is not an obstacle for getting into YC. Hundreds of founders have done it, from all over the world. Probably thousands at this point.
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One of the reasons I like this site is that it feels slightly academic in a way that a competing site like Reddit does not. And being a somewhat exclusive post-academic institution is not a bad image or message IMO. Maybe there are more pros than cons in terms of curation (of content, of founders). Really didn't see it as a "everyone should apply!" kinda place, thought the messaging was intentionally "here's the late…
You're right about HN - pg always used to say he wanted it to look 'bookish'. But not for academic reasons. He's just a bibliophile and a massive reader. When it comes to YC, however, I'm way closer to the "everyone should apply" end of the spectrum. Or rather: everyone who thinks they might like to start a high-growth startup. One of YC's biggest impacts has been in growing the number of startups that get created in…
My intuition was that there are more overly-confident types who think they want to be a founder rather than those not confident enough to do it, but after reading some comments here maybe my intuition was off. Then there's people like me who became a founder out of survival lol I'm a founder whether or not I want to be, need a cohort for that! xD
Thanks for sharing the motivating insights!
Another question (as a seperate comment incase dang is replying to the other one): This is the equity deal: https://www.ycombinator.com/deal What if I don’t want to raise any more than the 7% (which in itself is $125k I don’t really need but happy to give 7% for the higher P(success)) What if I want to bootstrap from that point or at least keep options open?
What happened? Not enough people applied? Here's the last batch.[1] Gives a sense of what's being funded. Ideas: - MoneyNow - leverages the new FedNow instant payment system. FedNow is run by the Fed and transfers money in seconds with a charge of just US$0.045 per transaction. And they mean seconds . If the money isn't there in 10 seconds, the transaction times out. Few banks support it yet, but some do. It needs co…
Let’s say I have an idea but it’s a niche, I know it won’t be more than ~1M in yearly revenue at its best. What is interesting for YC and what not when it comes to potential size?
However, your question is trickier than it seems because so many major startups begin as 'toy' or 'niche': https://paulgraham.com/altair.html. If you make something people want, there are often ways for it to grow—and perhaps grow big—that aren't obvious at first. The Airbnb founders stuck for a long time with their 'airbed' idea before making the obvious-in-retrospect (but not at the time) leap to a much larger market.
Another (is this bogus?) reason for not applying is I am not in the US and would prefer not to migrate there due to family. Can a founder do YC with minimal time in USA or even do it remotely.
You don't need to migrate to the US. But I believe you do need to be there with your co-founders for 3 months. And if you can't manage that then running a VC backed startup isn't what you should do. Because you will need to visit customers and it's often not feasible to just fly to/from constantly.