When they keep referring to $100,000 investments for 7%, this is a typo right? (YC usually does ~$10k)
$100,000 is typical and it is not a lot of money: consider that it will be split 3 ways. This will leave you under the median household income.
Y Combinator, Silicon Valley’s Start-Up Machine
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Re: Y Combinator, Silicon Valley’s Start-Up Machine
#62The tone and diction of the article really struck me as odd and unusual. 1. The heavy-handed metaphorical comparison of YC to a summer camp: "During that time, campers, or founders, have regular meetings with each of Y.C.’s counselors, or partners," "The director of this camp," " basketball-court-size dining hall," 2. "The Y.C. term culminates with Demo Day, or D Day." N̶o̶ ̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶a̶c̶t̶u̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶c̶a̶l̶l̶s̶ ̶i̶t̶…
The tone of this article is in fact a little different than most of what's on HN - as are most articles from the NYTimes Magazine.
The magazine enjoys a much wider audience than most of the technology articles found here. Articles from the magazine are often framed as stories, following the path of individuals to show the purpose of the article. This also helps hold the attention of the reader through the article's longer length.
The embellishments you list out here are other tools the writer and editors use to appeal to the magazine's reader base.
Re: Y Combinator, Silicon Valley’s Start-Up Machine
#63It’s because of this power law: If a company has a 1 percent chance of being a hundred-billion-dollar company, then it’s worth about a billion dollars Really, is this a power law? Looks to me like a simplistic application of expected value.
The power law part is why the contribution of the other 99 percent of outcomes to the expected value is close to 0.
If, for example, the distribution of outcomes was uniform between 0 and 100 billion, the startup would be worth 50 billion. Because the distribution roughly follows a power law, 1 billion is a better estimate.
Re: Y Combinator, Silicon Valley’s Start-Up Machine
#64Re: Y Combinator, Silicon Valley’s Start-Up Machine
#65On firefox aurora it runs between 40 and 60 fps (intel hd 2000 ). The dedicated memory (65 mb) of that card is all the time the limit.
Re: Y Combinator, Silicon Valley’s Start-Up Machine
#66Guess this one looks like a post enthusiasm state but here is what I think is going on lately (Disclaimer: I am an entrepreneur, I feel this, so please take it all with a pinch of salt): It seems that the race to get into a coveted program like YC has become crowded. Almost every other startup that I met during last one year (50 odd in two cycles) had applied to the YC program [premise-A], some gotten the interview […
Re: Premise A, a good application is not about "doing literature", it is about being able to describe clearly what you are building, why it is going to be a great business and why you are the right people to build it. It is harder than it looks and has to do more with how well you understand your business and less with writing skills.
Re: Premise B, there are plenty of people that get rejected at one point, keep going, and join later on. The Strikingly guys got rejected once.
Re: Y Combinator, Silicon Valley’s Start-Up Machine
#67When they keep referring to $100,000 investments for 7%, this is a typo right? (YC usually does ~$10k)
$100,000 is typical and it is not a lot of money: consider that it will be split 3 ways. This will leave you under the median household income.
considering it's not income, it leaves you well below the median household income.
Re: Y Combinator, Silicon Valley’s Start-Up Machine
#68When they keep referring to $100,000 investments for 7%, this is a typo right? (YC usually does ~$10k)
They mean $80k for YC VC ($20k each from Yuri Milner, Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, and Maverick Capital) plus the $14-20k from YC itself. The ~$20k is for 7% (of common stock); the $80k is under START Note terms, essentially convertible debt which inherits the cap/discount of the next note you do. It's conceivable that just means an uncapped note, so adds onto your Series A.
Do all the startups get the ~$80k VC money? And is that at the beginning of the batch or at the end?
(This part isn't mentioned like the $14-20k funding is http://ycombinator.com/apply.html)
Re: Y Combinator, Silicon Valley’s Start-Up Machine
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
They mean $80k for YC VC ($20k each from Yuri Milner, Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, and Maverick Capital) plus the $14-20k from YC itself. The ~$20k is for 7% (of common stock); the $80k is under START Note terms, essentially convertible debt which inherits the cap/discount of the next note you do. It's conceivable that just means an uncapped note, so adds onto your Series A.
Do all the startups get the ~$80k VC money? And is that at the beginning of the batch or at the end? (This part isn't mentioned like the $14-20k funding is http://ycombinator.com/apply.html )
Everyone is offered it; as far as I know everyone has always taken it. I got mine around early July of the summer batch; I assume it's roughly the same still. If you really needed it early I'm sure you could arrange that.
Re: Y Combinator, Silicon Valley’s Start-Up Machine
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Didn't pg say a while back that the video was the most important part?
I think he was talking about what the founders say in the video, not the quality of the video itself.
It would be nice if people would put a tiny bit of effort into the video, specifically making sure the audio is intelligible (levels, lack of noise, etc.) on a normal computer. Just playing it back on a normal settings computer on internal speaker would probably be enough. Maybe don't shoot it in a car while driving, or outdoors with wind?