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My story of applying, getting in, and being a mom in Y Combinator

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Re: My story of applying, getting in, and being a mom in Y Combinator

#61

Post by chiph »

vitalus wrote: post #12

"Each week, I either flew or drove to Mountain View. Burning the candles at both ends, this commuting & scheduling hell allowed me to maintain a stable life for my young daughters and make the most of YC. I do not recommend this approach and in fact, it’s 100% against YC. You are required to move and you should. It’s exhausting and it takes your focus off of the most important things: talking to users, shipping code,…

I'm wondering if the time spent on the plane, or in the car, gave her some "think time". Away from the demands of both company and family.

Re: My story of applying, getting in, and being a mom in Y Combinator

#63

Post by Iftheshoefits »

ig1 wrote: post #58
valleycynic wrote: post #32

"Access to venture capitalists: Raising money is incredibly hard and incredibly distracting. The faster you can get it done, the faster you can get back to building something people want. YC is the perfect forcing function to help you raise capital. Network: Being an entrepreneur is a lonely path. There are few people who truly understand what you’re going through and even if your friends (or parents) are well meanin…

The flaw in that line of reasoning is assuming that luck and connections are the opposite of skill and execution. Building relationships is a core part of business development, if a business lacks appropriate connections then it's something they should work on either by building bizdev skills internally or hiring. In the same way that if someones a tech founder with no marketing skills, they have to learn it or hire…

The number of people whose "luck and connections" come from "skill and execution" is smaller than the number whose "luck and connections" come by accident of birth. This is true no matter where one lives, or how one wants to leverage his own skills.

Re: My story of applying, getting in, and being a mom in Y Combinator

#64

Post by Iftheshoefits »

argonaut wrote: post #50
calibraxis wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that would be the honest thing for VCs to publicly say. "Now look, you'll want to be a guy, unless you're a woman of some means. We're not racist, as we're heavily composed of both whites and asians. Modulo certain Asian and perhaps lesser-European or -US accents. (That excludes others of course, which we hope you consider a feature and not a bug...) As for coming from a family with money and comfort, well we ha…

So are you implying that no woman has a surplus of time (and that they never do)? Do you disagree with my assertion that if you want to start a company, you have to have lots of time, and if you don't have that, then you'll have to trade something else for that (like money: for hiring people, paying for flights, etc)? There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. If you have no time, and no money, don't expect to be abl…

You're missing the point. The qualification you describe in your last sentence excludes the overwhelming majority of people anywhere, but especially in the U.S., and it does so by pure (bad) luck and accident of birth. That is to say, the qualification you note is either a polite way to say, "Non-rich, or affluent, or already-connected need not apply," or an incredibly obtuse equivocation. As a result, for example, the subject of the article that started this thread is not in the same set with people who can accurately be described as "normal."

Re: My story of applying, getting in, and being a mom in Y Combinator

#65

Post by atonse »

mrweasel wrote: post #46
huehue wrote: post #29

My story of applying, getting in, and being gay in Y Combinator. My story of applying, getting in, and being a white man in Y Combinator. My story of applying, getting in, and being a Java 9to5 developer in Y Combinator.

I looked for the part where her being a mom made any difference what so ever. It must be hard to be away from your children most of the week and of cause taxing on her partner, but that's not really unique to YCombinator or startups.

It's not about her being a mom helping or hurting. It's about Her being a mom and going through YC. I think this kind of post can inspire other women with kids to see "maybe I can do it too."

I think it really is that simple.

Re: My story of applying, getting in, and being a mom in Y Combinator

#66

Post by jscheel »

valleycynic wrote: post #52
sytelus wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are massively undervaluing YC. It's not just "advice dispensed over diner", there is lot goes on [1]. In startup world, there are just too many bad decisions you can make at any point in time and even just 5 minute advice from an experienced person who has literally seen it all 100s of times is worth all of the 7% cut that you give to YC. In the book[1] you will see several cases described by author where founder…

Read their own terms. They don't provide you with office space, living space, or other necessities that even other, less vaunted incubators do. And the seed money used to much lower: $17,000 (a few months salary). Again, 7% is an enormous chunk of a company, and for a firm like Dropbox, such a stake runs easily into the millions. YC on its face has always been a terrible deal, except it isn't, because YC is the first…

Financial stability is always an issue for founders. Any founder that has an alternative source of income, a large reserve of liquid cash, or a small living expense (NOT a family to feed), is going to have more flexibility.

Re: My story of applying, getting in, and being a mom in Y Combinator

#67

Post by ig1 »

Iftheshoefits wrote: post #63
ig1 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flaw in that line of reasoning is assuming that luck and connections are the opposite of skill and execution. Building relationships is a core part of business development, if a business lacks appropriate connections then it's something they should work on either by building bizdev skills internally or hiring. In the same way that if someones a tech founder with no marketing skills, they have to learn it or hire…

The number of people whose "luck and connections" come from "skill and execution" is smaller than the number whose "luck and connections" come by accident of birth. This is true no matter where one lives, or how one wants to leverage his own skills.

While it probably varies between different fields, I haven't seen any evidence for that in the startup world.

There's obviously a certain level of "accident of birth", you have a much better chance if you were born in a developed country, one where you can go to university, etc. But if we standardise at say pool of CS graduates from good universities it's certainly a much more level playing field.

If we take what's probably the most important relationship in the startup world, that of co-founders, most co-founders meet each other through work, actively seeking through professional networks or university. There's very few co-founders who met through family connections.

Similarly for investors, investors will take a recommendation from one of their portfolio founders who've worked with someone much more seriously than that from a family friend who just knows someone socially.

Re: My story of applying, getting in, and being a mom in Y Combinator

#69

Post by jscheel »

The family sacrifice should not be discounted in any way. Specifically, being away from her children during the week could have an impact on her family for a long time. Probably less so with her three year-old daughter, but there will be an impact with her youngest child. There is still a huge amount of inherent bonding that happens at that age. I'm not disparaging her husband in any way, he seems like a good fella, but I can speak from experience. My daughter was 11 months old when I left for 500 Startups. I did the back and forth thing too. And I tried to be 100% when I was home. But that time away from her altered our relationship. No matter how awesome my wife was while I was gone.

Re: My story of applying, getting in, and being a mom in Y Combinator

#70

Post by webwright »

valleycynic wrote: post #32

"Access to venture capitalists: Raising money is incredibly hard and incredibly distracting. The faster you can get it done, the faster you can get back to building something people want. YC is the perfect forcing function to help you raise capital. Network: Being an entrepreneur is a lonely path. There are few people who truly understand what you’re going through and even if your friends (or parents) are well meanin…

Two points. There was a non-rich mom in my batch in 2008 (one of the hardest fundraising climates in the last decade). She and her co-founder kicked ass and raised more money than most of the batch.

Point #2: You need to expand your view of meritocracy beyond just product/code. Expanding who you know, how much they like/admire you, and how much they want to work with you is part of meritocracy. Imagine it as a multiplier to product merit and,as a founder, you NEED to imagine it as part of your job. In a failure scenario, it absolutely helps turn a zero into a one. But it also helps you hire, sell products, raise money, get press, do bizdev deals, sell companies, etc.

All sorts of other nits I could pick with your comment. Strawmen (really? Does anyone go into YC thinking advice at dinners is the primary value they offer?) and ad hominem attacks (what does Sam's previous company have to do with the merits of his "polemics"?).

Some stats to challenge the "rich white dudes raining gold on each other" theory:

52% of founding teams in the Valley have 1st generation immigrants on them. Just shy of half of the top-ranked venture companies (in case you think all of these immigrant-heavy startups are floundering while rich white guys are winning). Does anyone believe that a meaningful percentage of this group is rich and white? The same study also found that immigrants were key members of the product or management teams in more than 75% of those companies.

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