81–90 of 290 posts
I think this is oddly predatory, and sends the wrong idea to graduating students who have not even entered the real world. There is no need to rush to get into YC, and it would help to get actual experience in a job before setting out to build a whole company.
Does YC ever intend to revisit doing remote batches again? There's many founders in the country who are just as driven and motivated, but have real-world situations that cannot allow uprooting themselves for several months, two very common ones: - new parents - disabled family members, or are themselves physically disabled The discourse on Hacker News has frequently chastised companies demanding RTO, and some of the…
We might, and I'm sure you're right that there are many great founders not applying to do YC because they don't want to move here. But I think it would be a better analogy to compare YC to a university, rather than to a company. It's true that many companies operate remotely very effectively. But essentially zero universities have stayed remote since the early days of the pandemic.
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This. There is a huge opportunity cost, even more so for the “best and brightest” (by whatever definition). The odds of striking it rich are really not in your favor. You may be better off working at big tech for a few years, save up, let the money work for you while you explore your entrepreneurial urge. You have a cushion and maybe that will let you take on bigger and bolder bets than what you could when you come o…
No you want to take these bets when you are young, its the opposite, you go into stable careers when your appetite for risk and working around the clock has waned
If the funding is available immediately (not just an immediate commitment for funding once they start a batch), would it address the following problem I've run into a few times? In the last year alone, I've had to bow out of co-founding two promising startups with good biz co-founders, because first-year MBA students wanted to finish their degree before they sought funding. Two ways funding could help: 1. I couldn't…
Does YC ever intend to revisit doing remote batches again? There's many founders in the country who are just as driven and motivated, but have real-world situations that cannot allow uprooting themselves for several months, two very common ones: - new parents - disabled family members, or are themselves physically disabled The discourse on Hacker News has frequently chastised companies demanding RTO, and some of the…
People in those situations can and should start companies without an accelerator (or at least without this one). The joke around the SF scene is that even a founder with a boy/girlfriend is a sign of a startup doomed to fail, and YC doesn't seem particularly invested in changing that culture.
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It’s a form of self selection. YC (and silicon valley at large) isn't interested in founders with pesky things like real life responsibilities or anything else that will prevent them from focusing on their startup 24x7.
This is too flippant. YC is so early on some of these deals that the primary gauge is team - which means personality of founders. Very hard to measure remotely. I'm in a group, not as big or famous, that does early checks. We're 95% remote. IME, it's so hard to make those judgement calls through web-cam. Agreed that founder focus is a big factor and that life gets in the way (of deals). However, if you don't like YC…
Life is short. Play long term games with long term people. While a batch bakes in a season, a cap table rests like a boulder in a hillside. If you’re smart there are better ways to find a lever with which to move the world.
Consider incentives. Don’t accept a hammer when you need a bulldozer. Don’t ask which paths exist: find where you want to be, ask what needs to be done. Do it.
I loved YC and can't recommend it enough. But if you're going to start a company, please consider working at another company first, even if briefly. (And make it a company you respect and want to emulate.) The amount of wheels you won't have to reinvent if you work at another company are astronomical. From engineering practices to sales to management, there's a lot you don't want to innovate on. Starting a company is…
Personally I would caveat that they be a small company. Large companies are a very different beast. What it takes to get ahead and succeed at there is often very different from a startup, in ways that don’t become obvious until you’ve worked at a startup.
Rather than learning which wheels not to re-invent, you have one data point and reflexes that you’d need to deprogram.
Working at the company I most highly respect and would want to emulate (Stripe), I don’t think the skills would have been at all the right ones. (Admittedly I was in a highly toxic and political org.)
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I have a problem with the analogy “lottery ticket”. I think analogies are helpful as long as we are talking perhaps a singe order of magnitude difference between the two things. The chance of winning most popular US lotteries is approximately 1 in 300,000,000. In comparison, the chance of IPO-ing a YC company is approximately 1 in 300. You can count how many orders of magnitude of difference that is.
I buy a lottery ticket for $1, in a moment, with no further effort. A YC startup founder grinds for years, if not a decade, to reach IPO with unknown opportunity costs. They are not the same. How many lottery tickets over how many lottery draws to equalize the odds is a fun thought experiment to quantify a dollar value for the option premium. 17 YC IPOs over how many total YC founder years (Lifetime YC companies * #…
A more useful comparison would be a serious statistical analysis between startups and other occupations.
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People in those situations can and should start companies without an accelerator (or at least without this one). The joke around the SF scene is that even a founder with a boy/girlfriend is a sign of a startup doomed to fail, and YC doesn't seem particularly invested in changing that culture.
I don’t usually wear my ring day to day because it’s poorly fitting, but I wear it to meetings with private equity because I want to filter out anyone with that mentality.