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Startup School – YC’s Online Class

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Startup School – YC’s Online Class

#5

Post by estsauver »

I'm very optimistic about this program, but I also wonder how much of the success of the main program and the fellowship can be scaled into a MOOC.

I was part of YCF1 as AirPaper, and while I think it was an incredibly valuable experience, most of the things the YC partners told us we're things that we "knew." Most of the advice was available in one essay or another, but it still felt very, very different to have one of the partners tell us directly what we should be doing.

I actually think in a lot of ways the YC program felt a lot like therapy for our startup. We'd talk in group office hours about the other successes and problems other startups were facing. Individual office hours felt like one on one therapy where we got very specific direction out of the partners, but most of the time they were really helping my cofounder and I work out what the solution to our biggest problem was.

While I think the information in this class will certainly be valuable, I hope that the participants of this class really convince themselves that the advice applies to them, right now. To get the most out of this class, I think you need to abandon cynicism and let the message reach through the screen and grab you and your cofounders by the lapels.

Re: Startup School – YC’s Online Class

#6

Post by ploggingdev »

> Build a community of entrepreneurs who can encourage and teach each other

Working towards the mentioned goal can start right here on HN by adding a navbar link titled "MOOC" like what YC did with "Apply HN". I am curious to know if YC considered involving the HN community directly like they did with the Fellowship. I remember the whole controversy involving pinboard and YC receiving a lot of flak for it, but I hope that experience did not deter YC from involving the HN community if they had considered involving the HN community. I imagine there are a lot of enthusiastic folks around here willing to give feedback to startups.

Sam Altman mentioned that somewhere (can't remember where) that they would experiment giving funding to a few startups taking part in the MOOC. I wonder why they pushed that to the next offering of the MOOC, why not start now?

Also, what happened to the Fellowship? I thought it was a great idea but I get the impression (from having read comments about the Fellowship written by YC partners) that YC felt it might not have been the best way to scale funding new startups and so the MOOC was born.

Suggestion : the Fellowship was a great idea and so is this MOOC, why not make the Fellowship a subset of the MOOC i.e fund a few startups taking part in the MOOC with $20,000 or so and please find a way to involve the HN community directly.

Re: Startup School – YC’s Online Class

#7

Post by ThomPete »

This is great, however I don't believe it will make you a better entrepreneur.

To me at least the only thing I ever learned from was doing it and make my own experience which often would if not contradict what I read about then at least illustrate that nothing beats doing.

Re: Startup School – YC’s Online Class

#8

Post by kintamanimatt »

ThomPete wrote: post #7

This is great, however I don't believe it will make you a better entrepreneur. To me at least the only thing I ever learned from was doing it and make my own experience which often would if not contradict what I read about then at least illustrate that nothing beats doing.

I guess the idea isn't to teach people how to be an awesome entrepreneur, but to point them in a good direction so they can earn the experience they need to be an awesome entrepreneur.
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