[HN Gopher] Ask HN: What's your experience working for a YC back...
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Ask HN: What's your experience working for a YC backed startup?
What was experience? How large was the team? Good things, bad
things?
Author : hoerzu
Score : 44 points
Date : 2021-06-25 21:38 UTC (1 hours ago)
| ipaddr wrote:
| Every YC compant is different. YC provides investment and
| coaching for senior leadership. YC companies are startups with
| the good and bad of that.
| taylorlapeyre wrote:
| The YC accelerator is really set up to encourage the founders'
| best qualities and to drive them forward in a supporting
| environment. The shape and culture of any YC company is almost
| entirely due to the founders, not YC.
| H8crilA wrote:
| Just remember to price all the equity/options at $0 as you go
| with the decision making (and double check it's not actually
| potentially negative, can happen in some cases due to taxes), as
| you're not a diversified fund with tens/hundreds of companies in
| your portfolio (which helps with smoothing out the volatility, as
| well as being able to handle the complexity of the capital
| structure).
| WisNorCan wrote:
| This is one of the common pieces of advice on here that is also
| completely wrong.
|
| Let me know if you are willing to sell any options that you
| have at $0 from YC backed companies. I'd be happy to buy all
| day long.
|
| It is true that there is risk, but there is also more upside if
| things go well. Make some educated guesses on outcomes and
| adjust by probability. Revise your model at least once a year
| or if you have materially new info.
| ska wrote:
| The right way to do this, although obviously impossible to do
| really rigorously, is to estimate expected value of the
| equity. Note that EV will not be zero even if lots of
| possible paths lead to equity = 0.
|
| Compare this and the rest of your comp to other opportunities
| you have, and factor in how miserable it would make you if it
| fails.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Is there anything in particular that YC does to set up employment
| structures/ways of working?
|
| As this seems like asking "What is your experience working for a
| publicly traded company?"
| kritiko wrote:
| There are some pretty clear answers to the publicly traded
| company question. Financial statements are much more
| transparent and regulated, HR policies much more formal, equity
| awards are easier to value and sell, etc.
|
| A lot of responses seem to believe this question is either
| naive or asked in bad faith. Insofar as YC is a network of
| founders and mentors with strong opinions on how to
| successfully start any grow a venture, it would be shocking if
| there were no generalizations that you could make.
| haliskerbas wrote:
| How different is "working for a YC startup" than "working for a
| funded SV startup"
| heroHACK17 wrote:
| Follow up: what was your time spent coding relative to your time
| spent tweeting?
| edgyquant wrote:
| I work at a YC backed startup and have never tweeted anything.
| Lots of long days programming though.
| [deleted]
| thinkingkong wrote:
| If youre looking for data to back up a feeling you have about it
| "being bad sometimes" youll find it. But you knew that.
|
| I would actually focus more on what kinds of behaviours, skills,
| and values you appreciate in your coworkers and apply that to the
| founders. The culture of any company is dictated by them
| primarily, so meet with them after you decide what works best for
| you.
| jmcgough wrote:
| YC startups aren't significantly different from any other startup
| at a similar stage.
| dyeje wrote:
| I've worked for two YC companies. One was around 10 people, the
| other around 40. There was good and bad as with any company, none
| of which was directly attributable to being a YC company. I don't
| think there's much signal you can derive from it as a candidate
| really.
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(page generated 2021-06-25 23:01 UTC)