[HN Gopher] Is Y Combinator worth the money? Brutally honest rev...
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Is Y Combinator worth the money? Brutally honest review of W22
batch experience
Author : acecreamu
Score : 648 points
Date : 2023-03-30 14:14 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (acecreamu.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (acecreamu.substack.com)
| preinheimer wrote:
| Prior to covid I was paying for a business coach/group (not yc,
| just paid with cash no equity). We had monthly group meetings and
| I had a one on one with my coach every month.
|
| The value I got out of the group took a huge nosedive when we
| went remote. I felt like many of my fellow attendees weren't
| fully present in our group meetings, and the one on ones weren't
| the same. So I left.
|
| Just putting stuff on Zoom doesn't make it the same. I think a
| lot of orgs are struggling to make things work in the new medium.
| jsemrau wrote:
| I am surprised they got with that idea into the Batch.
| cl42 wrote:
| I went through YC in S12 and have been investing in YC companies
| + active on Bookface and YC's founder matching program. I
| recommend YC to almost everyone I meet and plan to apply again
| when/if I am working on a new product company.
|
| We're all adults and we all have agency. Every community is a
| function of how much you put into it; how much you invest in
| getting to know others.
|
| It feels like the author expected YC to do all the work of
| community engagement for him. That's 100% not what YC is about.
| Folks like Michael Seibel, Garry Tan, and other partners all
| respond to emails + engage as much (or as little) as you ask them
| to.
|
| It's unfortunate the author had an experience that wasn't ideal,
| but I'd be wary of saying this is representative.
| rexreed wrote:
| When you recommend YC, how do you help the people you recommend
| actually get in to the YC program?
| cl42 wrote:
| Do the things that make you seem like a great startup/founder
| regardless of YC: show you can execute. This means coding or
| launching experiments, and show that whatever you're doing is
| getting some sort of a market response.
|
| A lot of people think YC has some secret formula they will
| teach you (I think maybe OP made this mistake?), in reality
| they are very open: build product and talk to users.
|
| If you can do that well, you'll get in.
|
| It's amazing how few people actually "get" this, though. I
| recently met with a friend who is running a consulting firm
| and is convinced he has a product... But there's no demo,
| customers can't just sign up -- they need to speak with him
| and it takes a few weeks to onboard them, etc... Yet his deep
| (and well-meaning, I'm sure!) belief is that he has a
| product. Nothing I say will convince him otherwise.
|
| 10 years post YC, I find most of the issues people have with
| startups (getting in to YC included) is they overcomplicate
| their interpretation of what YC says you should do.
| acecreamu wrote:
| There is a referral program, hey
| rexreed wrote:
| Does it improve the odds of getting in or is it some sort
| of kickback to the referring party if they do?
| acecreamu wrote:
| No one clearly knows, but it should be there for a
| reason. We used a referral when applying and I would
| recommend finding one. Won't hurt for sure, prob will
| increase the chances to be seen.
| acecreamu wrote:
| As a YC founder, never received a single reply to a couple of
| emails sent to Garry Tan ;(
| tptacek wrote:
| Did you expect YC status was going to get you a direct
| channel to one of the busiest people affiliated with YC?
| burnished wrote:
| >Folks like Michael Seibel, Garry Tan, and other partners
| all respond to emails + engage as much (or as little) as
| you ask them to.
| acecreamu wrote:
| I replied to a comment which stated exactly that, and my
| point that it's false.
| tptacek wrote:
| Yeah, I'm just asking if that was your actual expectation
| going into the program.
| acecreamu wrote:
| Not really, that's why I don't put an evaluation criteria
| of "how close you going to get with the star founders".
| It's silly to expect that.
|
| I only expected and discusses the community engagement
| within the batch, and the power of YC connection between
| the batches. Both are quite low.
|
| The connection to Brian Chesky or Paul Graham is expected
| to be ~0 from the start.
| dang wrote:
| When did you email Garry? He's only been back at YC for a
| couple months.
| joshxyz wrote:
| i find this fair and informative. i havent got into yc yet but
| their free content is very valuable in giving me direction, and
| the things mentioned in the article are very valuable to me who
| is still an outsider.
|
| to some they're like "meh", but to me those subtle things really
| make or break your company.
|
| it's like yc has solid focus on your company's fundamentals and
| reminding you of it again and again so you dont get distracted.
| seizethecheese wrote:
| > Now, with a 500k deal, the amount is more substantial, but in
| turn, its terms are not super funder-friendly. Imho, the previous
| 125k deal was better for the founders since once the company gets
| accepted to YC it can raise easily a lot more money and on better
| terms.
|
| Wait, the additional $375k is an uncapped SAFE. How could a
| company "easily raise at better terms"?
| acecreamu wrote:
| Add one angel or one early commit of 10k to it and the uncapped
| SAFE turns into a very bad SAFE. Basically it blocks you from
| flexibility of building up fundraising moment gradually.
| vmatsiiako wrote:
| Not true. You can still raise on uncapped SAFEs. This will
| not trigger the YC MFN safe
| rvnx wrote:
| According to the contract, in exchange of 375K USD (+/-
| salary for 1.5 developer) you agree to this when you sign
| the MFN:
|
| ==
|
| If the Company issues any Subsequent Convertible Securities
| with terms more favorable than those of this Safe
| (including, without limitation, a valuation cap and/or
| discount) prior to termination of this Safe, the Company
| will promptly provide YCombinator with written notice
| thereof, together with a copy of such Subsequent
| Convertible Securities and, upon written request of
| YCombinator, any additional information related to such
| Subsequent Convertible Securities as may be reasonably
| requested by the Investor.
|
| In the event YCombinator determines that the terms of the
| Subsequent Convertible Securities are preferable to the
| terms of this instrument, YCombinator will notify the
| Company in writing within 10 days.
|
| Promptly after receipt of such written notice from the
| Investor, the Company agrees to amend and restate this
| instrument to be identical to the instrument(s) evidencing
| the Subsequent Convertible Securities.
|
| ==
|
| So, any type of issue triggers the MFN and the jackpot to
| YC.
| vmatsiiako wrote:
| What I'm saying is that you can issue the exact same
| $375k YC MFN SAFE to other investors (with a different $$
| value). This will not trigger the MFN because the terms
| are absolutely the same
| jedberg wrote:
| Most small angels, like myself, will not do an uncapped
| SAFE. It's too risky when I'm only putting in $25K. I'd
| like to know at least very roughly how much I will own
| when it converts.
|
| I don't want to be in a situation where they never raise
| again and then exit for $100M five years later and I only
| get my small little piece with no benefit for being in
| early.
| alexashka wrote:
| Can someone explain this like I'm 5?
|
| What does this mean in practice?
| acecreamu wrote:
| It means that MFN will likely convert very fast, and
| these 375k will cost you more dilution than you might
| want otherwise. Or you have to play very fancy sheningans
| convincing other investors who wanted to be early to
| wait, just to postpone it and decrease its dilution.
| rvnx wrote:
| Imagine you have a toy store, and you want to make it
| bigger and better.
|
| To do that, you need more money, so you ask your friend
| YCombinator to help you.
|
| In return, you promise to give them a special kind of toy
| money that you created (like monopoly money) that they
| can trade for real toys later when your store becomes
| bigger and better.
|
| But for now, there are no real toys to exchange yet
| because the shop is still small and not opened yet.
|
| Now, if you ask other friends for help and give them even
| better toy money (with better chances to get more toys),
| you need to tell YCombinator about it.
|
| If YCombinator thinks the new toy money is better, they
| can ask you to change the toy money you gave them earlier
| to match the better one.
|
| You have to do this quickly after YCombinator tells you
| they want the better toy money.
| dang wrote:
| It's true that YC will tell you over and over to (1) work on your
| product and (2) talk to users. Those are the "make" and "people"
| in "make something people want".
|
| If you want to focus on marketing tricks / media hype / "content"
| / that kind of thing, you're going to hear the above repeatedly,
| since those are neither (1) nor (2). For my part this reflects
| well on YC. In fact it's a little reassuring to hear that this is
| what (some) people are complaining about. If you're a YC startup
| and want to launch on HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/launches)
| you're going to hear even more of it from me.
|
| I like this part: " _present dry facts--how much money customers
| already paid you, what the size of the market, if you count all
| the units you can sell, what you have actually built and what is
| working today_. " On the HN side we also push for "just the
| facts" and urge founders to cut hype and marketing speak. That's
| as much about the HN audience as core values, but it's nice (and
| for me a relief) that those overlap.
|
| If building a valuable product, talking to users, and focusing on
| facts sounds good to you, you should consider applying to YC.
|
| (feel free to discount this to zero based on my bias but I wanted
| to say it anyway!)
| joshxyz wrote:
| this to me is very appealing. while i dont know if ill get into
| this upcoming batch, all i know is i can just keep watching and
| reading yc's free content and i know i'll still be on the right
| track.
|
| most of it is boring and repetitive, but effective.
| rsp1984 wrote:
| Appreciate the chime-in and honesty.
|
| > If building a valuable product, talking to users, and
| focusing on facts sounds good to you, you should consider
| applying to YC.
|
| Also being perfectly honest, it does sound very appealing, but
| I'm afraid it unfortunately just isn't what makes startups
| successful in 2023. Speaking from personal experience and
| carrying the battle scars.
| mritchie712 wrote:
| building a valuable product doesn't make you successful in
| 2023? Please, elaborate.
| dustingetz wrote:
| * markets measure sentiment
|
| * capital flows through trust networks
|
| * the important thing is not how things are but how they
| seem to be (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiio%27s_laws)
|
| * Curse of Development: the depth of any transaction is
| limited by the depth of the shallower party (https://www.du
| stingetz.com/#/page/the%20curse%20of%20develop...)
|
| * You Can't Tell People Anything (https://www.dustingetz.co
| m/#/page/you%20can't%20tell%20peopl...)
|
| * Much Madness is Divinest Sense (https://www.dustingetz.co
| m/#/page/much%20madness%20is%20divi...)
|
| * Sufficiently Powerful Optimization Of Any Known Target
| Destroys All Value (https://www.dustingetz.com/#/page/suffi
| ciently%20powerful%20...)
| dang wrote:
| It's certainly not sufficient and experiencing that in
| practice is painful and sucks.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I'd be curious what does make them successful.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| Making the "right" product, and talking to the "right"
| customers.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| That's encompassed by "valuable" in "valuable product."
| If it's not the right product for the right customer, it
| won't have value.
| vmatsiiako wrote:
| From my personal experience, the greatest benefit of YC is being
| part of a group of so many brilliant founders that are trying to
| create amazing things - this creates healthy peer pressure and
| pushes you forward A LOT. As a result, many companies achieve
| absolutely crazy results in just 3 months
|
| This is even better now that YC is back in person. I think W22
| batch was the last remote batch
| notahacker wrote:
| Most surprising quote to me was this: _If you have some kind of
| b2c or Enterprise business, all you will get is a knowledge
| exchange with homies. YC does not have any industrial partners,
| and YC partners themselves will not do external intros_ since
| this is a big part of other accelerators ' pitch. Obviously YC
| can't compete with vertical-focused accelerators for depth of
| industry knowledge and day-to-day access to corporate sponsors,
| but knowing when and who and how to approach is one of the
| biggest challenges for an early stage startup and one where I'd
| assume YC's network was big enough to add value (beyond a list of
| companies to send cold emails to indiscriminately)
| dang wrote:
| I don't know what "industrial partners" are but "YC partners
| will not do external intros" is not true, and a weird thing to
| say since it wouldn't be in their interest.
| jongjong wrote:
| Oh my, $150K for 7% equity sounds really good. I would offer 30%
| equity for that amount.
|
| I've been trying to raise $20K for the last 10 years and never
| managed though one time someone took pity on me and gave me $20K
| in cryptocurrency as a gift. I managed to stake that on a crypto
| project in such a way that it was soon generating me around $35K
| to $70K per year and I used the money to fund myself to work on a
| Decentralized Exchange for 3 full years which is now operational.
|
| Still nobody will invest in me.
| trevmckendrick wrote:
| Can I please recommend w/ no ill intent that you take news
| courses of action if you've unable to achieve raising a
| relatively low amount of capital after 10 year?
| jongjong wrote:
| I already met many investors and millionaire founders. I even
| met 2 founders who are now billionaires and many others who
| went on to become multimillionaires. Nowadays most of them
| won't even answer my emails. One of the founders I met before
| they were successful (and who sold their startup for
| millions) won't even give me a $2000 per year support
| contract though they continue to use my open source project
| and ask me questions. I'm thinking I've been blacklisted. It
| doesn't make sense right?
|
| Does it make sense that someone I met 10 years ago, was using
| my open source project as part of their startup and was
| having conversations with me every couple of months
| throughout the whole 10 years (they even let me log into
| their production system with 30K concurrent users to help fix
| a bug) and then went on to make millions won't even support
| my project with a $2000 a year contract?
|
| Probably something weird going on. This is not just about one
| example, it's every now-successful founder I've ever met.
| Nobody talks to me and I did nothing wrong except build some
| products that work really well.
| alfl wrote:
| We were W22. It was a HUGE batch and we were raising at a large
| valuation, during the boom, so the YC standard deal didn't make
| financial sense for us.
|
| IIRC as soon as we signed the deal they would have 10x'd.
|
| Overall, I think not signing was a mistake. But YC is very
| expensive.
| ychnthrowaway24 wrote:
| I did YC also remote, though a bit earlier than the article's
| author. The part that stood out to me was
|
| > In their picture of the world, you, the founders, should only
| build a product and talk to customers, everything else is
| superfluous and waste of time. Hiring is waste of time, paid
| advertising is waste of time, content is waste of time, talking
| to investors is waste of time, getting media coverage is waste of
| time.
|
| I talked to many other founders who also disliked this view (only
| talk to customers and build), and they all tended to be the worse
| founders in the batch - a large part of the value add yc provides
| imo is acting as coach/therapist and pushing back against founder
| pschology/thinking traps. The view that many things founders want
| to do early is a waste of time is correct and works, and hearing
| that can be jarring for many.
| abe94 wrote:
| The founder psychology bit was key for us as well. You may not
| like hearing what you need to hear. Hiring before product
| market fit, increases the chance of death
| dangoodmanUT wrote:
| I would put that footnote at the top, it's very important
| context.
| hassy wrote:
| Did YC S21 which was an all remote batch. my 2c.
|
| YC is 100% what you make of it. It's not a lean back experience.
|
| I did not meet most of the companies in my batch but I've gotten
| to know many founders through YC that I would not have otherwise.
| Founders that have been source of advice and support.
|
| Network of clients - yep don't go into YC expecting to sell to
| other YC cos. It _is_ easier to get warm intros through the
| network though.
|
| YC advice, office hours specifically - it's what you make of it
| too. Expecting a group partner to know your space in great detail
| is unreasonable but if you recognize that they've seen hundreds
| of companies with similar problems and make use of that pattern
| matching, you can get very valuable advice. Some of the advice I
| did not take and did the opposite and it was the right decision.
| And some advice that I did not take was exactly right, but I only
| saw it in retrospect months later.
|
| Fundraising - being a YC company definitely opens doors, and also
| helps protects you from bad actors who have to think twice before
| fucking with a YC co. Very valuable for any first-time founder.
| You have someone to sanity-check everything, terms you're not
| sure about etc. The bump in valuation is real too.
|
| I'd do YC again in a heartbeat.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _Some of the advice I did not take and did the opposite and
| it was the right decision. And some advice that I did not take
| was exactly right, but I only saw it in retrospect months
| later._
|
| Sometimes their advice is right, and sometimes it's wrong? That
| doesn't sound particularly valuable.
|
| > _Fundraising - being a YC company definitely opens doors, and
| also helps protects you from bad actors who have to think twice
| before fucking with a YC co. Very valuable for any first-time
| founder._
|
| I'd love to see this substantiated.
| rco8786 wrote:
| > Sometimes their advice is right, and sometimes it's wrong?
| That doesn't sound particularly valuable.
|
| That's how all advice works.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| >>Some of the advice I did not take and did the opposite and
| it was the right decision. //
|
| FWIW that does not mean the advice was wrong. Trivial
| example: "head East, there's a great bakery there", "I went
| West and found a place for a lovely lunch".
|
| Unless the parent elucidates (and maybe even then) you can't
| tell if the advice was right or wrong.
| quest88 wrote:
| Then why do you need the VC
| hindsightbias wrote:
| Because a lot of first-time founders have no idea what
| they're doing and other experts are at least experts
| whether they're 100% right or not. Anyone on Sand Hill is
| probably a better resource than some guy down the alley.
| groby_b wrote:
| As much as I think VC is problematic: Those folks have a
| host of previous experience. When they share advice with
| you, it's a distillate of seeing _lots_ of companies go
| through similar things.
|
| And that's all _any_ advice is - "based on what I've
| experienced before, here's what I see". You never should
| take advice unevaluated, but it's additional data that
| might help you to come to a better decision.
|
| If that additional data is worth _enough_ to you is a
| separate question, but there 's certainly value there.
| vmatsiiako wrote:
| VCs are not gonna help you build your company (doesn't
| matter if it's YC or anyone else). As a founder, you're
| the only one responsible about what advice to follow or
| not (and very often you get conflicting advice from two
| very credible sources)
| JohnFen wrote:
| Honestly, maybe you don't.
|
| But, as a serial entrepreneur for more decades than I
| like to think about, I can confidently say that there is
| one thing that you really do need: you need access to
| people experienced in business, preferable a similar sort
| of business to yours. You need their advice.
|
| YC can provide that, and has paved the path for it. You
| can also get it through many other avenues. But whether
| through YC or not, your business will be more likely to
| succeed if you can learn from what other people have
| already done.
| chimineycricket wrote:
| You can't expect them to be oracles though, right? Even the
| most experienced can give not-good-enough business advice,
| they don't do it on purpose I imagine.
| sp332 wrote:
| Sure, but the question in the thread is whether it's worth
| the money.
| JohnFen wrote:
| And the answer, as with all "is it worth the money"
| questions, is "it depends".
| moremetadata wrote:
| [dead]
| gumby wrote:
| > Sometimes their advice is right, and sometimes it's wrong?
| That doesn't sound particularly valuable.
|
| As others have commented, all advice is like that. The person
| offering it cannot know your precise situation, but just
| pattern match on what they hear. That's life.
|
| I turn this around the other way: if I am asked for my advice
| but the asker uses none of it, I don't feel bad, but stop
| offering advice. I'm clearly not the right person to be
| helping them.
|
| But the opposite is true too: if the asker takes 100% of my
| advice then they aren't thinking about their business (or
| whatever they're asking about). And so I won't offer them any
| more advice either.
| jseliger wrote:
| As Gildor says in _The Fellowship of the Ring_ :
| " '... The choice is yours: to go or wait.' [Gildor said.]
| 'And it is also said,' answered Frodo, 'Go not to the Elves
| for counsel, for they will say both no and yes.'
| 'Is it indeed?' laughed Gildor. 'Elves seldom give
| unguarded advice, for advice is a dangerous gift, even from
| the wise to the wise, and all courses may run ill. But what
| would you? You have not told me all concerning yourself;
| how should I choose better than you? But if you demand
| advice, I will for friendship's sake give it.'"
| xiphias2 wrote:
| Whenever I see interviews with YC advisors, they blame
| mistakes of founders of not taking their advice as the
| biggest as mistake.
|
| I don't have a strong opinion on this, and I believe YC is
| worth it, as 7% of nothing is still nothing, so any way a
| startup can decrease its risks is great.
| indymike wrote:
| > Whenever I see interviews with YC advisors, they blame
| mistakes of founders of not taking their advice as the
| biggest as mistake.
|
| This is normal human behavior. You did X and failed. If
| only you had done Y as I had suggested... Monday morning
| quarterbacking at it's finest.
| im_down_w_otp wrote:
| My experience is usually more like being told to do X, me
| saying X probably isn't worth the time and energy, doing
| X anyway at their prompting assuming they'll take some
| accountability for it going sideways, it ultimately going
| sideways because it was a bad idea, and then them taking
| zero accountability for their bad idea and not helping
| with the fact we've now been materially set back by the
| attempt.
|
| I've since learned to align our incentives around advice.
| If they'll put their money where their mouth is to stand
| behind their advice, then it's good advice. If they
| won't, then it's bad advice and I'm just their lab rat.
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| Ah it could be if you learn from it-- which it sounds like
| they did. They would have learned mire imagine than if they
| had never had to make those choices and live with the
| consequences.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Only if what you learned is _better_ than what you would
| have learned without that advice.
| JohnFen wrote:
| "Better" can mean a bunch of different things, too. For
| example, if your business is headed for the rocks,
| mediocre advice that you get in time to enact it is much
| better than perfect advice that you get too late.
|
| What advice isn't, and can never be, is ironclad rules
| that you can just accept without consideration and expect
| to provide value. The real value of almost all advice
| isn't the part where it's telling you what to do -- it's
| the part where it's providing you with a new way of
| thinking about the problem.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Sometimes their advice is right, and sometimes it's wrong?
| That doesn't sound particularly valuable.
|
| This is true of literally every source of advice you'll ever
| encounter.
|
| It's not that the advice is right or wrong in an absolute
| sense, it's that how good the advice is depends on the
| context of it. So you always have to evaluate the advice
| according to your own circumstances. Some of it will be
| appropriate to you and some will not.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > This is true of literally every source of advice you'll
| ever encounter.
|
| Right, that's the point. If the main thing you have to say
| about some advice is a thing that's true about all advice,
| then that's not a good endorsement.
| hassy wrote:
| The main thing about the advice comes immediately before
| the bit you're zooming in on. Want to talk to people who
| have seen hundreds of companies deal with what you're
| dealing? YC is great for that.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > Want to talk to people who have seen hundreds of
| companies deal with what you're dealing? YC is great for
| that.
|
| The way I read your post, saying you "can get" very
| valuable advice immediately followed by saying some
| advice was wrong undermines that "can" pretty solidly.
| I'm not just looking at that sentence in isolation.
|
| Could we get an estimate of how much of the advice was
| right, weighted by how non-obvious each thing was and how
| much of an impact it would have to follow or not follow?
| JohnFen wrote:
| > The way I read your post, saying you "can get" very
| valuable advice immediately followed by saying some
| advice was wrong undermines that "can" pretty solidly.
|
| I disagree. Getting advice from subject matter experts is
| almost always of great value. The chances of that advice
| being on-target for you are never 100%, but that doesn't
| mean the advice is without value. It just means that it's
| not infallible.
|
| In the end, as with literally everything about running a
| business -- VC backed or not -- you need to take in all
| of the quality information you can get and decide what's
| important/relevant and what's not.
|
| Having access to more information is a Good Thing, even
| if some particular bit of information isn't helpful.
|
| Also, while access to subject matter experts is one of
| the benefits of a group like YC, it's not necessarily the
| most important. Even if that's not useful to you, the
| other benefits may very well be.
|
| Disclaimer -- I'm personally not interested in doing VC-
| backed ventures. For me, the juice isn't worth the
| squeeze, so I'm not asserting that YC is some sort of
| panacea that is valuable to everyone. But it is obviously
| of great value to some. Part of what an entrepreneur
| needs to learn how to do is how to determine what is of
| value to your startup and what is not. Every venture is
| different, and has different needs.
| aflag wrote:
| 100% right is likely impossible, but the way it was
| written it made it sound as if it was right 50% of the
| time, which is essentially the worst you can do. Anything
| below or above that is valuable. Obviously, the closer to
| 0% or 100% the better.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > the way it was written it made it sound as if it was
| right 50% of the time
|
| Ah, I see. I didn't interpret it that way at all!
| lazide wrote:
| _that you got advice_ for the particular areas you needed
| and it was not _always bad_ is actually a pretty major
| step up from what you'd otherwise be dealing with, in my
| experience.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| If you could find a source of advice for areas you need
| that is _always bad_ , that would be amazingly useful.
| Each piece of advice is another pitfall you can
| confidently avoid.
| lazide wrote:
| The Inverse Cramer strategy has been doing pretty good I
| hear.
|
| Unfortunately, real life advice is rarely something you
| can short. :(
| solveit wrote:
| Eh, I know you're being facetious but the opposite of bad
| advice is not good advice. Things are more complicated
| than that. Which is why even a 20% hit rate (say) could
| be very impressive.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| If you can get multiple wrong takes on the same topic you
| can very likely narrow down the correct path by a lot.
| Even if each piece of anti-advice is kind of vague by
| itself.
| jxramos wrote:
| Yah, seeing that is a signal from others personal
| experience that you're now entering into non-formulaic
| territory and need to put on the appropriate hat.
| vmatsiiako wrote:
| The advice can't always be right. As a founder, I get a lot
| of (also unsolicited) advice every day, and it is the
| founder's responsibility to decide what advice makes sense in
| the current context. YC partners always emphasise that, and I
| really appreciate that.
|
| In general, I can only say positive things when it comes to
| YC advice (especially on the fundraising side - YC partners
| know A LOT about fundraising)
| jjeaff wrote:
| No idea about whether bad actors would think twice, but if
| you are asking about whether having YC attached to your
| business opens doors, absolutely. I did a startup with a much
| less well-known incubator VC and that alone got us in so many
| doors compared to when you are trying talk with VCs on your
| own. Honestly, I think that is the one and only major benefit
| to doing an incubator. Unless you are just really green and
| need the support for things that maybe aren't on your radar
| like taxes and payroll and compliance, etc., the unknown
| unknowns.
|
| There are a lot of businesses with a great deal of traction
| that do incubators because it simply opens a lot more doors
| for VC investment. You would be surprised how little due
| diligence many investors actually do. Many will just invest
| in whatever $respected_vc is investing in. Assuming that
| $respected_vc has already done the due diligence.
| iab wrote:
| This is the nature of all advice. If there was a surefire
| playbook to do X and get Y result, then everyone would do it
| surely?
| lr4444lr wrote:
| Substantiating as an early employee of a YC company. There is
| much honor among thieves, so to speak.
|
| EDIT - but to the OP's point, yeah, it's what you make of it.
| I would suspect that word could get out about founders who
| are rude or combative to important people as not being worthy
| of any veil of protection.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Does it really need to be stated that you can learn a ton
| from advice you don't directly take? It could be relevant
| later, get you to think up a different solution, help you
| understand a competitor's business model or decisions,
| improve your understanding of the industry you're in, etc.
| lazide wrote:
| I can't speak for if it is better or not in YC land, but I
| can vouch for a truly amazing amount of scammers that
| salivate when they hear startup. It's mind boggling.
|
| If someone makes a YC company legitimately happy, then using
| them with other YC companies would be both natural and a good
| way to filter out the scammers.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > I can vouch for a truly amazing amount of scammers that
| salivate when they hear startup.
|
| It really is amazing, isn't it? Over the years, I've
| developed a few coping mechanisms. One of which is that I
| never tell people I'm an entrepreneur, and I never use the
| word "startup".
|
| I work for a business, doing <whatever the business does>.
| Outside of potential investors, nobody needs to know that
| the company is a startup running on my sweat and blood.
| lazide wrote:
| That is excellent advice, thank you.
| mrobins wrote:
| Hearing both good and bad advice and making smart decisions
| is what a CEO's job is. Get as much advice as possible but
| understand no one knows your business like you do. Being able
| to hit go hard on the right advice and go slow/ignore the bad
| is what makes a good leader.
| archgoon wrote:
| [dead]
| bell-cot wrote:
| > YC is 100% what you make of it. It's not a lean back
| experience.
|
| THIS. Running (or even being the lowliest employee of) a maybe-
| not-yet-viable new & hopefully-fast-growing company is so, _SO_
| what you make of it.
| 77pt77 wrote:
| >helps protects you from bad actors who have to think twice
| before fucking with a YC co
|
| Probably the best thing they get out of this.
| r12343a_19 wrote:
| > YC is 100% what you make of it
|
| This is 100% what survivor bias sounds like.
|
| Every party is what you make of it. Every job. Every business.
| Every interaction.
|
| Except, you know, when this other thing is overhyped and one
| hopes getting there helps and it turns out... it's not any
| different than anything else?
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > Founders that have been source of advice and support.
|
| What are the specific logistics/semantics of reaching out to a
| group of "founders" with targeted questions? Is it an e-mail
| chain? Is there a group chat? Discord? WhatsApp? iMessage?
|
| I feel like if you were to ask 10 different "founders" general
| questions about "should I do XYZ in business?" (pivot, grow,
| measure how much you should listen to or ignore existing noisy
| customers, raise prices, don't raise prices, offer a free tier,
| don't offer a free tier), aren't you possibly going to get 10
| different answers given that business isn't an exact science?
| Or... is it?
| EGreg wrote:
| How can one do an all-remote batch ??
| acecreamu wrote:
| It's been an only option during Covid times. I believe now
| the program is still remote-friendly, tho everyone is
| encouraged to come in-person (particularly because it became
| crystal clear how harmful the remote experience is)
| seshagiric wrote:
| I could not help but notice the similarity with another popular
| question "Is MBA worth $100K+" and the equally similar answer
| "MBA is what you make of it".
| abfan1127 wrote:
| this seems obvious, but its not for some. Should you get an
| MBA from Harvard? the material is probably very similar to
| other materials in other programs. But, the contacts you can
| make are probably priceless. Are you a shy individual who
| isn't going to put effort into meeting people, growing a
| network? probably not worth it because the actual advantage
| is the people, not the degree.
|
| A classic example I use is I attended Arizona State for a
| bachelors and masters in electrical engineering. A friend of
| mine attended Arizona State for bachelors and Stanford for a
| masters. We both learned the same material. He had more
| opportunities to meet good contacts and use those resources
| to expand his future. Did he? no, he ended up at a defense
| contractor back in AZ. Instead he had larger student loans to
| pay back. The big fancy schools have big fancy networks of
| people, but if you're not going to leverage it, its not worth
| it. Sounds like YC is very similar.
| strangattractor wrote:
| VC's have pitched their "value added" other than funding
| forever. I suspect it is no different with YC. From my own
| limited experience as a startup founder VC's can be detrimental
| as well as helpful. Ultimately if they provide a stable source
| of funding and lend credibility to your venture consider
| yourself lucky. The valuations are just a reflection of the
| mood of the day.
| yeldarb wrote:
| We did YC in S20 (fully remote during COVID) and, as a Silicon
| Valley outsider, it was absolutely, 100%, no-questions-asked
| worth it for the fundraising credibility alone.
|
| After demo day, we were able to get in the room with dozens of
| top-tier investors, got multiple term sheets, and were able to
| pick the seed investors that were right for our business. This is
| a luxury none of my non-YC founder friends have had (being
| outside of Silicon Valley it was just such a stark, stark
| contrast in our fundraising experience to my friends').
| Fundraising has always been a struggle and giant distraction for
| them.
|
| The doors YC opened for us let us focus on building and have had
| an outsized impact on our trajectory. Re the 7%: I'd much rather
| have 93% of a giant pie over 100% of a small one.
|
| Edit: I should caveat that YC and VC in general are built around
| finding & amplifying outliers. If you don't think you are an
| outlier founder and aren't trying to build an outlier company,
| our experience probably isn't relevant.
| [deleted]
| mbesto wrote:
| YC doesn't scale for students. In fact, no accelerator does
| (500startups has ~3k investments as well). Accelerators are about
| relationships, signalling, prestige, advisory, networking, etc.
| The success is asymmetric, because YC is a numbers game - the
| more bets they make, the higher likelihood they are to succeed.
|
| Many of the negative criticisms here have to do with the fact
| that there are 4k companies that have gone through YC, and this
| batch specifically had 400 companies, so it's no wonder there are
| aspects that are less than ideal.
| mikrl wrote:
| >Accelerators are about relationships, signalling, prestige,
| advisory, networking
|
| Interesting to see this after reading the 'nice vs competent'
| threads because everything you mentioned is a soft skill, and
| correlated with EQ/SQ, niceness and playing of the game.
|
| I guess it's a reminder that there is no objective superior
| strategy of being nice vs being competent because the game is
| too complex for that. It's strategically applying both to
| increase your own survivability and if you're so inclined, that
| of your company too.
| dtagames wrote:
| Interesting quote: Even when it came to
| fundraising, all the YC's advice came down not to how to raise
| smarter and more, but to the fact that everyone needs to follow
| their simple framework, not try to shine too much, not try to
| choose the right words, wash off all the makeup, put on a gray
| uniform, and present dry facts--how much money customers already
| paid you, what the size of the market, if you count all the units
| you can sell, what you have actually built and what is working
| today. And this will always sound bad for anyone, it just can't
| sound good in the early days. And what actually works is
| storytelling, confident vision, committed revenue, and all these
| subtle things. It looks as if they are trying to make the
| selection process among 400 companies easier for the investors,
| and cover their own reputational risks, instead of trying to wrap
| each company in a beautiful wrapper and help it to raise easier.
|
| Just for ref, I did SUS and applied to YC three times
| unsuccessfully.
| sharemywin wrote:
| I guess it comes down to who is the product and who is the
| customer.
| [deleted]
| madmask wrote:
| A "beautiful wrapper" of bs. I think the makeup would smell
| fishy to investors, and that they would appreciate clear hard
| facts PLUS the vision.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| I guess both perspectives seem completely rational to me. Why
| shouldn't Ycombinator care most about viability and why
| shouldn't startups care most about vision?
|
| Each side needs to cater to the other a bit but ultimately this
| is just the difference between funders and builders.
| dtagames wrote:
| I think the complaint here is that the current "mass market"
| version that treats all founders the same isn't really able
| to deliver on the promise of helping most of them achieve
| their vision. If YC makes all its money from tentpoles, the
| fund doesn't care. But founders probably care.
| bbarnett wrote:
| When a woman is pregnant, the fetus tries to grow as large as
| possible, while to womb/woman works to restrict growth.
|
| Too much of either is not good, so perhaps the same is true
| here.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| I think you need to brush up on your reproductive
| knowledge.
| komadori wrote:
| I think the foetus has a vested interest in not growing too
| large!
| bbarnett wrote:
| Cannot even remotely understand the logic in this getting
| flagged.
|
| People are upset with the idea, that the mother and the
| fetus form a feedback loop, to ensure the baby is as large
| as possible, while still being able to exit the womb??
|
| Yeah, horrible, flaggable idea. Even if one disagrees, what
| is the logic in flagging? "Ew, ick! Birth!"?!?
|
| Bizarre.
| dang wrote:
| > the mother and the fetus form a feedback loop, to
| ensure the baby is as large as possible, while still
| being able to exit the womb
|
| That's quite different from what you said in the GP
| comment. This is a more neutral way to put it.
|
| I've taken the flags off the GP comment now, but I'm
| leaving the subthread collapsed because it's off topic.
| aatd86 wrote:
| Or maybe they have learnt that investors due-diligence is about
| the hard facts and not sentiment?
|
| Not everyone is a good story-teller either so to avoid the
| confounding charm factor, just be as boring and straight to the
| point as possible?
|
| Which should also keep every startup of their batches on equal
| footing and hopefully mitigate the hype factor?
|
| Not defending them, just me brainstorming about what could be
| plausible explanations for this.
| dtagames wrote:
| It's the opposite! Only the good hype-makers and storytellers
| get early access to investors before demo day. If you're a
| good huckster, no one finds out about your stats. Even
| though... YC tells people to be dry and boring and focus on
| stats.
|
| That's his complaint.
| acecreamu wrote:
| Exactly, a rational facts-driven investor is a myth
| ahstilde wrote:
| YC suggests people tell a story:
| https://www.ycombinator.com/library/49-a-guide-to-yc-demo-
| da...
| [deleted]
| danenania wrote:
| I think the rationale here is "be so good they can't ignore
| you". While advanced fundraising skills could potentially
| help someone to raise _without_ first making a great product
| that people demonstrably want, nailing product and early
| growth sufficiently well makes fundraising achievable even
| for founders who are notably lacking in the charm and
| storytelling departments.
| dtagames wrote:
| Here again, I think the complaint is the opposite. He's
| saying that if you have traction already, you don't need
| YC. You're further along than what they offer. They are
| there to help people who have no traction and no metrics
| and no money.
|
| The sad thing is that the hype cycle is _more_ important
| than the product delivery. Many huge investments are made
| on products that have nothing delivered. It 's more BS than
| we'd like to admit. My own product failed in the market
| because I focused on the MVP and making it real and not on
| getting hype out and using that to get money.
| danenania wrote:
| 'Traction' is a pretty wide spectrum. Having some early
| traction with a small number of users who love your
| product is a sweet spot for YC imho, especially if you
| don't have connections or a 'pedigree' in the startup
| world. At that stage, VCs typically aren't interested
| unless you have something else going for you. YC helps
| you take the few sparks you've got smoldering in some
| twigs and turn it into a little fire that is potentially
| interesting to angel and seed investors without too much
| embellishment.
| gus_massa wrote:
| You can call it reputation management. They can provide access
| to good investors, because investor know they are not selling
| lemons.
|
| For example, if YC has a strict rule about inflating the
| startup users only up to 20%, and then everyone will inflate
| them 20%-25% and investors will pay only the the 50% because
| they never know how much the number are inflated.
| yaseer wrote:
| We did W21, and whilst the point that 'remote < in-person' has
| some validity, I fundamentally disagree on the points about YC's
| network, partners and community.
|
| Most of the YC network effects occur after demo day. Likewise,
| most of the socialising occurs after demo day, as during the
| batch companies have little time to socialise. You get out of the
| network what you put in.
|
| Similarly, with YC partner advice - it depends on how you utilise
| it. To be honest, we probably under-utilise the partners (we made
| most of our stupid startup mistakes pre-YC). But looking at
| batch-mates I've seen companies attribute pivotal decisions to YC
| advice, particularly during funding rounds.
|
| I'd liken it a college experience - you won't be spoon-fed like
| you were in preschool. You must be self-directed to be
| successful, and there's always someone smarter and more
| successful than you to learn from.
| tschesnok wrote:
| Wow. In the footnote they mention they shut down right after demo
| day? Perhaps I'm old school but I always had a huge feeling of
| indebtedness to my investors.
|
| So here they lose all the money within 3 months and write a
| scathing review to boot?
|
| Is it not a two way street?
| awwstn wrote:
| next post will be: how i got into YC, shut down my company, and
| then added x subscribers to my substack by simply trash talking
| YC
| Ecstatify wrote:
| Positive Review: "Upstanding fellow, pillar of the community"
|
| Negative Review: "Degenerate, bad mindset, red flags
| everywhere"
| scythe wrote:
| I wouldn't describe the review as "scathing", although it's
| certainly titled as though it would be. The parts where the
| author offers the most critical complaints seem to be
| particular to their experience as a startup based in Singapore,
| while most of the YC companies are in SFBA or recently NYC. And
| in that, their feedback may be more useful for YC or others
| than a generic story from someone on YC's home turf.
|
| They also seem to be thanking YC for basically inducing them to
| shut down before they had lost everything. Here it is more
| contradictory to what they wrote (3/5) about YC as a "school",
| because they apparently gained quite a bit from the advisement,
| even if it wasn't in the way they initially hoped. Though, I
| can certainly understand being a little unhappy with the bearer
| of bad news, even though we've all been taught not to be.
| ntonozzi wrote:
| Typically and hopefully they would have to return the money
| that they did not spend, and it's better for the investors to
| get that portion of their money back than to have founders run
| it into the ground.
| hk__2 wrote:
| This is answered in the disclaimer at the top of the post:
|
| > YC are the ones who teach how important is negative feedback
| for improvement.
| frozenport wrote:
| >> I always had a huge feeling of indebtedness to my investors
|
| With early stage, low capital startups, relationship is more
| like an employer.
| acecreamu wrote:
| That's why we did it, instead of spending money dragging the
| decision or even taking more money and spending them while
| building mediocre company, we wind up operations in a shortest
| term, and returned everything, to minimize damage for
| investors. We even cancelled the checks which were about to get
| wired.
|
| How to perceive it--is up to you, we sleep well because we did
| the best we could in that situation.
| ushakov wrote:
| You sound like a very self-reflected founder to admit this!
|
| Wish more YC founders could learn from you
| paxys wrote:
| Think of YC like a Harvard MBA. You may or may not learn anything
| substantial from it. The quality of education may or may not be
| better than your local state school. Graduating with that brand,
| however, may be valuable enough in itself to justify spending the
| hundreds of thousands of dollars. How you leverage the network is
| entirely up to you.
| yashap wrote:
| The "credibility" value is pretty huge IMO. If you're a small
| startup, the assumption from potential customers, employees and
| investors is that you're super likely to fail, probably soon.
| Because YC companies have a strong track record, you instantly
| gain credibility with potential customers, employees and
| investors.
|
| It's worth 7% of the company for most, because it makes it more
| than 7% easier to hire, sell and find raise, and those 3 things
| are the most important things for most startups.
| ngiyabonga wrote:
| I find these two concepts [1, 2] at odds with each other. Not a
| critique on the author - on the contrary, empathy: I felt the
| same when applying to YC (did not make a batch).
|
| On one hand, the general impression you get when preparing for
| your application (via FAQs, Startup School, YC videos, etc) is
| very much in line with [1] - YC is looking for _very_ early
| stage.
|
| But once you go through the actual application you feel focus
| shift towards [2] - metrics and $. That is to say (with
| admittedly some not-having-been-selected bias), I feel [2] is a
| significant factor in deciding on applications. So as I weigh in
| on whether to apply for the next batch, I'm not sure whether a
| product I've just finished building makes sense for YC and
| whether I should gamble on attempt #3.
|
| I think it would help both YC and founders if they take some
| steps to make this clear(er) for potential applicants.
|
| [1] > In general, there is an evident focus on the very early
| stage without a product. The main theory and advice are about how
| to figure out what to do, how to build an MVP, how to launch, how
| to talk to customers, where to find the first 10 customers, how
| to raise the first money, and so on. Needless to say, for
| companies with tens or even hundreds of thousands in revenue it
| won't be very valuable.
|
| [2] > [...] present dry facts--how much money customers already
| paid you, what the size of the market, if you count all the units
| you can sell, what you have actually built and what is working
| today. And this will always sound bad for anyone, it just can't
| sound good in the early days.
| necubi wrote:
| > But once you go through the actual application you feel focus
| shift towards [2] - metrics and $. That is to say (with
| admittedly some not-having-been-selected bias), I feel [2] is a
| significant factor in deciding on applications.
|
| While the application does ask about that (and I'm sure it's
| very helpful for getting in if you've already demonstrated
| traction) it's absolutely not required to have any revenue or
| users when getting accepted into YC. I'm in the current batch.
| We applied before we'd built anything and definitely before we
| had any users (we didn't even have a name yet -- we had to pick
| one in order to submit the application). Across the batch there
| are a few companies that came in with strong traction but
| they're definitely in the minority.
| acecreamu wrote:
| You're right, it feels contradictive.
|
| On the defense of YC, I would say, they aim to make you think
| in terms of metrics and $ from day 1, perhaps?
| danenania wrote:
| My impression from YC and investors in general is that without
| a product and traction, the investment decision becomes mostly
| about you as a person. Do you have an impressive resume? Are
| you an MIT/Stanford grad? Do you come across as especially
| intelligent and ambitious in conversations?
|
| When you have a product and traction, a lot of that goes out
| the window. All the things I listed above are basically proxies
| for "might have the ability to make something people want". If
| you've already shown you can do that, other things become less
| important. On the extreme end, where you are growing like
| crazy, most investors will overlook just about any flaw or lack
| of credentials.
| [deleted]
| giorgiop wrote:
| Thanks for writing this up. The white on black background made me
| blind for today.
| acecreamu wrote:
| Happy to honestly answer any brutal questions you have!
| dilippkumar wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this.
|
| What's the strongest counter argument you can make in favor of
| YC?
| acecreamu wrote:
| There are a lot of good, even in what I write. The strongest
| I believe is the early and fully independent support for
| ideas that received no other recognition yet.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| Do you think YC would make sense for a company that doesn't
| intend to raise money beyond the YC investment?
|
| I have an idea for a b2c product I want to build that has a few
| paths to revenue (and a possible b2b offshoot), as well as
| acquisition by FAANG (or FAANG-adjacent). Is there something
| about taking investment from YC that prevents me from turning
| around and selling it for $2M after building it out a bit more?
|
| Alternately, as a solo founder, if I got to a point of $10K MRR
| I'd be happy to just keep doing what I'm doing, but I guess I'd
| have an obligation to continue trying to grow?
|
| edit: to clarify, I'd be using the $125K 7% part of the
| investment without necessarily dipping into the additional
| $375K in this situation. But maybe I'm not understanding how
| the MFN provision works
| robocat wrote:
| YC only invests in companies that aim big, and have a big
| opportunity. So you would have to lie to get them to invest,
| and they likely would catch you out lying.
| http://paulgraham.com/growth.html and
| http://paulgraham.com/mean.html gives you some idea (also see
| http://paulgraham.com/articles.html ).
|
| Giving 7%, but getting say 20% extra when you sell, could be
| financially sensible (depending on your other costs and
| benefits).
|
| Do you think it is worth lying?
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| I have no intention of lying, I'd rather bootstrap or shop
| for other investors who don't have the same expectation of
| 'growth potential'.
|
| The YC model is.. it's own thing.. seems like in the
| current economy, they need every company to be a potential
| unicorn, which works out for them because they're doing it
| at scale, and the ones that deliver, deliver outsized
| returns.
|
| But possibly doesn't work out as well for the founders,
| because the 9/10 that don't deliver, are forced to run
| their company into the ground chasing a moonshot vs. a
| sustainable lifestyle business, and don't get to reap the
| rewards they might get from the latter business model
| robocat wrote:
| Agree. I have yet to see YC publish figures on founder
| returns - they mostly talk about the successes.
| https://jaredheyman.medium.com/on-the-life-and-death-of-
| y-co...
|
| Amazing video on bootstrapping:
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=otbnC2zE2rw
|
| There are funds trying to succeed at the many-small-
| successes model of investing - personally I am skeptical
| (from my own experience) because the natural failure rate
| is so high (before stressors due to investors). Edit: and
| there is a strong negative selection bias - small
| software businesses asking for money is a loud signal
| that they are much less likely to be successful at all
| IMHO. Relevant article about Mittelstands "We need a
| middle class for startups": https://neilthanedar.com/we-
| need-a-middle-class-for-startups... and my comment
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31350478
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| > small software businesses asking for money is a loud
| signal that they are much less likely to be successful at
| all IMHO
|
| Money doesn't seem like the main benefit to going through
| YC (otherwise there are lots of other investment firms
| one could approach). The main advantage seems to be the
| network, connections, and expertise on running a
| business.
|
| Sure, if I had another 30K I'd have an extra year of
| runway, which can be pretty valuable right now. But I
| suspect solo-bootstrapping without a good VC will result
| in a lot of friction at points that a specialist VC would
| be well-suited to assist with (providing standard ToS,
| verifying compliance, business structure boilerplate,
| etc)
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Why don't you look into bootstrapper friendly VCs
| instead?
|
| TinySeed and Calm Fund come to mind.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| This is awesome, thank you for suggesting these!
| acecreamu wrote:
| Any investor would hate this idea, it's a terrible deal for
| them, and YC are smart enough to get it out of you. The whole
| business of VC is to sell later at the higher price. If they
| give you money at val of 5M+ and you sell for 2M - they are
| in loss.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| It's not val of 5M though? It's ~1.7M IIUC. 7% for 125K, an
| additional 375K can be invested though, with additional
| equity attached. Is that not right?
|
| edit: Investors are also expecting to take a loss on many
| of the investments. 2M is one exit option, which still
| gives them +17% return on investment
|
| I know that's not the standard type of exit YC are looking
| for, and I'm open to growing a bit more, but not as
| interested in taking additional investments. Final exit
| could end up being 10M for all I know.
|
| I just think this growth at all costs attitude needs to
| change a bit with the current economy. I'd be happy to take
| $80K for a 7% investment also, but they have a standard
| deal which I think perverts the incentives and, frankly,
| leads to outcomes where they're pushing you to take more
| investment even if you could just have a sustainable
| business pulling in 10-30K MRR or something
| tptacek wrote:
| The whole business of business is to sell later at a higher
| price.
| turbonaut wrote:
| In some businesses selling earlier at a higher price is
| also acceptable. It's only the delivery that is later (or
| indeed concurrent).
| monetus wrote:
| With the market conditions right now, have any ideas about how
| it could be better?
|
| It sounds like structural critiques; like a smaller, tighter
| community that onboards with better incentives, enables more
| efficient engagement with the alumni and batch would be a big
| gain. And importantly, like ycombinator could show more
| flexibility and interest in the batch. That sounds like a
| smaller network overall though, with less success stories to
| tout. If they have a better 'batting average' so to speak,
| though, that would help the investor environment. How does it
| affect their income and social lives, balancing it all I
| wonder. Thanks for the article!
| acecreamu wrote:
| I think they did a right move - making the batch smaller and
| moving it back in-person. The money amount that was not very
| attractive at 2021 makes a lot more sense in 2023 as well.
|
| As for the community I believe it can only be build
| relatively strong for <100 people. Hence, smaller niche-
| specific batches?
| ahstilde wrote:
| How much did your company raise in total, and at what
| valuation? Would it have been able to do so without YC?
| acecreamu wrote:
| I can say, we didn't see significant uplift at Demo Day, the
| highest bump of valuation happened when we got accepted, it's
| fair to assume we wouldn't get it otherwise.
|
| I can't answer your question completely as in the end we
| decided not to raise and returned the money...
| ychnthrowaway24 wrote:
| What led you to shut down and not continue and pivot?
| acecreamu wrote:
| Huge % of dilution after going through two accelerators (EF
| and YC). Would be too much of a burden to drag into a new
| venture.
| blast wrote:
| Didn't you know that when you took the money?
| acecreamu wrote:
| When we took the money we were planing to build up the
| original idea, not to start another one. For the
| consecutive growth of the original idea it wouldn't be an
| issue.
| ginger2016 wrote:
| I didn't go to YC. My impression of YC is from news articles and
| hacker news. I believe that YC is good only if it helps you raise
| money.
|
| Their advice is not worth it because advice is free on YouTube.
| Let's take PG; he often gives a lot of general and specific
| advice; he is a great writer and a fascinating mind. I enjoy
| reading his articles; they are outstanding, but they aren't any
| different from the many YouTubers giving advice. Unless you get
| personal time with YC staff, their services are not unique.
|
| Do you need to be Peter Mckinnon's apprentice to learn
| photography? No, likewise you don't need YC.
| kingboss wrote:
| If you think PG is a great writer and fascinating mind you
| absolutely need to expand your horizons.
| ginger2016 wrote:
| I am not saying PG is Shakespeare, PG is good in his field of
| writing, i.e. giving random(but useful) advice to wannabe
| founders who listen.
| rubenfiszel wrote:
| S22, solo founder, open-source infra + internal tools
| (windmill.dev).
|
| As the other ones in this thread have mentionned, YC is what you
| make out of it. For the fundraising alone, it allowed me to raise
| - a non US solo founder - at very comfortable terms and on the
| financial aspect alone it would have been worth it. But most
| importantly, the hardest part to start a company in my opinion is
| to keep being motivated.
|
| I was under the impression that surely a successful startup
| wouldn't have to go to any struggle and that founders were a
| special - genius-like - kind of breed. Being in YC opened my
| eyes:
|
| - everyone struggle, relax and keep working
|
| - the great people of this world are smart, but not crazy smart.
| They are crazy pragmatic, and crazy motivated, which you can be
| TOO
|
| - YC founders are nice people, and they make for great friends to
| keep. Those people are the only one that will understand truly
| what you're going through.
|
| YC was a transformational experience for me and I would recommend
| it to all.
|
| EDIT: To give a more balanced view, YC was also stressful, and
| the expectations were the same, solo founder or not. Be prepared
| for an intense ride.
| acecreamu wrote:
| These are good points! Especially for founders who don't have
| any founder-group in the first place, YC may be a source to
| create one.
|
| These things are really important, just that in comparison I
| saw alternatives which can help with it better (being in a
| small in-person group, for example)
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Thanks so much for posting this, I really appreciated it. I
| can't say enough how much this point aligns with my experience:
|
| - the great people of this world are smart, but not crazy
| smart. They are crazy pragmatic, and crazy motivated, which you
| can be TOO
|
| One of the things I've seen about successful entrepreneurs is
| that they have the ability to just push, push, push, even when
| _everything_ is hitting the fan. I 've realized about myself
| that that's just not the way I work - in super
| stressful/chaotic situations, some people have the ability to
| just cut out the noise and focus. I'm not like that, my nervous
| system just gets too hyped up.
|
| So, over time, while I've been disappointed that I don't have
| some of these skills I wish I had, I've found that I can be
| very valuable in other roles, and those can be lucrative or at
| least "lucrative enough" for me.
| mr90210 wrote:
| I didn't know YC accepted solo founders.
|
| Congrats! I'll definitely check your product out.
| hu3 wrote:
| > a non US solo founder
|
| As a non US citizen, I'm interested so bear with me:
|
| 1) You had move to US right?
|
| 2) Did YC provide you the finances to do so beforehand?
|
| 3) What kind of Visa status should/could I seek for this?
|
| No need to answer what you don't feel comfortable. I would
| appreciate any pointers.
| mmq wrote:
| There is information on YC's website that answers your
| questions:
|
| * https://www.ycombinator.com/about#yc-program-2
|
| * https://www.ycombinator.com/faq
| ahstilde wrote:
| I did YC in W21 in NYC. I was not allowed to meet people in large
| groups until April (after the batch).
|
| I disagree with each and every one of these ratings and
| conclusions.
|
| Firstly, the comparison should be "Is the alternative to YC worth
| it?" For many companies, the alternative is raising nothing and
| bootstrapping, or raising at significantly lower valuations.
|
| Additionally, I believe founders approach YC the wrong way. YC is
| not there to coddle you. They are there to give you access to
| hundreds of exceptional founders, brilliant partners who have
| seen much more than you, and a fundraising platform.
|
| It is on the founder to adapt their behavior to get the most out
| of Y Combinator. Unfortunately, many founders are unable to do
| so, and waste the opportunity.
| pertymcpert wrote:
| > I was not allowed to meet people in large groups until April
| (after the batch).
|
| I don't understand this. Why would they stop people talking to
| each other?
| shahargl wrote:
| covid
| [deleted]
| rhtgrg wrote:
| YC will absolutely coddle you if you manage to become one of
| their "darling" startups, just like any other incubator or VC
| firm.
|
| That's the type of thing that you have to earn, and if you earn
| it you don't need it.
| the_cat_kittles wrote:
| its almost like... and i know this is crazy... they are just
| money vampires?!
| dang wrote:
| That seems a little extreme!
| dang wrote:
| It's true that the business is governed by power laws at
| every level and you can't ignore those and succeed. I hope
| that doesn't prevent people from still being decent to each
| other.
| acecreamu wrote:
| That's totally true, we also heard that the attitude is
| dramatically different if you're in the top of the batch.
|
| Unfortunately, long-term performance is proven to not
| correlate well with performance during the batch, and YC are
| transparent about it. So I wouldn't recommend over-stressing
| it.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _They are there to give you access to hundreds of exceptional
| founders_
|
| Define "exceptional"? Is that major exits above a certain
| valuation? YC has _hundreds_ of these?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| acecreamu wrote:
| > They are there to give you access to hundreds of exceptional
| founders
|
| Is there anything you can't do on your own? Like finding email
| and writing? Mentioning that you're from YC in the beginning
| adds less to the conversion than the actual message you're
| conveying, imo.
| zamnos wrote:
| If you have enough of those to send, seems like something
| easy enough to A/B test. You only have a few sentences before
| an email recipient marks your email as spam. If one of those
| mentions your YC batch and that's what keeps their attention
| for another couple sentences, hey.
| outericky wrote:
| As a YC alum, of all the emails i get spammed with, I'll
| give YC founders are read and a reply. More often than not
| it's a "sorry can't help" but I will at least give it a
| look.
| benatkin wrote:
| > For many companies, the alternative is raising nothing and
| bootstrapping, or raising at significantly lower valuations.
|
| The review has four stars for fundraising. So it's not like
| they don't address that.
|
| However I don't understand "1.2. Network of clients/partners".
| I wonder why YC is expected to provide that. And for the Money
| one, that's common knowledge and only makes sense if you don't
| get a lot of value out of it.
|
| The most concerning one to me is that Networking isn't 5 stars
| and I would like to hear reviews from others because I suspect
| it might still deserve that.
| captaintobs wrote:
| i was looking to do yc but decided against it because of the
| remote aspect
| moneywoes wrote:
| Sounds like it's back to in person
| gamblor956 wrote:
| At least from the perspective of a potential customer, I now view
| Y Combinator as a red flag for a service provider, for a variety
| of reasons.
|
| The two big ones: YC companies try to "grow" too fast without any
| concern to the dynamics of how their market is supposed to work
| after they've achieved their targeted scale. The basic playbook
| seems to be: give stuff away for free until you kill the
| incumbents, then jack up prices to way more than what the
| incumbents used to charge while simultaneously reducing the
| services/products offered.
|
| There's also the issue of companies basing their business models
| around regulatory arbitrage, ignoring the rules that incumbents
| (are forced to) live by and then using their size to try to get
| away with their past misbehavior.
| acecreamu wrote:
| That's an interesting perspective! Do you feel YC companies get
| too pampered / arrogant?
| satvikpendem wrote:
| I don't see how this is specific to YC and not to other VCs
| too, unless you do mean to include other VCs too in your
| viewpoint.
| rvba wrote:
| Thought experiment: if you had a successfull bootstrapped company
| that didnt need external financing.. how much would it cost to
| get Y combinator advice?
|
| Basically how much should you pay to get their package?
|
| They have 200 companies with 125k investment? So 25 per year?
|
| Would they offer their "service" for 100k usd?
| yawboakye wrote:
| [flagged]
| b7r6 wrote:
| There is nothing wrong with being the category-defining early-
| stage investment company, and doing it as a for-profit business
| that's optimized for good financial outcomes.
|
| I think what some of the insiders (like the OP) and semi-adjacent
| outsiders (like me) might be feeling a _little_ queasy about is
| that YC began with a pretty clearly stated goal (in addition to
| making money) around disrupting the unproductive importance of
| high-status networks and signaling like elite university
| educations and to a lot of us (even people who didn 't apply like
| me) that was really inspiring. And to at least some degree, YC is
| now a high-status network that signals well.
|
| There's nothing uniquely bad about it, it's kind of the default
| throughout human history, and they are completely transparent
| about being a for-profit company, but it's also ok to be a little
| sad that it's not quite as idealistic as it used to be.
| mikekij wrote:
| I have minimal contact with YC these days, and have no particular
| motivation to artificially inflate the value of the program.
|
| YC was transformational for my company (MedCrypt). I have almost
| zero negative things to say about it, and would do it again
| immediately with my next company (despite probably not needing
| help raising the first $500k for a company).
|
| I can't think of a situation where I would recommend a company
| not accept a spot in YC.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _I've seen enough cases when saying "oh, I'm also from YC"
| didn't move the needle._
|
| When you're one of a thousand companies every year, why would it?
| Are YC particularly discerning, or are they optimizing getting as
| many through the "system" as possible?
| acecreamu wrote:
| > When you're one of a thousand companies every year, why would
| it?
|
| Exactly, therefore making very questionable the whole "YC
| network" concept
| hinkley wrote:
| There's something to be said for having churn in some disciplines
| rather than a comfortable consistency.
|
| And that something is Goodhart's Law. The longer the game, the
| more game theory you're dealing with.
| silverlake wrote:
| I always thought the primary benefit of YC was the brand. It's
| like an Ivy League school for startups. The article suggested it
| didn't help much. Perhaps going too big has diluted the YC brand?
| armatav wrote:
| The article literally only gives high star rating to demo day,
| predicated on the prestige factor of YC
| rexreed wrote:
| I actually like the YC as Ivy League school comparison - it has
| many parallels. Highly selective, has a set regimen ("world
| view"), has a somewhat high cost of entry ($500k for 7%, not
| bad tho), and has a fairly exclusive clique that provides value
| by association that's difficult for outsiders.
|
| Given that, is it harder to get into Harvard or YC based on
| admission numbers?
| acecreamu wrote:
| Purely based on numbers YC is more selective ;)
| rexreed wrote:
| What are the numbers? Are they disclosed?
| acecreamu wrote:
| Here, https://www.ycombinator.com/investors
|
| 1.5 - 2%
|
| Harvard: 4%
| gist wrote:
| > Given that, is it harder to get into Harvard or YC based on
| admission numbers?
|
| I always find it laughable (sorry not directed at you in
| particular) when people make that type of comparison.
| Probability of something occurring for unrelated events ...
| why in the world does that matter at all? I could say it's
| harder to get accepted to a certain health club than Harvard
| or YC.
|
| I am reminded of a restaurant in my city that opened and the
| local press talked about how hard it was to get a
| reservation. In fact this particular chef decided to open
| that restaurant both because he didn't have any experience
| and also the fact that it had a limited amount of tables
| would always make it seem more valuable in some way than it
| was. 'So hard to get a table harder than WONDERFUL RESTAURANT
| IN SAME CITY where it's hard to get a reservation HARDER THAN
| THAT EVEN!' Additional point in that restaurant was it took
| over the location (another PR win) of an old established and
| very famous restaurant in the same city. The press ate that
| up as a story angle. As if it mattered at all. It didn't only
| it made a good story angle. Otherwise why should it make any
| difference at all?
| robocat wrote:
| > $500k for 7%
|
| $125k is for 7%. The other $375k SAFE causes extra dilution
| when next round or sale occurs.
|
| > Ivy League school comparison
|
| One difference: Harvard graduates 98%, but YC founder's
| success rate is say 33% - http://paulgraham.com/die.html -
| and actual financial success is power law (average $ returns
| good, median return for founder rounds to $0). Edit:
| https://jaredheyman.medium.com/on-the-life-and-death-of-y-
| co...
| xwdv wrote:
| It's not like an Ivy League, it's more like joining a frat, but
| for startups. Except, it used to be more fun, when all
| companies worked at the same location and you could bump into
| people in halls and then go do keg stands after work or sleep
| on couches, etc.
|
| Now it's just remote webinar garbage, talk to some people on
| Zoom, etc.
| gist wrote:
| > It's not like an Ivy League
|
| The Ivy League is talked about and well known all over and
| public knowledge your neighbor your aunt, your wife, your
| mother, the guy who owns the local bakery etc. It's an
| international brand.
|
| YC known in the startup community. Most likely the guy who
| runs the local 200 person wholesale operation wouldn't even
| know about it unless he read about it in the WSJ he reads
| print edition. Go to sell to that company and they will say
| HUH what's that mean 'YC'.
| acecreamu wrote:
| double that, most of the people in the e-commmerce don't
| have any idea what is YC
| avree wrote:
| I think it would have always been the same for overseas
| companies - I've had several YC-founder friends, and the
| experience is vastly different if you're YC-in-the-Bay versus
| YC-elsewhere.
| necubi wrote:
| FYI, YC is now back to primarily in person (although there is
| a remote option, it's strongly encouraged to be in SF).
| aubanel wrote:
| Anyone have similar insights about Entrepreneur First? Btw I
| still don't understand if during the program they you a salary
| anyway or only if they end up taking a stake in your company.
| acecreamu wrote:
| In fact I (OP) have, we went through EF before YC.
|
| They do give you a stipend regardless whether you make it to
| the second stage (investment)
| neric wrote:
| Geez my eyes, what happened to rule #1 never use pure black?
| peter_d_sherman wrote:
| Interesting article!
|
| > _" Remember: accelerators and their help are temporary but the
| equity you give away forever"_
|
| True!
|
| But the other side of that argument ( _" The opposite of a fact
| is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very
| well be another profound truth." - Niels Bohr_) -- is that some
| entrepreneurial endeavors _require_ the assistance of multiple
| specialized parties without whose help the entrepreneurial
| endeavor will not succed, and:
|
| Owning only _part_ of a business venture that is successful --
| might very well be more valuable -- than owning _all_ of a
| business venture that is unsuccessful...
|
| In other words, a founder who accepts _capital for equity_ (AKA
| "Debt") in whatever form -- is paying a percentage of future
| rewards for a better chance at initial success, and faster growth
| once that initial success has been achieved...
|
| Now, the counter-counter argument to the one I make above, which
| is applicable to myself, which is applicable to a few other
| founders, is that _we don 't want to give away any equity in our
| future companies_ -- thus our trade-off is one of guaranteed or
| near-guaranteed (or at least easier) potential early success and
| faster growth curves (what we give up) -- in exchange for doing
| things the hard way, doing things the old-fashioned way, doing
| things the debt-free way -- at the expense of time (and watching
| many other people who took other people's money be more
| successful in the short and mid-term) -- but NOT at the expense
| of education -- a real and practical business education that
| could not be had at most universities, at most institutions of
| higher learning, even in their MBA programs...
|
| So which of these two approaches is right?
|
| Well, I don't think either one of them is wrong -- it all depends
| on the individual or individuals involved and their personal
| preferences, goals and values...
|
| The only one differentiator between the two, perhaps, could
| happen many years in the future -- a company which has sold too
| much of its equity could become the subject of a hostile
| takeover...
|
| A single founder who has never given so much as a single percent
| of equity -- will have his company taken from him over "his
| (proverbially) dead body"...
|
| That differentiator is _ownership_ -- _true ownership_ -- of a
| company...
|
| Still, there is value in "team lifts", and putting together teams
| to accomplish what single founders cannot accomplish alone...
|
| Related: Joel Spolsky, "Foreword to 'Eric Sink on the Business of
| Software'": https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/04/07/foreword-
| to-8220er...
| jawns wrote:
| At the very bottom, in a post-script:
|
| > The constant comparison and growth benchmarking triggered us to
| look differently at our business and we decided to wind up its
| operation right after the Demo Day.
|
| What happens in this scenario? YC gave them $500K in exchange for
| 7% of the business, and then they immediately shuttered the
| business?
|
| Did they get to keep the $500K?
| acecreamu wrote:
| We didn't take 375k in fact. In W22 batch they were optional,
| and would trigger MFN for many. As for the rest of money, we
| returned what has been left. That's why closing so rapidly - to
| be able to return more.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Why not take the 375k and/or pivot?
| acecreamu wrote:
| The dilution at that point would be unbearable
| satvikpendem wrote:
| I saw your other comment, makes sense. Are you working on
| a new startup then?
| iamnafets wrote:
| Absolutely not. SAFE investments have liquidation preferences -
| the investors will get what's the left of the money back.
| neric wrote:
| [dupe]
| varelse wrote:
| [dead]
| presidentender wrote:
| Is there a way to get the Bookface knowledge base without
| participating in YC?
| [deleted]
| dangoodmanUT wrote:
| YC has both transformed by company and saved my role as a
| founder. I'll be completely transparent and say I disagree with a
| lot of the sentiment. I'll do my best to briefly explain why.
|
| From talking to many YC alumn, I've observed a strong correlation
| with business success and YC opinion. Every founder that is no
| longer operating within 2 years of YC has a generally negative
| sentiment. Others are quite positive. Not sure what biases are at
| play, but the correlation is clear.
|
| As others have said, YC is what you make of it. I (S22) did not
| ever feel like I was getting cookie cutter advice from my GPs.
| When I talked to my partners, we really honed in on our issues
| specifically. Every time the GPs told us something they were
| right, whether it took me 10 seconds or 10 weeks to accept it.
| And to be fair the cookie cutter and repetitive advice they do
| give is because people generally don't listen if they just say it
| once or twice, and it's also REALLY important.
|
| > Hiring is waste of time, paid advertising is waste of time,
| content is waste of time, talking to investors is waste of time,
| getting media coverage is waste of time.
|
| This is dangerously oversimplified, these are all things that
| they suggest at various stages. Their advice for you depends
| greatly on your stage. Early on they told us paid placement is
| innapropriate. Later they told us it would be a great way to
| quickly validate changes and iterations. Depends on where you are
| and what you do.
|
| Yeah YC makes fundraising orders of magnitude easier. Yeah in
| person definitely makes it way better. I've no regrets, would do
| YC again every time.
|
| I've also heard similar sentiment from investors! "7% it too much
| for $125k", etc. But it's the prestige of the brand, and the
| super powerful network. I'm not part of any other pre-defined
| networks so I don't really know how to compare, but YC is
| POWERFUL. Nobody I've talked with that had those opinions had
| alternatives to getting that network or valuation that quickly,
| unless your already a startup star.
|
| The big caveat is that my timezone lined up and I had many in
| person options, I also did not shut down immediately after demo
| day. I'm sure that made our experiences dramatically different.
| Being in a group of founders with similar experiences and
| comfortable being vulnerable with each other is the greatest
| therapy any founder could ask for.
|
| I would warn non-YC founders reading this that this founders
| experience is highly abnormal for YC, and to talk to many more YC
| founders before drawing your own conclusions.
| nico wrote:
| Heard similar opinions from other YC founders before.
|
| I think any educational system will run into similar issues.
|
| The problem is that the system takes over and becomes more
| important than the original goal of educating, coaching, helping.
| And instead it just becomes a conversions and return optimizer.
|
| At the end the individuals don't matter as long as the aggregate
| produces good enough results.
| dang wrote:
| The original goal was to make money by investing in early-stage
| startups, and that's still the goal.
|
| It's true that the energy has changed from "let's hack the
| economy / see if this works" to "yup it works".
| celestialcheese wrote:
| > In the end, YC is an investor, an investor with a strong
| reputation, who is now sitting in a very comfortable chair and
| can select the best startups and invest in them at a meager price
|
| Wait what? a ~$7m valuation, _pre product_, is considered meager
| these days?
| HWR_14 wrote:
| A ~$7MM valuation? Did you read the same math I did? I see an
| investment at ~$1.8MM valuation and another investment as an
| MFN SAFE.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Doesn't this miss the point.
|
| If you need 150k to start your company it is difficult to find
| other options.
|
| You have a booking dollar idea, the drive and knowledge to set it
| through, but no cash. You need an early stage investor. What you
| are paying for is the massive risk that they are tipping that
| money down the drain. The other stuff is just value-add
| acecreamu wrote:
| The uncomfortable truth is that YC is a highly competitive
| program, the best teams invest a lot into preparation to get
| there. If you have nothing and need 150k to start your company,
| than you have better ways to find it, than the most prestigious
| accelerator in the world.
| dkuntz2 wrote:
| So much of this seems to just be a misunderstanding of how
| venture capital works. Like, yes, obviously they want your pitch
| to minimize flashy and showy and maximize real numbers like
| customer count, average spend, and market size.
|
| I may have a low opinion of venture capitalists but at the end of
| the day they're not complete idiots. They're operating with a
| known framework, they're trying to maximize their own returns,
| and the only way to know if that will happen is to know hard
| numbers (like how many customers you have, how much money you
| have in the bank, how quickly you spend money), all the hype and
| sales charisma is not going to help you, and if that's your
| entire presentation to investors they're going to tell _other_
| investors not to waste their time talking to you.
|
| The reason you're getting advice to minimize hype and showmanship
| and maximize hard numbers is because when you get into those
| investor meetings they're going to cut off hype and showmanship
| and ask you to just tell them the numbers. This isn't some "make
| life easier for YC and make every startup fit into a box" thing,
| it's just how investor pitches work.
| RestlessMind wrote:
| A recurrent theme I noticed is that a fully virtual setup (zoom
| calls, distributed companies in the batch) coupled with varied
| timezones lead to shallow interactions, weak bonds and no sense
| of community. Furthermore, if you are in a remote timezone (vs
| SF/NY) like the author, you will have even more trouble like
| ungodly meeting hours or very few fellows in the same timezone.
|
| This is very similar to how I have experienced remote work as
| well. Just replace startups with individuals and the takeaways
| are still the same.
| pclark wrote:
| This stood out to me:
|
| > In their picture of the world, you, the founders, should only
| build a product and talk to customers, everything else is
| superfluous and waste of time. Hiring is waste of time, paid
| advertising is waste of time, content is waste of time, talking
| to investors is waste of time, getting media coverage is waste of
| time.
|
| IMHO YC doesn't want you to "build" a product they want you to
| "grow" a product. I think the YC framework (again IMHO) is to get
| an idea out and then do everything you can to make it grow 30%
| each week, and if after a few months you're obviously failing at
| that -- maybe that product isn't working.
|
| This seems, on the whole, like kind of reasonable high level
| operating parameters for startups, since traction is what defines
| revenue and fundraising chances.
|
| I do think there is a flip side to this approach which is it can
| kind of lead to short-term-erism where if things aren't working
| you flail about, and/or it can encourage founders to specifically
| tackle things they can ship quickly rather than things that are
| maybe more compelling.
|
| I would argue that when things are slowly working that's exactly
| when you need skilled advisors and founders to give you critical
| advice. Most dying startup don't flat line... they slowly grow.
| samstave wrote:
| @Dang,
|
| Why the _F_ are we having this conversation on HN and it not a
| seminal discussion happening with, at and of YC?
|
| Why do we need "trench knowledge" as opposed to YC actually
| holding an open forum on such?
| dang wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand the question but HN discusses what
| it wants and this post happened to show up and get upvoted.
| Considering that the author went through YC a year ago I'm
| not sure that the timing matters much.
| samstave wrote:
| Thanks for the reply.
|
| All I am saying is that YC terms should be a place for
| clarification outside of HN - and if Q's show up on HN,
| they should be answered and addressed in a YC FAQ/forum-
| specific/whatever...
|
| Grats.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| > get an idea out and then do everything you can to make it
| grow 30% each week
|
| Compounded? After 8 weeks you go from 10 customers to 81, seems
| doable. But after 6 months you'd have 5,428 customers. Maybe if
| it was an App Store app? But if you have to talk to any of
| them, yikes. Might not be the most sustainable rate of growth?
| cwp wrote:
| Yeah, it's hard. But sustaining that is how you get the next
| Facebook.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| So YC is mostly just for unicorns?
| arbuge wrote:
| > In their picture of the world, you, the founders, should only
| build a product and talk to customers, everything else is
| superfluous and waste of time. Hiring is waste of time, paid
| advertising is waste of time, content is waste of time, talking
| to investors is waste of time, getting media coverage is waste
| of time.
|
| Getting you to focus on those two things, particularly the
| second one which many technical founders are initially out of
| their comfort zone doing (I need to work on it myself), is
| probably a huge value add in itself if they're successful at
| doing just that.
| ianbutler wrote:
| I'm surprised they haven't moved back to being in person. That
| seemed like one of the core benefits to companies, grinding it
| out with a set of like minded people who can all benefit in one
| place. Hearing you made a weaker network from YC than you would
| have liked is concerning, especially when you can find most of
| YC's wisdom on free videos. Network is one of the primary reasons
| I had applied and interviewed with YC a few times, both for
| investor networking and for founder networking and had presumed
| that was one of their main benefits.
|
| I agree with people here saying YC attempting to scale seems to
| be hurting the overall experience. Hopefully with their
| recommitment to early stage companies only, this changes for the
| better. Their earlier wins set them up as the pre-eminent
| accelerator and diluting that experience those earlier companies
| had seems like a bad idea to me.
|
| They have access to metrics I don't have though (obviously) so
| who knows I may be totally off base.
| thesandlord wrote:
| S22 and W23 have been in-person, W22 was the last remote batch.
| In person has been a significantly better experience from what
| I can tell!
| ianbutler wrote:
| I'm super glad to hear that!
| weisser wrote:
| "You, the founders, should only build a product and talk to
| customers; everything else is superfluous and a waste of time."
|
| I found it interesting that this seems to be described as bad
| advice that boxes founders in.
|
| "Hiring is waste of time, paid advertising is waste of time,
| content is waste of time, talking to investors is waste of time,
| getting media coverage is waste of time."
|
| The above all seem to be like a waste of time--but the OP is
| claiming otherwise. Perhaps this speaks to some YC companies
| being more mature than they used to be when they enter a cohort?
| _sentient wrote:
| I wonder how much of this is a function of the W22 batch being
| remote.
|
| We all know the benefits: The fundraising pop is great, the brand
| patina helps you hire better talent than you would otherwise, the
| advice can be useful, especially for first-time founders, you can
| sell into the YC network, etc. All of this pales, IMO, to the
| value of the personal connections you make in the program. It
| sounds like OP, by virtue of being 8,400 miles away, missed out
| on that.
|
| I went through YC in S14, and I found the in-person experience to
| be invaluable. There were 80 companies at the time, so we had
| somewhere around ~200 founders in our batch. Even at that scale,
| you're not going to get to know everyone, and I found myself
| gravitating toward a smaller group of people who I connected with
| personally.
|
| I'm not going to lie, YC was stressful. You're dropped in amongst
| bunch of smart and accomplished people who are sprinting as fast
| as possible toward the all-consuming Demo Day. It's a bit of a
| pressure cooker, but that's not unintentional. Those shared
| experiences formed the substrate of some amazing, life-long
| friendships.
|
| I have 15+ close friends who went through S14. We talk every day.
| We've been in each other's weddings. We've watched each other
| have kids, shut down companies, start new ones, get acquired for
| enormous amounts of money, and everything in between. It's been
| incredible watching their trajectories over the last 9 years.
| Some are C-level execs at public companies, some are tier 1 VCs,
| a couple are billionaires, some are homesteaders and amazing
| parents. All of them are solid, kind, high-quality people, the
| likes of which you are unlikely to meet in the regular world.
|
| I think you lose much of that in the remote-only format. If I
| were to go through a remote-only accelerator located in
| Singapore, I imagine I would make few meaningful personal
| connections. Like it or not, Zoom is a pretty thin facsimile of
| real human interaction.
|
| My life's trajectory is meaningfully better for the friendships I
| made in S14, and I expect that trend to keep compounding over the
| next 30 years. If you missed that benefit, you missed much of
| what makes YC special.
| anurag_baddam wrote:
| This reminds of my college experience. My friends and I were
| always stressed trying to finish the next CS project or study
| for the next exam but we came out of it extremely close to one
| another. Nothing builds friendships like shared pain I guess.
| Eiriksmal wrote:
| Even if you can't have personal connections with the founders
| of 80 companies in a batch, having _hundreds_ of companies in
| each batch--twice a year!--is seriously diluting my own worked-
| for-a-YC-startup brand equity. "Oh, yeah, I met Jeremy at
| $EVENT" becomes a thing of the past when there are thousands of
| founders with tens of thousands of early-stage employees.
| walleeee wrote:
| > All of them are solid, kind, high-quality people, the likes
| of which you are unlikely to meet in the regular world.
|
| This attitude may have something to do with the skepticism we
| low-quality people out in the regular world may harbor for the
| Silicon Valley startup sphere
| dang wrote:
| > _we low-quality people out in the regular world_
|
| I understand how easily this feeling can arise. It may not be
| obvious but we spend a lot of energy on HN trying to mitigate
| it. I don't want a high-status-insider vs. low-status-
| outsider dynamic on HN.
|
| One thing I'd like to tell you is that as someone who came
| from little class privilege and a geographically provincial
| place, and had zero connection to the "Silicon Valley startup
| sphere" or really any other sphere, YC welcomed me and gave
| me a shot and a lot of help.
|
| These dynamics aren't simple but I'd like to think (and do
| think) that YC is still one of the best ladders in the
| snakes-and-ladders game if you're talented, ambitious, and
| sincere. And at the same time, there are still lots of
| obstacles.
| digging wrote:
| maybe my brain is sleed-deprived but this doesn't feel
| great to me either. can we not be high quality people
| without those connections, regardless of how those
| connections might be made easier for the rare individuals
| who participate in YC?
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Who is saying you/we are not high quality people? No one
| is saying that high quality people don't exist outside
| YC, just that YC accepts high quality people. You are
| committing the logical fallacy known as the fallacy of
| composition [0].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_composition
| dang wrote:
| Of course we can! And are.
| rsp1984 wrote:
| _Their logic can be understood: make a good product, and the rest
| will catch up. But in real life marketing and hype really
| matters, and when everyone does these things while you naively
| sit and code, they get an advantage in the market, and you get
| your cool product._
|
| I sometimes get the feeling, also by watching their public
| content on YT, that a lot of YC advice, especially w.r.t. what to
| prioritize, is from an era of startups about 10-15 years ago.
|
| Back then there were about 10x fewer SaaS startups (maybe that's
| a conservative estimate) and if you had a decent product that
| solved a problem for your customers and you were just plugging
| away at it, that was enough to get noticed and grow.
|
| Nowadays every worthwhile niche seems to have 10-15 companies in
| it in no time, all of them doing more or less the same thing.
| Even if your company differentiates in a very special and useful
| way, getting that across to your potential customers is a totally
| different game now. You basically need 1-2 full time staff doing
| nothing but content creation and social media outreach marketing.
| Also locking in (micro-) influencers in your niche is key. Once
| they start promoting your competitors it's game over.
|
| From the content that I see publicly on YT etc. it seems to me
| that YC thinks such things are basically a waste of time. And
| back in the late 2000s and early 2010s that was largely true. If
| you are targeting a narrow hyper-niche it is probably still true,
| however it's just not the reality for 99% of today's startups,
| even YC ones.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| This logic just implies YC is more relevant than ever.
|
| If there's 10-15 players in the space and you're the one with
| YC connections...
|
| Meanwhile if there are barely any players in your niche you
| have time to get things wrong and iterate in isolation, no need
| for the all-or-nothing style of growth
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I think parent's (and OP's) point was that YC was more
| valuable for investing and strategy, but less valuable for
| finding customers.
|
| And since customers are the most difficult part now (because
| 10-15 players), it adjusts the relative value of something
| that doesn't help you acquire customers.
|
| IOW, the differences between a "build it and they will come"
| historic era and a "make me care about you" modern one.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| I don't agree, the parent's point is directly attacking
| strategy:
|
| > a lot of YC advice, especially w.r.t. what to prioritize,
| is from an era of startups about 10-15 years ago.
|
| I'm saying any misalignment in strategy matters less than
| implied. I spend a lot of time with current and past YC
| founders these days, and the recurring thought has always
| been "if you know already know business they're not going
| to teach you that much".
|
| > it adjusts the relative value of something that doesn't
| help you acquire customers.
|
| Money is how you acquire customers. From outlasting
| competitors to advertising to improving your product, it's
| money that turns into customers. So YC being valuable for
| investing is tantamount to being valuable for gaining
| customers.
| dang wrote:
| YC has never taught "build it and they will come" - they
| give plenty of advice and encouragement to find customers
| and will add, er, kinetic energy if you're not actively on
| that. That's a huge focus.
|
| This, however, not so much:
|
| > "You basically need 1-2 full time staff doing nothing but
| content creation and social media outreach marketing"
|
| If that's the way you're thinking, YC's going to try to
| change your mind, and if you don't want to change your mind
| about that, YC's probably not a good fit.
|
| (I'm not speaking for YC here! just from my own experience
| as a founder, observer, HN mod)
| testmasterflex wrote:
| What's your startup Dang? :)
| tptacek wrote:
| Dan and Scott Bell did Skysheet.
| mcguire wrote:
| Your comment put me in mind of something I saw in 1999 or so;
| where a local newscast in Austin profiled a local start-up and
| included:
|
| "We can't discuss what we do because someone else could take
| the idea and beat us to it."
|
| _That_ was the beginning of the dot-com bust.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Yep. I've heard that sentiment more times than I can count
| over the decades -- and in every single case, without
| exception, those ventures failed pretty hard.
|
| I think its because the sentiment expresses a fundamental
| misunderstanding of how business works and what makes it
| successful. The idea is not the most important ingredient in
| a business, the execution is.
|
| For the most part, it doesn't matter if someone else takes
| your idea and beats you to it as long as your offering is
| better at solving the customer's problem. And that's a matter
| of execution.
| hdivider wrote:
| I think we are definitely in a new era.
|
| My view: entrepreneurs should take on a little more
| _technology_ risk. Not just market risk. License IP from
| federal labs and government agencies -- there is SO much
| advanced tech sitting on shelves. Do government contracting to
| fund R &D.
|
| Go beyond just software, especially the SaaS kind, because
| ultimately, software can only make so much difference in
| society. Investors don't like government and anything sciencey,
| especially when there's a hardware component, so I don't
| believe most hotshot founders will go for it. But hopefully
| enough will take on more technology risk.
|
| The biggest problems out there right now require a mix of
| traditional software, ML, hardware _and_ research. All put
| together in the right way.
| jschveibinz wrote:
| You are describing a moat, and it is indeed important. I'll
| step up on the soapbox for a moment...
|
| A moat can be unique technology, an exclusive licensing
| agreement, an exclusive IP (patent or otherwise), very unique
| experience or insight, an exclusive geographic location, a
| very unique business model, a very unique skill and/or
| reputation, etc.
|
| Follow the leader seems like a plan, but it's probably not a
| good plan unless you have tons of money to spend on marketing
| and sales.
|
| In my previous home city, someone opened a bake shop with
| coffee that was targeted at the growing Korean population. It
| was unique: Korean pastries, Korean friendly faces, great
| coffee, etc. They probably invested $100k in opening this
| shop. It became very popular. Then, in about nine months,
| five more copycat shops opened up within a mile or two of
| this store. Result: business went way down for all of them.
| They all lost revenue, and they all invested a lot of money.
|
| Software is prone to this kind of copycat behavior. The
| thinking goes like one of these two sequences:
|
| 1. People like software-->I write software--->People like
| [note apps, for example]-->I can write a note app in a
| week--->I'll start a SaaS business
|
| 2. I write software--->I think [fill in the blank] is
| cool-->I will write an app for [that] in a week--->I'll start
| a SaaS business
|
| Writing software is not a differentiator. It's not a shortcut
| to big bucks. It's not a solution in itself. It's just a
| tool. Anything you can write in a week (or 3 months) can be
| done by 100,000 other people---in a week (or 3 months).
|
| You have to start with a problem, defined by a large group of
| people, that you have the experience and expertise to solve
| in a unique and valuable way. Software may be part of that
| solution, but it's just a fraction of the whole pie. You need
| to think about the whole solution---and the moat. It may take
| 5 to 10 years to develop your moat. Be patient and be
| observant.
|
| Good luck.
| testmasterflex wrote:
| Can you give any example of such "advanced technology"?
| wanderingmind wrote:
| For example, there is significant IP around additive
| manufacturing beyond plastics that are sitting as a
| squatting duck with national labs and universities that can
| be leveraged
| hdivider wrote:
| Consider all these:
|
| https://technology.nasa.gov/patents
|
| And the NSF's equivalent, the many national labs, defense
| labs, and research-intensive universities (eg UC Irvine is
| keen to for entrepreneurs to pick up IP; as are lots of
| others). There's _so_ much out there, and it 's just
| waiting for entrepreneurs to commercialize it. Many things
| won't have direct commercial application, but much of it
| does. Typically the entity doing the licensing doesn't just
| give you the IP, but a full teaching program and network to
| help you get further.
| twelvechairs wrote:
| > every worthwhile niche seems to have 10-15 companies in it in
| no time
|
| B2B in established industries can be much more open, though
| often requires a level of domain knowledge to enter.
| baxtr wrote:
| Super interesting.
|
| Do you have an example in mind where a startup excels through
| marketing in a crowded niche with the mentioned 10-15 startups?
| lossolo wrote:
| In the crypto space currently, there are projects that excel
| in terms of technological merits, making them far superior to
| their competition. However, the competition often has better
| marketing and generates more hype and win the market.
| ccortes wrote:
| Technological merits are not the product.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Laravel, Vercel, come to mind.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| I'm not sure where anyone said marketing doesn't matter, even
| YC will say that "build it and they will come" is false. But,
| talking to customers face to face or in person is much more
| valuable that marketing, because you experience first hand what
| the customer wants in a way that is not very doable with just
| marketing.
| rhtgrg wrote:
| YC used to be for people who investors wouldn't normally take a
| chance on...and imo, it still is. If you have a FAANG attached to
| your name with multiple years of experience, you can probably
| find better deals elsewhere. YC has done a relatively good job of
| scaling themselves, but it has never been a "one size fits all"
| funding solution, and if you are a founder you'd be wise to
| consider your options carefully.
|
| That being said, removing the relocation requirement was a big
| mistake -- it was partially a forced move, but it's not at all
| surprising that you get a significantly degraded founder
| experience if you are not in SF.
| opportune wrote:
| I have FAANG attached to my name with multiple years of
| experience, where else would you recommend as a replacement or
| competitor to YC? I am aware of angel investors' existence but
| looking for anything besides that
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