[HN Gopher] Do YC after you graduate: Early decision for students
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Do YC after you graduate: Early decision for students
We announced something today at YC called Early Decision,
specifically for students. It's a relatively small change, but we
thought people might be interested to hear the thinking behind it,
even if you don't happen to be a student graduating this year. A
year ago, YC went from running 2 batches / year to 4 batches /
year. We did this because we wanted to give founders more
flexibility to do YC at the right time for them. It seems to have
worked - a lot of founders have told us that they were only able to
do YC because the new schedule fit their timeline. Early Decision
was driven by the same motivation. We talked to a lot of college
students, and we learned that most graduating seniors interview for
their after-graduation job in the fall of their senior year. For
the ones who are interested in doing their own startup, this
creates a bit of a dilemma. If they don't interview for jobs in the
fall in order to apply to YC later, they're risking that they might
be left without any options. We created Early Decision so that
they can apply to YC at the same time they're doing recruiting for
regular jobs, the fall of their senior year. If they get into YC,
they can confidently turn down their other job offers without
worrying they'll be left without anything. Note: this isn't really
a new idea. We've quietly done this from time to time since 2018,
but we didn't create a dedicated flow in the application software
for it, so most people didn't realize it was an option. Hopefully
by productizing and popularizing it, we'll make it easier for
college seniors to start companies.
Author : snowmaker
Score : 200 points
Date : 2025-09-24 23:12 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ycombinator.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ycombinator.com)
| cassonmars wrote:
| Does YC ever intend to revisit doing remote batches again?
|
| There's many founders in the country who are just as driven and
| motivated, but have real-world situations that cannot allow
| uprooting themselves for several months, two very common ones:
|
| - new parents
|
| - disabled family members, or are themselves physically disabled
|
| The discourse on Hacker News has frequently chastised companies
| demanding RTO, and some of the companies in your portfolio are
| remote-first (or remote-only), why does YC make the same kind of
| RTO demand with batches?
| _--__--__ wrote:
| People in those situations can and should start companies
| without an accelerator (or at least without this one). The joke
| around the SF scene is that even a founder with a
| boy/girlfriend is a sign of a startup doomed to fail, and YC
| doesn't seem particularly invested in changing that culture.
| aetherspawn wrote:
| I don't usually wear my ring day to day because it's poorly
| fitting, but I wear it to meetings with private equity
| because I want to filter out anyone with that mentality.
| dang wrote:
| This doesn't resemble anything I've ever heard at YC in the
| many years I've been here. People don't think or talk that
| way at all...they're far more normal and decent than that.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Unless your girlfriend is your laptop.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmFoNXkQTt8
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkZ8MAk2oH4
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Z-_py5WgOM
| snowmaker wrote:
| We might, and I'm sure you're right that there are many great
| founders not applying to do YC because they don't want to move
| here.
|
| But I think it would be a better analogy to compare YC to a
| university, rather than to a company. It's true that many
| companies operate remotely very effectively. But essentially
| zero universities have stayed remote since the early days of
| the pandemic.
| repeekad wrote:
| There are plenty of remote schools, always have been, they're
| just lower quality and solve a different problem than
| traditional in person university
| user_7832 wrote:
| I agree, to add on - I think places like Open University
| are absolutely fantastic for folks who want to learn but
| have other "real world" responsibilities. The last time I
| heard a out OU was when a new parent was happy having being
| able to get a degree from there (while I think studying at
| night).
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| In Canada a lot of well-known schools are shifting much of
| their delivery to online. They're limited by the government
| how much they can charge/increase while international
| student visas have been cut dramatically. It's an
| existentially moment for international-focused schools, but
| even the best traditional universities are hurting.
| vasco wrote:
| Because a university's ability to charge the prices they do
| depends on people being on location. Nobody is going to pay
| 50k or 100k for an online course.
|
| Plus if rich fucks can't buy a building to put their name on
| that kids will walk through they won't donate money.
|
| You make it sound like it's a decision based on school
| administrators putting learning first.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| So much emotion! I graduated from a fairly shitty (and
| getting worse) state school and I started my own company.
| Which failed!
|
| Then I started another. Horrible failure! Then another. And
| another!
|
| And now I own a successful company built off all my
| previous learnings and failures. The "rich fucks" work for
| me now!
| vasco wrote:
| I like how other than being triggered by the word rich
| fucks your reply has nothing to do with universities
| being remote or in person, just you bragging about
| personal accomplishments? I mean congratulations, but
| universities are still going to charge more by requiring
| you to go on location.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| I was triggered because people rationalize why they fail
| because of "other people". But the reason you fail has
| nothing to do with universities
| ttoinou wrote:
| Universities are still a scam though, that was the point
| of the original comment
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| >> But essentially zero universities have stayed remote since
| the early days of the pandemic.
|
| This is not true. I know several people at different
| institutions - decent schools - that have most or (in one
| case) all of their courses (at Queens) via remote delivery.
| arjunven wrote:
| Check out https://tinyseed.com/
| NetOpWibby wrote:
| Doesn't TinySeed require some measure of traction already?
| paxys wrote:
| It's a form of self selection. YC (and silicon valley at large)
| isn't interested in founders with pesky things like real life
| responsibilities or anything else that will prevent them from
| focusing on their startup 24x7.
| edoceo wrote:
| This is too flippant.
|
| YC is so early on some of these deals that the primary gauge
| is team - which means personality of founders. Very hard to
| measure remotely.
|
| I'm in a group, not as big or famous, that does early checks.
| We're 95% remote. IME, it's so hard to make those judgement
| calls through web-cam.
|
| Agreed that founder focus is a big factor and that life gets
| in the way (of deals). However, if you don't like YC
| conditions there are 100s of other places to (attempt a)
| raise.
| nhumrich wrote:
| Except that all acceptance via YC is actually done
| remotely. They don't meet you in person until after they
| have already wired the money.
| edoceo wrote:
| I think you are talking about phase-1 and I was talking
| about a phase-2 of the process (of N phases).
|
| We're just addressing different steps.
| nhumrich wrote:
| Phase-2 being what? demo day?
| aetherspawn wrote:
| Would you invest in Australia?
| NetOpWibby wrote:
| A lot of other places are just YC-lite/-wannabes and have
| either niche focuses (this is good) and/or not enough
| innovation-seekers (this is bad).
| westurner wrote:
| From "Ask HN: How to Price a Product"
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41180492#41220971 :
|
| > _Asset Value = Equities + Liabilities_
|
| > /? startupschool pricing:
| https://www.google.com/search?q=startupschool+pricing
|
| /? site:startupschool.org pricing:
| https://www.google.com/search?q=site:startupschool.org+prici...
|
| > Startup School > Curriculum > Ctrl-F pricing:
| https://www.startupschool.org/curriculum
|
| YC Library: https://www.ycombinator.com/library
|
| /? YC Library : pricing:
| https://www.ycombinator.com/library/search?query=Pricing
| Maro wrote:
| There's also people who are driven, don't have a real-world
| situation that pins them to their location, but don't believe
| that they need to move to SF to do a startup, because they
| shouldn't have to..
| solumos wrote:
| Because San Francisco is a truly singular place that
| drastically increases your odds of success in starting a
| venture-backed company by simply existing there (even
| temporarily).
| morpheuskafka wrote:
| To be fair, it is a 3mo batch. The better analogy would be a
| long business trip or on site project, not a remote vs. in
| office job.
|
| Moreover, for better or worse, the all day every day work
| culture typical of venture-backed startups isn't really
| compatible with being a new parent etc. anyway.
| gkoberger wrote:
| I loved YC and can't recommend it enough. But if you're going to
| start a company, please consider working at another company
| first, even if briefly. (And make it a company you respect and
| want to emulate.)
|
| The amount of wheels you won't have to reinvent if you work at
| another company are astronomical. From engineering practices to
| sales to management, there's a lot you don't want to innovate on.
| Starting a company is really hard, and it's even harder if you've
| never seen first-hand how a functional company works. Your future
| employees will thank you.
| 0x696C6961 wrote:
| > if you've never seen first-hand how a functional company
| works.
|
| You can go an entire career without seeing how a functional
| company works.
| gkoberger wrote:
| Great, then at least you can see what you don't like! (But
| really, I intentionally said a company you want to emulate,
| because I do agree - no point in taking this advice if you go
| to a bad company)
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| also helpful to see a dysfunctional company (or four) to
| cover your bases on shitty management practices
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| > You can go an entire career without seeing how a functional
| company works.
|
| having worked at a few dysfunctional companies, there's value
| in it. you learn to spot red flag decisions and the kinds of
| people that tend to cause organizations to explode from
| within. a Lot of the success at my current company can be
| attributed to decisions I've made that came from experience
| at failed startups where we did the opposite.
| htrp wrote:
| Exactly! being able to recognize the wrong thing is just as
| valuable as recognizing the right thing
| charlie0 wrote:
| Learning what NOT to do is almost as valuable as knowing what
| to do.
| kelleyk wrote:
| I made this mistake. I love where I've wound up, but I would
| have gotten there much more quickly and with a lot less
| heartache if I'd worked as part of an existing company before
| starting my own.
| jimmyl02 wrote:
| Cannot +1 this enough! Joining a team you respect and seeing
| how they operate gives you a really good baseline to work off
| of and take what you like and modify what you disagreed with.
|
| You'd be surprised how many times you can "iterate and fail
| quickly" only to end up at an established practice some other
| shop has been doing for years. It is important however to
| understand the _why_ behind the decisions as otherwise you 're
| no better than just figuring it out yourself
| bix6 wrote:
| I learned a lot working for other people but I've learned the
| most running my own thing.
|
| I do think many college grads generally don't understand how
| business works though because they just haven't experienced it
| yet. School is a totally different beast.
| Esophagus4 wrote:
| This is partially why the average age of a successful founder
| is late 30s to early 40s at the time of founding.
|
| There's a lot of focus in the media and in accelerators on the
| 22 year old with a dream, but it's nice to have a real adult in
| charge when the stakes are high.
|
| Not to mention, if you have no work experience, you have no
| idea what problems are worth solving. So you end up with junk
| startup ideas from the latest fad / hype cycle.
|
| But a senior partner at a law firm knows the pain points of
| being a lawyer and they can now start a company to fix them.
|
| And a senior quant at a hedge fund might have some good ideas
| for automating tedious back office processes.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| So it's not too late !
|
| Still, I think you need to be well connected, or already
| profitable for VC fundraising.
|
| Otherwise your just another programmer with hacked together
| prototype.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Better than just another Idea Guy with an MBA.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| There are two types of idea guys, Idea Guys who actually
| can get funding.
|
| And those who can't.
|
| I've already wasted too much time creating small
| prototypes and then cold calling/emailing VCs/YC.
|
| It's a big club and I'm not in it, at this point I'd
| rather just make weird games with my friends and open
| source them versus trying to chase a dime.
| tyre wrote:
| > And make it a company you respect and want to emulate
|
| Personally I would caveat that they be a small company. Large
| companies are a very different beast. What it takes to get
| ahead and succeed at there is often very different from a
| startup, in ways that don't become obvious until you've worked
| at a startup.
|
| Rather than learning which wheels not to re-invent, you have
| one data point and reflexes that you'd need to deprogram.
|
| Working at the company I most highly respect and would want to
| emulate (Stripe), I don't think the skills would have been at
| all the right ones. (Admittedly I was in a highly toxic and
| political org.)
| mikert89 wrote:
| This is basically ensuring YC starts to get more absolute top
| graduates. Entrepreneurship is more and more seen as the default
| path for top people in the USA. All other career paths are for
| people that want to take the risk of ending up in a 50 year
| assembly line. This is probably good for society
|
| If you want to get rich by 30, you basically have to start a
| startup or get into a top small hedge fund out of undergrad.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| How many YC founders end up rich before 30? Or even at all? I
| think it's likely a highly valuable experience running a
| business experiment someone else will fund (not to mention
| connections you wouldn't otherwise make), but the odds of
| actual, liquid wealth from the experience and time spent are
| very low.
| mikert89 wrote:
| Alot of them do, not only that, they build skills that help
| them start their next company. Many of which are bootstrapped
| and profitable. This whole idea that startups are a complete
| lottery ticket is not only false, its increasingly less
| false, more money is being made now in startups than ever
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Based on public exit and liquidity event information,
| startups still remain a lottery ticket for most. 90% of
| startups fail entirely, for example (CB Insights). YC
| startups have more longevity, and more get to a Series A
| then non YC startups, but the best batches based on
| performance have been between 2009 and 2013. 10% achieve an
| exit, 4.5% became unicorns. Only 17 companies backed by YC
| (out of almost 5k) have gone public, and all except Airbnb,
| Instacart, and Reddit have underperformed post IPO.
|
| Have fun, learn, develop and grow your skills and network,
| take the investment, but it's important to be honest with
| one's self about odds of success and outcome. If you win,
| respect and appreciate the lottery ticket for what it was.
| Hard work and years of grinding is table stakes, but you
| can still fail (and most do).
|
| https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/pulling-back-the-
| curtain-...
|
| https://www.marketsentiment.co/p/the-yc-report
| mikert89 wrote:
| 10% chance at millions fresh out school sounds great!
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| If you think "exit" automatically means millions, you've
| probably never seen an exit before. Of those that exit,
| the majority of startups get almost $0 for the common
| shareholders. I continue to believe that a lot of YC's
| alpha comes from the fact that they are very good at
| angling people toward small exits where they basically
| make no money but YC recovers their investment.
| bangaladore wrote:
| 10% of 0.01% of people is probably closer. 0.01% is
| probably way to high even.
| bix6 wrote:
| > More than 50% of companies are still alive after 10
| years
|
| I'd rather have a 50% chance at my own startup being
| alive after 10 years than go work some big corp job.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| To each their own. If you must do a startup, do so. My
| comments should be treated as informing prior to an
| informed decision.
| koolba wrote:
| If you work for 10 years in big tech and save your money,
| you'd have enough for a lifetime of chasing startup
| ideas.
| in_cahoots wrote:
| This is the part I think young people don't understand.
| My husband and I worked around 16 years combined in tech.
| We started pretty late, since we both have PhDs, and
| we're not engineers so we aren't making top of the
| market. We still had enough money after that time to buy
| a house, have 2 kids and go on a multi-year sabbatical.
| And most of this working period was not at FAANGs.
|
| If you're young, talented, single and bringing home $200k
| a year including RSUs, you are on track to basically do
| whatever you want in a decade. Make it to senior manager
| / Staff level and you should be clearing $400k a year at
| least. And if you do it smartly you're working 9-5, not
| some 996 bullshit. That's a ridiculous amount of money.
|
| It's not as sexy as building a startup. But at least for
| me the ROI has been incredible. And I'm not super smart-
| my whole college career I looked down at people who spent
| their lives in front of a computer. I completely missed
| the trend of tech and Silicon Valley, and I definitely
| don't work any harder than the next guy. But if you do
| good work I've found that it tends to pay off.
| brap wrote:
| People really underestimate how much FAANG pays, all
| things considered.
|
| If you spent the last 10-15 years as an engineer/manager
| in FAANG (and these past 5-10 years have been very far
| from what's called the "golden age"), and were
| financially responsible, you're a multi millionaire, most
| likely still in your 30s.
|
| If you're a _couple_ that worked there, well damn you're
| not just rich you are _wealthy_.
|
| I can't think of a better starting point for founding a
| startup. Or retiring.
|
| Sacrificing 10 years seems a lot when you're fresh out of
| college. But 1. it's not really a sacrifice since your
| life is much more comfy than most 2. in the grand scheme
| of things 10 years is not a lot. You will most likely
| spend way more time on a failed startup while having the
| worst time.
| raspasov wrote:
| I have a problem with the analogy "lottery ticket". I
| think analogies are helpful as long as we are talking
| perhaps a singe order of magnitude difference between the
| two things.
|
| The chance of winning most popular US lotteries is
| approximately 1 in 300,000,000. In comparison, the chance
| of IPO-ing a YC company is approximately 1 in 300. You
| can count how many orders of magnitude of difference that
| is.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| I buy a lottery ticket for $1, in a moment, with no
| further effort. A YC startup founder grinds for years, if
| not a decade, to reach IPO with unknown opportunity
| costs. They are not the same. How many lottery tickets
| over how many lottery draws to equalize the odds is a fun
| thought experiment to quantify a dollar value for the
| option premium.
|
| 17 YC IPOs over how many total YC founder years (Lifetime
| YC companies * # of founders * years YC company active,
| roughly)?
|
| (I've put a lot of thought into being a founder, from an
| aggressively data driven perspective about how to spend
| time, which is non renewable)
| raspasov wrote:
| It's all about the opportunity cost. There are always
| assumptions that need to be made, but it will be hard to
| argue that lottery tickets are better than startups. I
| don't think they are.
|
| A more useful comparison would be a serious statistical
| analysis between startups and other occupations.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| I am not spending years of my life trading money for
| lottery tickets, startups are worse than lottery tickets
| raspasov wrote:
| I said "serious".
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| Thought experiment: who do you think would be better off
| as a group? 10 college grads working at any of the FAANG+
| companies or the same 10 being YC founders?
| fijiaarone wrote:
| Entrepreneurship isn't getting showered with millions for doing
| nothing other than being accepted as a part of the blessed
| elite and access to an infinite spigot of free money when all
| other sources have been dammed off and diverted to the ever
| shrinking minority of ever increasing ultra-wealth.
| mikert89 wrote:
| its still better than these people fighting over promotions
| in finance
| fn-mote wrote:
| This would be a better comment if it asserted what the poster
| believed entrepreneurship IS rather than what it is not.
|
| FWIW, to me entrepreneurship is an amazing path, but starting
| a company right out of college?? There's a LOT of skills to
| develop. Have someone to copy. Make sure you draw enough
| salary. Keep an identity outside of your company
| (networking!) so you can pick yourself up if (when) it
| crashes.
| dcreater wrote:
| For people who took a second to get this (like me),
| @fijiaarone means it is.
|
| And I concur - in this AI hypecycle more than ever it seems
| to be about how can peacock the best. Its neck and neck with
| the crypto hypecycle a few years ago for the incidence rate
| of vaporware and snake oil. Sure there are some legit
| founders building meaningful product but they seem to be a
| small minority.
| mikert89 wrote:
| dude we just invented computers you can talk to
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| Whose "we"?
|
| there are open weight models which are SOTA.
|
| not sure how you plan to monetize it.
|
| Tell me how you can make a profit or if you even have a
| plan to make a profit..
|
| or your plan is to sell it to a higher fool who believes
| that they can sell it to an even higher fool....
|
| Oh. Sounds similar?
| dcreater wrote:
| yeah and its amazing, that doesnt mean you dont have
| charlatans, hucksters, hustlers, opportunists etc. come
| for the gold rush. In fact, you should expect them to
| timr wrote:
| Let me make this simple for you: _you will not get rich by 30._
|
| I know, I know...there are examples! And yes, there are, but
| statistically, they won't be you. You're playing the lottery,
| only it's a lottery that steals your youth and gives you
| psychological problems.
|
| If your only goal is to get rich, then don't do a startup. You
| have to have some more fundamental reason, or the agony will
| beat you.
| mikert89 wrote:
| I live in NYC, I have met alot of very rich startup founders.
| But not only that, lots of people making 50k a month from a
| startup they built post YC, raised no VC, and have no boss.
|
| Its an outdated take to think people arent doing this
| timr wrote:
| Sure. Google "selection bias". You aren't meeting the
| 10,000 who failed.
|
| I also live in NYC. I lived in SF, during possibly the all-
| time greatest period of wealth creation in the last 50
| years. I knew billionaires when they couldn't afford bar
| tabs. I ate leftover boxes of Obama-Os (again, Google it)
| that _nobody wanted._
|
| I'm still telling you the truth. Every one of those people
| who succeeded went through hell and back, and even then
| there was no guarantee that there was a reward at the end
| of the hell. Doing a startup is like getting punched in the
| face repeatedly for many, many years, with only your faith
| -- in something -- to carry you forward. You have to have
| more than just a desire to be rich.
| mikert89 wrote:
| You dont have to create a billion dollar company.
| Especially after raising VC and failing, its much clearer
| how to build a business. Very reasonable to think a smart
| hard working person can build a company making 1M a year.
| Life owning a company that makes even a moderate amount
| is 1000x better than a career. I think your analysis is
| outdated
| MegaButts wrote:
| If it's 1000x better than a career and you believe it's
| achievable, why haven't you done it yet?
| mikert89 wrote:
| why do you think i havent
| MegaButts wrote:
| It seems like you would've mentioned your own success
| rather than those around you when talking about how
| feasible it is. It's a lot easier to say something is
| achievable when you've done it yourself.
|
| And again, I think you would've simply responded "I have"
| rather than ask me what I think. Obviously I could be
| wrong.
| aliston wrote:
| Wait, are you saying the Obama O's story - that the 500
| boxes sold out, saving AirBnb - is not totally true?
| timr wrote:
| Well, they definitely had a lot of Cap'n McCains left
| over, and we also had more than a few boxes of Obama O's
| inside JTV. We would eat them as office snacks.
|
| I was told that we were given them, but maybe they were
| surplus? Either way, real boxes.
| htrp wrote:
| You live in NYC.... there are a lot of "startup founders"
| who already come from generational family wealth
| charlie0 wrote:
| Are you trying to tell me those who take the most risk
| already have a safety net?!
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| > If you want to get rich by 30, you basically have to start a
| startup or get into a top small hedge fund out of undergrad.
|
| I am 30, I am rich by most measures of wealth and probably in
| the minds of most college grads. I worked in various big tech
| companies (incl stints in FAANG) after graduating with my BS in
| CS. A lot of my peers did do startups, and they had varying
| degrees of success. But almost everyone who went to big tech
| has set up their next generation for success at this point
| mikert89 wrote:
| By rich I mean like 25 million +, not 3 million
| zahlman wrote:
| I feel like being "the best and brightest" is quite orthogonal
| to having what it takes to be an entrepreneur.
|
| I also feel like highly intelligent people might quite
| reasonably decide for themselves that they shouldn't have to
| take on that kind of risk to get what they want out of life.
| sobellian wrote:
| Having done this, and acknowledging the fuzzy definition of
| "rich" etc - going through YC after graduating is a great
| career move. You have to do everything yourself so you learn a
| lot. About business, about a specific industry, about
| programming, whatever. You make connections. But unless you
| walk an absolute golden path (hey it happens), > 90% chance you
| don't get rich. > 99.9% chance you won't get rich by 30.
| mikert89 wrote:
| Not denying you can fail, but one year spent on YC and
| failing puts you in a position to start another business
| babuloseo wrote:
| or you buy bitcoin
| thebigman433 wrote:
| This really is not true, basically every engineering job in the
| Bay Area will set you up with enough money to live extremely
| well.
|
| YC startups are a bit above average, but still most startups
| fail.
|
| If you care about building wealth, taking a stable engineering
| position straight out of college and working hard is a great
| path
| fullofideas wrote:
| This. There is a huge opportunity cost, even more so for the
| "best and brightest" (by whatever definition). The odds of
| striking it rich are really not in your favor. You may be
| better off working at big tech for a few years, save up, let
| the money work for you while you explore your entrepreneurial
| urge. You have a cushion and maybe that will let you take on
| bigger and bolder bets than what you could when you come out
| of college, and you maybe forced to take a "relatively safer"
| bet because you also have to make money soonish
| mikert89 wrote:
| No you want to take these bets when you are young, its the
| opposite, you go into stable careers when your appetite for
| risk and working around the clock has waned
| __loam wrote:
| There's an entire generation of FAANG millionaires that
| just spent a decade out of school working at one of those
| places and got fabulously wealthy off of it. In fact,
| it's probably the most likely career to get you rich
| instead of betting your time on startup equity that might
| be worth something in 6-10 years.
| mikert89 wrote:
| Yeah great they got into the fastest growing companies of
| all time at the perfect time
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| It's not just the companies are growing. If you get an
| offer from BigTech with cash + RSUs and the stock stays
| stagnant, you will still be better off statistically than
| spending 5-7 years of your life at a startup.
| buubblepoop wrote:
| YC is not really advocating you to become a worker at a
| startup. They want you to become a founder. As a founder
| you don't need to be a huge success for you to be well
| off. I'm one of 3 founders currently in a bootstrapped
| company that has done okay. We are approaching end of
| year 5. This year we will make 700k revenue, 240k profit
| and 50% yearly growth. Typically this kind of business is
| not something a VC would consider investing in, but it
| can still be profitable for the founders.
|
| I'm not very liquid at the moment. My salary is a measly
| 60k a year. Most of 80k that is my share of the profit
| will stay in the company instead of go into my pocket,
| but the 33% ownership in the company is valuable. Very
| typical valuations for companies in general is 10x
| profit, which would mean my share of the company is worth
| 800k. Companies getting strategically acquired can be 20x
| revenue, which makes my share of the company worth
| 4.7million.
|
| At FAANG I would have likely made a liquid 300k * 5 =
| 1.5million, which would allow me to spend more money and
| enjoy life right now. However, the next 5 years with my
| company will likely be a lot more valuable. If we manage
| to grow 30% a year then after 5 years profit will be
| 900k. That means 300k a year profit share, 3m valuation
| at 10x profit and 17m valuation at 20x revenue.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| You realize that you're kind of making my point? Even
| with your rosy projections, you're still going to be
| making much less than a few returning interns I know made
| in their first three years working at BigTech.
|
| Heck you're making less than a run of the mill enterprise
| dev is making in a second tier major city in Atlanta
|
| And as a founder, you still need to do well to do better
| off than a BigTech employee and statistically you won't
| come near.
|
| And on top of that, you're sounding like every startup
| that doesn't realize that they can't linearly project
| growth based on past performance. The first cohorts are
| almost always easier than later cohorts unless it is a
| platform with network effects.
| __loam wrote:
| Don't forget the actual rate of return vs time spent
| working too. As a founder you're probably working at
| least 50% more time than the average faang dev, plus the
| added stress of being in a high impact, high consequence
| role.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| Thought experiment: What group do you think will have the
| higher median total earnings over 10 years - the group
| that worked at BigTech or the group that worked at a YC
| startup?
|
| You make your money first, let it make money for you and
| then do a startup.
| __loam wrote:
| > If you want to get rich by 30, you basically have to start a
| startup or get into a top small hedge fund out of undergrad.
|
| Many will enter, few will win lmao
| woooooo wrote:
| Why is everyone equating "best and brightest" with "rich by
| 30"? Were Kernighan and Ritchie rich by 30?
| barbarr wrote:
| To what extent is YC's current strategy a form of "cookie-
| licking"? I.e. capture a small fraction of _every_ plausible
| startup created by the next generation of students?
| cde-v wrote:
| 100% at this point. The industry's leading AI for start-up
| ideas has run out of AI for _____ suggestions. It was pretty
| obvious they were scraping the bottom of the barrel a month ago
| when I made this list from their current batch:
|
| Acrely -- AI for HVAC administration
|
| Aden -- AI for ERP operations
|
| AgentHub -- AI for agent simulation and evaluation
|
| Agentin AI -- AI for enterprise agents
|
| AgentMail -- AI for agent email infrastructure
|
| AlphaWatch AI -- AI for financial search
|
| Alter -- AI for secure agent workflow access control
|
| Altur -- AI for debt collection voice agents
|
| Ambral -- AI for account management
|
| Anytrace -- AI for support engineering
|
| April -- AI for voice executive assistants
|
| AutoComputer -- AI for robotic desktop automation
|
| Autosana -- AI for mobile QA
|
| Autotab -- AI for knowledge work
|
| Avent -- AI for industrial commerce
|
| b-12 -- AI for chemical intelligence
|
| Bluebirds -- AI for outbound targeting
|
| burnt -- AI for food supply chain operations
|
| Cactus -- AI for smartphone model deployment
|
| Candytrail -- AI for sales funnel automation
|
| CareSwift -- AI for ambulance operations
|
| Certus AI -- AI for restaurant phone lines
|
| Clarm -- AI for search and agent building
|
| Clodo -- AI for real estate CRMs
|
| Closera -- AI for commercial real estate employees
|
| Clueso -- AI for instructional content generation
|
| cocreate -- AI for video editing
|
| Comena -- AI for order automation in distribution
|
| ContextFort -- AI for construction drawing reviews
|
| Convexia -- AI for pharma drug discovery
|
| Credal.ai -- AI for enterprise workflow assistants
|
| CTGT -- AI for preventing hallucinations
|
| Cyberdesk -- AI for legacy desktop automation
|
| datafruit -- AI for DevOps engineering
|
| Daymi -- AI for personal clones
|
| DeepAware AI -- AI for data center efficiency
|
| Defog.ai -- AI for natural-language data queries
|
| Design Arena -- AI for design benchmarks
|
| Doe -- AI for autonomous private equity workforce
|
| Double - Coding Copilot -- AI for coding assistance
|
| EffiGov -- AI for local government call centers
|
| Eloquent AI -- AI for complex financial workflows
|
| F4 -- AI for compliance in engineering drawings
|
| Finto -- AI for enterprise accounting
|
| Flai -- AI for dealership customer acquisition
|
| Floot -- AI for app building
|
| Fluidize -- AI for scientific experiments
|
| Flywheel AI -- AI for excavator autonomy
|
| Freya -- AI for financial services voice agents
|
| Frizzle -- AI for teacher grading
|
| Galini -- AI guardrails as a service
|
| Gaus -- AI for retail investors
|
| Ghostship -- AI for UX bug detection
|
| Golpo -- AI for video generation from documents
|
| Halluminate -- AI for training computer use
|
| HealthKey -- AI for clinical trial matching
|
| Hera -- AI for motion design
|
| Humoniq -- AI for BPO in travel and transport
|
| Hyprnote -- AI for enterprise notetaking
|
| Imprezia -- AI for ad networks
|
| Induction Labs -- AI for computer use automation
|
| iollo -- AI for multimodal biological data
|
| Iron Grid -- AI for hardware insurance
|
| IronLedger.ai -- AI for property accounting
|
| Janet AI -- AI for project management (AI-native Jira)
|
| Kernel -- AI for web agent browsing infrastructure
|
| Kestroll -- AI for media asset management
|
| Keystone -- AI for software engineering
|
| Knowlify -- AI for explainer video creation
|
| Kyber -- AI for regulatory notice drafting
|
| Lanesurf -- AI for freight booking voice automation
|
| Lantern -- AI for Postgres application development
|
| Lark -- AI for billing operations
|
| Latent -- AI for medical language models
|
| Lemma -- AI for consumer brand insights
|
| Linkana -- AI for supplier onboarding reviews
|
| Liva AI -- AI for video and voice data labeling
|
| Locata -- AI for healthcare referral management
|
| Lopus AI -- AI for deal intelligence
|
| Lotas -- AI for data science IDEs
|
| Louiza Labs -- AI for synthetic biology data
|
| Luminai -- AI for business process automation
|
| Magnetic -- AI for tax preparation
|
| MangoDesk -- AI for evaluation data
|
| Maven Bio -- AI for BioPharma insights
|
| Meteor -- AI for web browsing (AI-native browser)
|
| Mimos -- AI for regulated firm visibility in search
|
| Minimal AI -- AI for e-commerce customer support
|
| Mobile Operator -- AI for mobile QA
|
| Mohi -- AI for workflow clarity
|
| Monarcha -- AI for GIS platforms
|
| moonrepo -- AI for developer workflow tooling
|
| Motives -- AI for consumer research
|
| Nautilus -- AI for car wash optimization
|
| NOSO LABS -- AI for field technician support
|
| Nottelabs -- AI for enterprise web agents
|
| Novaflow -- AI for biology lab analytics
|
| Nozomio -- AI for contextual coding agents
|
| Oki -- AI for company intelligence
|
| Okibi -- AI for agent building
|
| Omnara -- AI for agent command centers
|
| OnDeck AI -- AI for video analysis
|
| Onyx -- AI for generative platform development
|
| Opennote -- AI for note-based tutoring
|
| Opslane -- AI for ETL data pipelines
|
| Orange Slice -- AI for sales lead generation
|
| Outlit -- AI for quoting and proposals
|
| Outrove -- AI for Salesforce
|
| Pally -- AI for relationship management
|
| Paloma -- AI for billing CRMs
|
| Parachute -- AI for clinical evaluation and deployment
|
| PARES AI -- AI for commercial real estate brokers
|
| People.ai -- AI for enterprise growth insights
|
| Perspectives Health -- AI for clinic EMRs
|
| Pharmie AI -- AI for pharmacy technicians
|
| Phases -- AI for clinical trial automation
|
| Pingo AI -- AI for language learning companions
|
| Pleom -- AI for conversational interaction
|
| Qualify.bot -- AI for commercial lending phone agents
|
| Reacher -- AI for creator collaboration marketing
|
| Ridecell -- AI for fleet operations
|
| Risely AI -- AI for campus administration
|
| Risotto -- AI for IT helpdesk automation
|
| Riverbank Security -- AI for offensive security
|
| Saphira AI -- AI for certification automation
|
| Sendbird -- AI for omnichannel agents
|
| Sentinel -- AI for on-call engineering
|
| Serafis -- AI for institutional investor knowledge graphs
|
| Sigmantic AI -- AI for HDL design
|
| Sira -- AI for HR management of hourly teams
|
| Socratix AI -- AI for fraud and risk teams
|
| Solva -- AI for insurance
|
| Spotlight Realty -- AI for real estate brokerage
|
| StackAI -- AI for low-code agent platforms
|
| stagewise -- AI for frontend coding agents
|
| Stellon Labs -- AI for edge device models
|
| Stockline -- AI for food wholesaler ERP
|
| Stormy AI -- AI for influencer marketing
|
| Synthetic Society -- AI for simulating real users
|
| SynthioLabs -- AI for medical expertise in pharma
|
| Tailor -- AI for retail ERP automation
|
| Tecto AI -- AI for governance of AI employees
|
| Tesora -- AI for procurement analysis
|
| Trace -- AI for workflow automation
|
| TraceRoot.AI -- AI for automated bug fixing
|
| truthsystems -- AI for regulated governance layers
|
| Uplift AI -- AI for underserved voice languages
|
| Veles -- AI for dynamic sales pricing
|
| Veritus Agent -- AI for loan servicing and collections
|
| Verne Robotics -- AI for robotic arms
|
| VoiceOS -- AI for voice interviews
|
| VoxOps AI -- AI for regulated industry calls
|
| Vulcan Technologies -- AI for regulatory drafting
|
| Waydev -- AI for engineering leadership insights
|
| Wayline -- AI for property management voice automation
|
| Wedge -- AI for healthcare trust layers
|
| Workflow86 -- AI for workflow automation
|
| ZeroEval -- AI for agent evaluation and optimization
| bix6 wrote:
| Yo this is nuts lol!
| j_bum wrote:
| Incredible list. Thanks for sharing.
| htrp wrote:
| Please tell me your AI tool did that for you and you didn't
| do it manually
| cde-v wrote:
| I'm actually the CEO of a startup that created the very
| first AI for AI for _____ list generation service. Already
| in our 347,985th round of funding, currently valued at
| $382,457,203.
| zahlman wrote:
| This makes me want to reach for a tool that definitely has no
| AI whatsoever involved.
|
| Specifically, the one described in
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45287474.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't spam the threads with massive lists. It's enough
| to link to the information.
|
| I'm not sure what this is supposed to show, other than that
| YC funds a lot of startups and a lot of them are working in
| AI, which is what you'd expect during any major tech wave.
|
| In fact, YC funds so many startups that your list is actually
| misleadingly short, unless you meant to argue that AI
| startups are a low percentage.
| cde-v wrote:
| You should create a startup based around an AI for
| collapsing lists if clicking [-] is too difficult and they
| are so annoying.
|
| 110 of those were from their summer 2025 batch of 170, so
| your statement is actually misleading unless you meant to
| argue that 65% is a low percentage.
| ludicity wrote:
| Tecto AI is my favourite, as it forms the "AI for AI"
| ouroboros. Outrove also sounds confusing, because doesn't
| Salesforce already purport to have their own native AI
| features? And when I look them up, it seems they're just AI
| for recruiting, which is also what VoiceOS purports to do.
|
| Looking up the founders is fascinating too. So many of them
| seem to have graduated and immediately started trailing what
| appear to be a string of back-to-back failed businesses,
| rarely with more than a year of staying power per attempt.
| It's hard to tell if that's "failing quickly" (desirable) or
| "frantically trying to get-rich-quick" (undesirable and what
| I run into in Melbourne most often).
| DonHopkins wrote:
| >Verne Robotics -- AI for robotic arms
|
| Kiko the Monkey
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KaWPYOLuT8
| neilv wrote:
| If the funding is available immediately (not just an immediate
| commitment for funding once they start a batch), would it address
| the following problem I've run into a few times?
|
| In the last year alone, I've had to bow out of co-founding two
| promising startups with good biz co-founders, because first-year
| MBA students wanted to finish their degree before they sought
| funding.
|
| Two ways funding could help:
|
| 1. I couldn't afford to work over a year as a technical
| cofounder, executing in full-time startup mode like usually needs
| to be done, with no income. While they were part-time, and
| getting an MBA and networking out of it during this period. Even
| ramen lifestyle funding would've made this closer to an equitable
| balance of contribution and risk among the cofounders.
|
| 2. There's also the concern that MBA programs seem to push
| students to have _a_ hypothetical startup, so there 's always a
| chance that the MBA student won't be fully committed to actually
| do the startup once they graduate. Maybe accepted funding could
| make this a firmer commitment. (Even if there's no contractual
| obligation to pursue the startup, I'd guess that new MBA
| graduates don't want to burn bridges in the small world of
| investors, so would take the commitment fairly seriously.)
| snowmaker wrote:
| Yes, I think it would.
| aetherspawn wrote:
| Being able to burn away at a startup while you are studying
| would be great. Uni was the most productive time in my whole
| life due to all the free time.
| yaacov wrote:
| If your cofounder isn't full time, that's not your cofounder.
| That's a part time contractor who owns 50% of your company.
| neilv wrote:
| Mostly I agree. But I also think that someone who is very
| good, and in a very good MBA program, can do their share of
| contributions, _iff_ they 're committed fully to the startup
| upon graduation.
|
| But if the follow-through doesn't happen, then the whole
| thing was probably a huge waste for non-MBA-student co-
| founders. (Unless those co-founders weren't really committed
| themselves.)
| nivertech wrote:
| Maybe a 18-24 months cliff would solve it?
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| you need a way to cause the termination for this to help.
| IME most things linger in zombie mode forever, they don't
| explode early.
| nivertech wrote:
| Full-time cofounder(s) should have the right to fire
| other cofounders, at least until a formal board of
| directors is established
|
| The problems start when you fire someone with equity
| closer to the cliff
|
| Anyway, I don't get the original post, IMO an MBA is not
| the kind of degree that is worthy of delaying founding a
| startup
| neilv wrote:
| > _Full-time cofounder(s) should have the right to fire
| other cofounders,_
|
| I'd guess there's usually no point in a technical co-
| founder "firing" their capable business co-founder; it
| just ends the company.
|
| While the technical person is spending most of their time
| on technical bits (no matter how much customer-facing
| product management time you have), etc., the business
| person is spending most of their time on relationships
| (investors, partners, customers, etc.). To a large
| extent, they take those relationships and reputation with
| them wherever they go next.
|
| Unless the technical cofounder has some very rare and
| marketable technical expertise that the business people
| recognize (e.g., some recent big AI invention, or a fancy
| title at a FAANG), the technical cofounder will probably
| be considered an ordinary commodity by most.
|
| > _IMO an MBA is not the kind of degree that is worthy of
| delaying founding a startup_
|
| My guess is that an MBA from one of the most prestigious
| programs is usually worth delaying founding a startup.
| The MBA student can lay some of the groundwork while in
| the program, get mentoring and connections, and then out-
| execute many competitors once the student graduates.
|
| The kinds of startups a lot of us have been thinking of
| are essentially the last 20 years of mostly ZIRP
| investment scams, but that can't go on forever (current
| dotcom-bubble-like "AI" hype wave low barriers to
| acquihire exit notwithstanding). I'd guess more people
| will have to do viable businesses than our field has in a
| long time.
| android521 wrote:
| if one of the founders is an MBA graduate, your chance of
| success just drop 50%.
| wolfcola wrote:
| bad, ideologically-motivated idea when thiel did it, and bad,
| ideologically-motivated idea now
| dang wrote:
| " _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other
| people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something._"
|
| " _Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of
| what someone says, not a weaker one that 's easier to
| criticize. Assume good faith._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| Jared's description about why YC is doing this now seems clear.
| If you know more or better, you're welcome to make a
| substantive argument. But please don't use this site for
| shallow putdowns--it's not what it's for.
| kurtis_reed wrote:
| What do you mean "turn out their other job offers"?
| snowmaker wrote:
| Whoops - I had a typo! Thank you; fixed.
| deadbabe wrote:
| I think this is oddly predatory, and sends the wrong idea to
| graduating students who have not even entered the real world.
|
| There is no need to rush to get into YC, and it would help to get
| actual experience in a job before setting out to build a whole
| company.
| __loam wrote:
| Putting inexperienced kids with good credentials who are
| amenable to listening to a board in charge of these things is
| part of the yc business model.
| raspasov wrote:
| YC doesn't take board seats.
|
| edit: removed snarky attack
| tomhow wrote:
| > You don't know what you're talking about.
|
| Please don't comment like this on HN. Your point would
| carry more weight without the snarky personal attack.
| raspasov wrote:
| Noted.
| tomhow wrote:
| Many thanks!
| throwawaymaths wrote:
| a "board" presumably like a "medical school acceptance
| board" and not a corpo board
| __loam wrote:
| Just 7% ownership while being one of the most important
| pipelines for early investment opportunities in the valley,
| which has extensive relationships with the people who will
| be on the boards. Additionally, YC might not take board
| seats, but its ceo certainly does.
| tomhow wrote:
| YC is looking for people who have high agency and can back
| their own judgement. All the most successful founders fit
| this profile.
| defrost wrote:
| In fairness young people can have high agency, back their
| own judgements, and have grit, perseverance, et al. and
| _still_ lack experience and be more easily influenced by
| perceived mentors than they might be a decade later in
| their career paths.
|
| With no disrespect to YC, of course.
| tomhow wrote:
| Sure but the founders who will generate the greatest
| returns for investors are the ones who won't be pushed
| around by boards. Facebook's board advised Mark
| Zuckerberg to take Yahoo's $1B offer in 2006 [1]. He was
| 22 years old. He refused, and Meta is now valued at
| nearly $2T. That's the kind of founder that the most
| ambitious startup investors are looking for.
|
| [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/an-ugly-truth-mark-
| zuckerber...
| defrost wrote:
| Sure but one example is a point in the cloud of all
| responses, granted the cloud tips toward a particular
| part of a large multi variate space.
|
| Unless ... your point is that all YC founders are
| homogeneous interchangeable cyborgs? ( surely not ).
| tomhow wrote:
| We're discussing the cynical assertion that YC is looking
| for founders who will be compliant and subservient to
| boards. I'm just pointing out that if there is any
| defining quality in the kinds of founders that an
| investor like YC is looking for, it's that they are not
| compliant and subservient to anyone, including or
| especially boards :)
|
| When pg and others talk about the qualities they look for
| in founders, they use terms like "formidable" and "force
| of nature".
| cm2012 wrote:
| As someone who has worked with many boards and execs, I
| cannot tell how wrong this way of looking at the world is.
|
| Execs universally love working with people who maximize
| proactivity and strong opinions. The opposite of what you
| think.
| __loam wrote:
| Yes we know execs are going to drink as much kool-aid as
| they need to to join this group of people and they'll
| probably love the process, especially when they're getting
| sweetheart liquidity deals earlier than everyone else at
| these firms.
|
| I'm not really concerned with that. I'm more interested in
| the aggregate effect of putting a significant amount of the
| industry in the hands of a few ignorant twenty somethings
| and the small group of wealthy people from the bay area who
| are on all these boards. That is a frightening level of
| power concentrated in the hands of a small and anti-
| democratic structure.
| jamestimmins wrote:
| These kids are (typically) in some of the best colleges in the
| world and in incredibly high demand. They have lots of options
| and enormous amounts of agency.
|
| Hard to buy that "here's another option" is predatory.
| imiric wrote:
| Not just predatory, but irresponsible.
|
| The idea that someone fresh out of college should start and run
| a business is deeply concerning. These are kids who have just
| (hopefully) learned about ethics and what it takes to run a
| business, yet you expect them to be responsible stewards of
| their users' data, to comply with laws and regulations, while
| you throw $500,000 at them, give them minimal guidance, sell
| them fantasies about infinite riches, and skim whatever you can
| from the top.
|
| Yes, I'm aware that Jobs, Gates, Zuckerberg, and others,
| started their businesses before even finishing college. But a)
| these are outliers, and b) when someone refers to users of
| their products as "dumb fucks", do we really want to put them
| in charge of running a company?
| shipitto wrote:
| This is great in principle. A word of advice:
|
| Life is short. Play long term games with long term people. While
| a batch bakes in a season, a cap table rests like a boulder in a
| hillside. If you're smart there are better ways to find a lever
| with which to move the world.
|
| Consider incentives. Don't accept a hammer when you need a
| bulldozer. Don't ask which paths exist: find where you want to
| be, ask what needs to be done. Do it.
| nenenejej wrote:
| This is a bit riddly. Have a concrete example?
| asadm wrote:
| Less riddly: Don't take money if you don't need it. if you
| have to, take it from people who have values/incentives (with
| life and business both) aligned with you.
| NetOpWibby wrote:
| I like this, thank you.
| ralph84 wrote:
| If this is what tips the scales for someone in deciding between
| being a founder and taking a 9-5 job, they don't have the level
| of commitment needed to be a successful founder.
| dvrp wrote:
| Paul Graham Essay and early YC: live your life, don't start a
| company in your 20s. You are young only once.
|
| Post Paul Graham YC: reserve your YC spot now. There's no
| downside!
| josfredo wrote:
| Whatever statement is more relatable at the time hence better
| for their business.
| shafyy wrote:
| Gives me weirdo Thiel vibes who pays (or used to pay) kids to
| drop out of college and start a company for him.
| sungam wrote:
| In fairness, while I'm sure it didn't work out for all of
| them, one of these students became one of the youngest self
| made billionaires in history
| flkenosad wrote:
| He did it to the smartest kid in our CS class. I feel bad
| now because I feel like he deserves a degree.
| cinntaile wrote:
| He'll receive plenty of opportunities regardless of
| degree so I don't see why you feel sorry for him.
| flkenosad wrote:
| He would have made a fantastic professor in my opinion.
| But I think also, certain opportunities just require a
| degree on a policy level.
| ohyoutravel wrote:
| A classmate of mine dropped out to do this. Failed, and
| ended up picking up later to finish the last two years of
| college. It really didn't seem to have slowed them down,
| and finishing college a few years later (with some
| startup founders experience) seems to have been overall
| good. Unfortunately did end up going to Boston Consulting
| Group from on-campus recruiting, so not a great end to
| the story, but historically that's a high-ish paying and
| hard to get job.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| I get the feeling only very affluent and well-supported
| people follow this path, and they probably don't need
| THiel's money to do it. The vast majority don't have a
| few years at this stage of their life to play the
| lottery.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Yeah, I hung out with one of the early batches of these
| people (my former supervisor was involved) and would
| agree that they tended to be from better off families.
| How much of that was the Ivy league selection bias vs
| anything else I dunno though.
| shafyy wrote:
| Doesn't mean that this was a good thing for them. For
| example, many kid actors who become rich and famous are not
| happy.
| squigz wrote:
| I mean... is it self-made if a billionaire helped you?
| Thorrez wrote:
| It seems kind of the opposite to me. YC is allowing you to
| finish school. You don't need to drop out.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Or weirdo Russ Hanneman vibes who bought a company called The
| Lady so he could use his phone as a parental remote control
| to raise his kid with AI:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGy5SGTuAGI&t=217s
|
| A company I'm funding, we call it The Lady.
|
| I press the button, and The Lady tells Aspen when it's time
| for bed, time to take a bath, when his fucking mother's here
| to pick him up.
|
| I get to be his friend, and she's the bad guy.
|
| I've disrupted fatherhood!
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| another POV is two people who are willing to risk a lot of
| money on pre-seed stage companies - no traction, only people
| and an idea - have arrived at a lot of the same mechanics for
| such investing
|
| the better question is: how do these two investors
| differentiate themselves?
| keiferski wrote:
| Honestly I think there are two different audiences. The type of
| person that is open to traveling, exploring jobs, etc. in their
| twenties is different from the "institutional pipeline" track
| of good high school > good college > good job.
|
| This early decision thing is functionally going to move a few
| pipeline kids from the corporate world to the startup world,
| which probably isn't a terrible outcome. But it also reflects
| how YC has become a marker of institutional pipeline success
| for a lot of people.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| it's unclear to me which track you think YC runs on - stuffy
| corporate or hip & edgy explorer?
| keiferski wrote:
| I wouldn't use either of those labels, more like...it is
| becoming / is already tied into the institutional
| definition of success. 15 years ago, it was still kind of
| unorthodox to turn down a BigTech job and start a company
| instead. Nowadays it's starting to feel like another
| credential or routine path that smart tech-adjacent people
| take.
|
| IMO if you're trying to decide between a well-paid job and
| starting a company...you probably aren't cut out to start a
| company. _But_...the infrastructure for choosing the latter
| option is becoming developed and safe enough that
| realistically speaking, it may actually be the optimal non-
| entrepreneurial career choice.
| danielfalbo wrote:
| For whoever wants to re-read one of the articles that mentions
| the idea, there you go:
| https://paulgraham.com/before.html#f7n:~:text=You%20can%20do...
| dang wrote:
| What that article says is "don't start a startup in college".
| That is what pg has always said, and is not at all what the
| GP comment imputes to him.
|
| More at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45375715.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| As startup valuations have gone up quickly and the YC offer
| largely remains the same, YC has naturally moved downmarket.
| They have gone from being an exclusive, premium product aimed
| at people who have a serious chance of building a unicorn to a
| finishing school for venture-backed entrepreneurs. In my
| opinion, this is a great thing for YC because it's a more
| natural fit for their main value proposition, but it also means
| that the best time to do modern YC is essentially straight out
| of school.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| I don't think this is a valuations vs. stagnant offer
| scenario. I think it has more to do with YC scaling up from
| dozens to hundreds and thousands of investments in a very
| competitive landscape. From a few early successes when no one
| was doing what they did, to having way more money to invest
| than there are good ideas and now it's spray & pray; trade on
| the YC name and with some luck hope there's a pay-off. If we
| start with the apocryphal "VCs look for 1 in 10 home runs",
| well the earliest YC classes only had like ten in a batch, so
| they had the time, energy and NEED to have a success. YC
| added a lot of partners who had a successful exit - or didn't
| - and surprise, they look like every other VC partner in the
| industry, at least minus the identical headshots in navy blue
| suits.
| vessenes wrote:
| This was absolutely Paul's strategy -- read his essay
| reflecting on returns from their early portfolio (AirBnB
| and Dropbox). His take -- "we should have done another 1000
| investments to get a third hit" (coinbase, it turns out.
| And he was correct).
|
| The math for YC's seed stage returns is overall inexorably
| towards more checks being written - the checks are
| incredibly cheap. YC's IRR is currently roughly 176%,
| yielding an 81,000x return since 2005 -- another way to say
| it: a single $25k investment from 2005 could be deployed
| into 81,000 $25k investments in 2026. Or another way to say
| it, for every check they wrote, they're able to write
| another check off that investment every 8 months,
| compounding all the way back.
|
| YC's main problem is that there aren't 81,000 even slightly
| viable startups in the world. It's true they've lost their
| "exclusive" vibe, but to be honest, when they started it
| was more "small and quirky" which briefly became "gold
| standard exclusive." It was never their original brand, and
| I don't think it was ever really part of the strategy.
| fakedang wrote:
| Doesn't PG actually argue for startups as the "surest" route to
| million dollar "success"?
| siva7 wrote:
| > Paul Graham Essay and early YC: live your life, don't start a
| company in your 20s. You are young only once.
|
| I've been lurking on HN since 2008 and can't remember a time
| where i got the vibe from pg to be like "live your life"
| instead of "start a company now and apply". Can you point to
| some specific essay you had in mind?
| abxyz wrote:
| https://paulgraham.com/before.html
|
| "Given this dichotomy, which of the two paths should you
| take? Be a real student and not start a startup, or start a
| real startup and not be a student? I can answer that one for
| you. Do not start a startup in college. How to start a
| startup is just a subset of a bigger problem you're trying to
| solve: how to have a good life. And though starting a startup
| can be part of a good life for a lot of ambitious people, age
| 20 is not the optimal time to do it. Starting a startup is
| like a brutally fast depth-first search. Most people should
| still be searching breadth-first at 20.
|
| You can do things in your early 20s that you can't do as well
| before or after, like plunge deeply into projects on a whim
| and travel super cheaply with no sense of a deadline. For
| unambitious people, this sort of thing is the dreaded
| "failure to launch," but for the ambitious ones it can be an
| incomparably valuable sort of exploration. If you start a
| startup at 20 and you're sufficiently successful, you'll
| never get to do it. [7]"
| cm2012 wrote:
| Totally disagree with Paul here. If you are growing up
| rich, you can take your time with no deadlines.
|
| If you grew up with responsibilities, you cant ignore the
| ticking clock. You have to start working on a career path
| asap.
| siva7 wrote:
| If there is a single advice i would give the young folks here:
| Don't listen to VC's. Live your life. Startup founder is more
| comparable to an olympic athlete in terms of what you have to
| give up to get there - by definition 99% of people who try no
| matter how brilliant won't walk this path successfully - but
| both will lose many things on this way without being much
| happier than before. This is also where most of this community
| is being very dishonest be it co-founder search or success
| stories: Only a very small percentage of people is mentally
| suited (e.g. extreme resilience) to go on with this gamble yet
| we encourage everyone to try it out here.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| >extreme resilience
|
| You misspelled narcissistic psychopath.
|
| The Best of Gavin Belson:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30WTWkFe910
|
| The Best of Russ Hanneman:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGy5SGTuAGI
| wslh wrote:
| This. I'd also add that, in general, you don't need a large
| sum of money in the early stages, as long as your basic needs
| are covered. For instance, living with your parents for a
| while can be a smart move. More importantly, use time wisely:
| with discipline you can do or validate a lot over several
| quarters. By contrast, if you take the VC route, the
| metronome ticks much faster, often in a way that can be
| counterproductive for your startup. As unintuitive as it
| sounds.
| podgorniy wrote:
| First time he gave that advise it was not directly affecting
| his company profit chances. Second time though is different.
|
| --
|
| Another good example of expressing and exersiging values, how
| easy to construct appealing narrative regardless of underlying
| subject and something else what I can't pinpoint at this
| stage...
| dang wrote:
| PG never gave that advice (see
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45375715), and has been
| completely consistent about the advice he has given.
|
| Not that everyone should always be consistent, but you guys
| could not have picked a worse example to seize on.
| zulban wrote:
| I've had to explain this to several people: YC goals are not
| our goals. For YC, it would be great for lots of people to burn
| down their lives for even the slimmest chance at success.
| dangus wrote:
| Venture capital would love it if everyone worked overtime
| with no weekends to build "the next big thing."
|
| Your hobbies and interests should actually just be work and
| producing profit. Don't spend the weekend taking a hike with
| your friends, you gotta get building.
|
| The people doing that work are a probabilistic financial
| instrument to the VC system. The founders who fall for this
| trap instead of living a balanced life are just lowering the
| cost basis for the VC investors by giving away free labor.
|
| In reality, you can build a startup while maintaining a work-
| life balance, but if everyone did that then VC firms would
| have to delay the purchase of their owners' fifth yacht by a
| couple of months.
|
| The only people who have the time and energy for the toxic
| startup founder lifestyle of thing are students and young
| people who haven't yet established families and their
| optimism and interest is being exploited.
| dang wrote:
| I'm having a hard time understanding the 'gotcha' quality of
| this comment and this subthread. There's no inconsistency; PG
| has always said that people should finish college before
| starting a startup--I heard him say this over 15 years ago, and
| he went on about it at length at his most recent YC talk.
|
| Edit: I think I understand the problem now. PG's actual advice
| has always been "finish college before starting a startup".
| Somehow somewhere that got distorted into "don't start a
| company in your 20s", which is certainly not what PG has been
| saying (the average graduation age is somewhere around 23).
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45372572 quotes a
| representative passage, and if you read that essay you'll see
| that he's mostly saying "don't start a startup at 20".
|
| (Edit: I deleted my last sentence which was irritable.)
| foldr wrote:
| I don't have a strong personal opinion on this, but the PG
| essay mentioned in the comment you link to advises people not
| to start a startup while in college and to do other things in
| their "early 20s", while Early Decision is targeted
| specifically at people who are currently college students and
| (mostly) in their early 20s. I don't think there's a 'gotcha'
| there, but there is at least a tension, no?
|
| While you're correct that the comment you're responding to is
| a bit sloppy in summarizing what PG said ("20s" instead of
| "early 20s"), its basic point still makes sense.
|
| YC is not the Church of Paul Graham, so I don't see any need
| to dive into Pauline exegesis and attempt to reconcile YC's
| current admissions process with everything PG has ever said.
| YC can do what it likes, and people can note what may or may
| not have changed since PG was in charge of it.
| dang wrote:
| The early decision is for people who want to start a
| startup once they finish college. I don't see a tension
| between that and advising people to finish college.
|
| The difference between "20s" and "early 20s" is huge; it's
| the difference between Google and not-Google (btw, that pg
| essay includes this information). Since not-not-funding-
| Google is, to a first approximation, the entire startup
| investment business, conflating the two is more than a bit
| sloppy, and the GP comment (imputing an inconsistency to PG
| that doesn't exist, with cynical implications), makes no
| sense once one adjusts for what pg really said. He's been
| consistent about this for many years! I'm being irritable
| again now though. but not with you!
|
| You made me laugh with the Pauline bit!
| user3939382 wrote:
| Yeah so all our talent can line the pockets of SV.
| Maro wrote:
| I can't quite put my finger on it, but this announcement gives me
| bad vibes.
| gjgtcbkj wrote:
| They just want warm bodies. Why else would they focus on people
| that don't have experience?
| epolanski wrote:
| Neither experience nor hard skills, let alone soft ones.
| gjgtcbkj wrote:
| Something tells me the business is became the product.
| theplatman wrote:
| For awhile now I've felt like YC has turned into another badge
| for the type people who are obsessed with prestige. It's all
| about checking a box and not about the substance of what they
| want to do.
|
| This is evident in how disappointed certain people are when
| they're rejected from YC. Their startup is merely a vehicle to
| get into the club.
| mnky9800n wrote:
| Better to start our own club then.
|
| All things have a life cycle. Despite what yc wants you to
| believe, it will come and go. Perhaps it's becoming a
| prestige institution in the hopes to increase its longevity.
|
| That being said, belonging to a group is a central component
| of being a human as we are highly social animals. So it's not
| wrong to want to belong to a group and then being sad when
| you are rejected. It requires a lot of maturity and stoicism
| to cut your own path. This is somewhat ironic since
| traditionally founding your own company is considered cutting
| your own path but I think yc and others have made it much
| less so. There is a formula now to follow which is why there
| is now an in group and an out group. Cutting your own path by
| definition does not include a set formula.
| epolanski wrote:
| Asking people without experience, skills and maturity to know
| what they want in their life to commit to YC way before
| graduating comes off as simply too much.
| this_user wrote:
| Interestingly, this mirrors the kind of thing that has been
| happening in finance, especially in private equity. Normally,
| you start out at an investment bank, do two years as an
| analyst there, learn the basics, then make a choice whether
| you want to stay in IB or move to PE (or somewhere else).
|
| Eventually, PE started recruiting earlier and earlier to the
| point where they were hiring college graduates for two years
| in the future who hadn't even started their IB role.
| Obviously, these people don't even know what they like doing,
| and you have no idea if they are any good at their job.
|
| The end result was Jamie Dimon of JPM slamming his fist on
| the table to knock it off. This has led other banks to follow
| suit and major PE firms to commit to stop recruiting this
| early. At least for now.
|
| But it seems that something similar is now happening on the
| VC side.
| ulfw wrote:
| It's all about riding that idiotic AI bubble until the huge
| burst
| bko wrote:
| I think a few things:
|
| Wanting to finish school is a negative signal. Also
|
| > Also we know that many students spend a lot of time in Fall
| or during their final year applying for jobs or internships.
| Early Decision gives students another option: apply to YC and
| bet on yourself.
|
| So now YC is an alternative to searching and apply for jobs? I
| think if you're marginal on trying to find a corporate job or
| starting something, then you should prob find a corp job.
| Objectively starting a startup is worse, you work harder, lower
| odds of success, more stress, less money, etc. You have to be a
| little crazy and hardheaded to make it work
|
| Finally everything that YC does to increase it's applicant pool
| so they still maintain exclusivity. If you have 2% acceptance
| rate, why are you trying to maximize the top of the funnel? You
| should discourage people to apply.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| honest question: do you think that in a job market where it
| seems to be ridiculously hard to land that junior corporate
| job maybe starting your own thing is a increasingly valid
| alternative? I'm not sure this is aligned with the properties
| that YC is necessarily shopping for (they seem to compete
| with companies eager to hire the same people) but maybe if
| you're a newish grad from a lesser-known school? My sample
| size of one includes someone who did that in the 90's and
| built a $B+ valued company.
| majormajor wrote:
| VC investment has rebounded but it's also been extremely
| concentrated in AI in the last couple of years.
|
| "Starting your own thing" in a _vc-backed way_ (need a big
| exit, or bust) as a fresh college grad who now has to come
| up with a thing and sell it to a lot of customers within a
| couple of years sounds _incredibly_ hard.
|
| Especially when framed as "you won't have to look for a
| job" - not having the hustle skills to be at the top of the
| pack in the job-hunt vs your classmates doesn't _really_
| give a good signal for your hustle-and-build-and-sell-a-VC-
| startup alternative.
| dheera wrote:
| > Wanting to finish school is a negative signal
|
| No. This sounds like VC trash advice and very bad career
| advice.
|
| Startup chances of success are <5%, and many of the factors
| are beyond your control. A degree is still relevant in being
| able to easily get interviews and secure jobs, in the >95%
| case that you do not succeed on the first try.
|
| I'd only recommend dropping out if you see mad traction and
| revenue and you are on a trajectory to be famous enough that
| people won't care if you don't have a degree. If you're still
| a "nobody", it's a really, really bad idea.
| floriferous wrote:
| Exactly the same feeling here, it's such a strange thing to
| promise a kid they are accepted into a program, but it starts
| in like 4 years.
|
| As if all of your education (and probably side-projects, life
| decisions) is meant to lead to YC.
| estearum wrote:
| > Also, if you're not in your final year, you can still apply
| for Early Decision. You'll be able to finish the school year
| you're currently in,
|
| It's a one-year early decision, like pretty much every other
| early decision program.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| I have been thoroughly enjoying re-watching HBO's Silicon
| Valley, appreciating all the little details and sub-plots I
| missed during my first watching long ago. It's aged so well.
|
| It's telling how many people are afraid to watch that show and
| detest it because it's just so spot on accurate, and they
| cringe when they see themselves in its characters and their own
| lives in its plots.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| I love the show and rewatch it often, but if you lived in
| that world during the show's timeframe you can see it's
| changed draamtically. It still holds up as the "vision" of
| what we thought a SW startup looks like, but the reality is
| these scrappy little altruistic startups are not lead by
| hands-on tech founders, they're all taking the money today -
| often from PE - and are already the people from the show we
| laughed at. Show a member of a YC25 class SV today and
| they'll think Gavin Belson is a "how-to" tutorial.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| I agree, it's gotten much much worse, especially with all
| the MAGA/Trump/Musk/Thiel boot licking.
|
| It's prime time for Silicon Valley: AI Bubble. Instead of
| hiring the original actors or artists or writers, it could
| be ironically AI animated in the style of South Park, with
| a storyline about infringing on copyright and intellectual
| property, and putting actors and artists and programmers
| out of work.
|
| I wonder what kind of company names would Erlich Bachman
| come up with on ketamine instead of shrooms?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXqkkpnZDgU
| ClimaxGravely wrote:
| I suspect Erlich might have died of an opium overdose at
| this point.
| gghffguhvc wrote:
| The number of people we are talking about as a percentage of CS
| like graduates is tiny. They aren't kids either. It seems like
| a low risk experiment on both sides.
| solumos wrote:
| You should consider placing them into a 1 or 2 year "on the job
| training" program at another YC company before sticking them in a
| batch.
|
| Maybe you could offer that as a "waitlist" option.
| cosmic_quanta wrote:
| I like that suggestion. Work experience at a startup is eye
| opening.
| dang wrote:
| YC has done that over the years and I believe is planning
| another such program. Not every prospective founder wants to do
| that, though, so there's a need for both options.
| antonvs wrote:
| Eternal September for the startup world.
| ramon156 wrote:
| Fun fact, not every startup needs funding. Seems like post paul
| doesn't really talk about this anymore.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| AP (After Paul) is much more concerned with traditional VC
| exits; YC is just another firm now, but because they invented
| the space get to trade on their name a while longer.
| dang wrote:
| YC gives founders a lot more than funding.
| Illniyar wrote:
| Seems like a good thing for founders, doesn't force them to quit
| school to start a funded startup. Especially for under-privileged
| youths who might not be able to miss a high paying job
| opportunity or have no income for months.
|
| Seems like a bad signal for YC though - if you aren't committed
| enough to quit school or at the very least reject job offers and
| do your startup anyway - feels like you might not be committed
| enough to do what it takes?
|
| But if anyone does, YC knows how to pick founders with the right
| mindset.
| snowmaker wrote:
| I think there is some risk of that. But commitment isn't
| static. A lot of incredible companies started with founders who
| were just toying with an idea and weren't committed at all,
| then they became more committed over time as things started to
| work.
| tossandthrow wrote:
| I bought into the idea of startups after college. And did It
| despite having an offer from a good large Corp.
|
| I regret that decision.
|
| Truth is that it is incredibly difficult to build startup without
| any good industry knowledge.
| AfterHIA wrote:
| [flagged]
| hnthrowaway121 wrote:
| Senior year of college, aren't we talking 21/22 year olds?
| AfterHIA wrote:
| Having had friends that went to a technical high school I
| have a feeling that there's a subtle suggestion that,
| "graduates" might refer to talented kids coming out of high
| school. At any rate suggesting to a young person that they
| should essentially ruin their life to chase a pipe dream is
| unethical especially when you benefit financially from making
| these suggestions.
| hnthrowaway121 wrote:
| That's clearly not the suggestion of the post. It only
| mentions college students. There is no child abuse.
| gh0stcat wrote:
| In what way is this "ruining your life"? If things don't go
| as planned, I imagine the person would be in a good
| position to pivot to higher education/a different
| job/starting something new. I think this idea that ruining
| one's life == not following the exact k-12 -> college ->
| big corporation route is short sighted.
| tossandthrow wrote:
| Do a risk based calculation of compensation and learning.
|
| Your will see that you are putting you self at risk -
| especially if you had the opportunity to work at an
| renowned business.
|
| Eg. Having 2 no name defunct businesses on your resume
| you claim as startups over 3 years will likely not
| benefit you so much.
| ehutch79 wrote:
| There's plenty of 65+ people who are still best described as
| toddlers.
| ascorbic wrote:
| Your 20s is a great time to be a founder. You have fewer
| responsibilities so can get by with less income and more easily
| up sticks to somewhere else. Your opportunity cost as a junior
| is low. It's a bad time to get a job as a junior too, so this
| is a good way to get job experience if nobody will hire you.
| You probably won't succeed (because most startups fail) but
| you'll learn a lot and probably have a lot of fun.
| podgorniy wrote:
| Young, fool and hungry. The best VC material.
| asimpleusecase wrote:
| There is so much online to help jumpstart a young entrepreneur-
| they can have some small sense of what they are in for. As far as
| start a company vs get a job, just being told that is an option
| can be super empowering. I agree that burning up a few years in a
| failed company as a young entrepreneur does not have a good
| monetary outcome, but it does help them gain a ton of real world
| experience that can serve them well their whole life.
| FinnLobsien wrote:
| I think everyone criticizing this is comparing it to the wrong
| thing. Many ambitious students:
|
| -graduate and work 100 hour+ weeks as investment banking
| associates.
|
| -join other people's startups where they work crazy hours
|
| -work hellish hours in PhDs/med school/law school
|
| Yes, being a founder is hard and can be absolute hell at times.
| But so are some of the "normal" things ambitious students already
| do post-graduation.
|
| It's not like YC is saying you either do an internship with free
| lunches, corporate yoga classes and kombucha on tap or you dive
| into the trenches of being a YC founder.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| speaking only for recent graduates I know personally well:
| ambitious students also want to be writers, for example. If
| only it were so easy as writing more makes you a better writer!
| So if you have to sit around and get life experiences that are
| interesting to write about (a good way to be a good writer), do
| you want to do that while working for Stripe, drinking kombucha
| and getting free lunches and being able to live in New York?
| Yes. You don't want to do that while being an investment banker
| or a doctor or a YC founder.
|
| The thing is those kids still have massive cognitive gifts -
| I'm not going to use a loaded word like talented or whatever -
| and have worked very hard in the past. It's just that the
| journey to the thing they want to do no longer rewards hours.
|
| Paul Graham is like the Mr. Beast of seed investing. He wants
| to make the best SEED STAGE INVESTMENTS in the world, to mock a
| Mr. Beast PowerPoint. He doesn't want to get the kids with the
| highest potential, or the kids who work the hardest. They are
| very sincere and supportive - I mean, who the hell in your life
| is willing to risk $525,000 on an idea with no traction?? - but
| they are not out to anoint a category of kids as the
| "ambitious" ones versus the unambitious ones. You can be
| ambitious about being a writer and find success and wind up
| writing very little!
| FinnLobsien wrote:
| > speaking only for recent graduates I know personally well:
| ambitious students also want to be writers, for example. If
| only it were so easy as writing more makes you a better
| writer! So if you have to sit around and get life experiences
| that are interesting to write about (a good way to be a good
| writer), do you want to do that while working for Stripe,
| drinking kombucha and getting free lunches and being able to
| live in New York? Yes. You don't want to do that while being
| an investment banker or a doctor or a YC founder.
|
| But nobody's closing that option, are they? YC is simply
| offering another path.
|
| There are different kinds of ambitions of course. Not all of
| them are about money, some are about creative fulfillment or
| family or whatever. That's totally true.
|
| But it's not like anyone's yanking those people out of their
| kombucha-on-tap associate job and forcing them into YC.
| Kranar wrote:
| > If only it were so easy as writing more makes you a better
| writer!
|
| One commonly repeated piece of advice that almost all
| successful authors state is to write a lot, a lot, a lot.
| Like just practice writing, it doesn't have to be good.
|
| I hear this often said about many other creative endeavors as
| well, including painting, cooking, game development/design,
| etc... It often seems like really good artisans just pull
| greatness out of thin air, but that's because we often only
| see the successes, not the failures, but I am reminded that
| even the best writers, poets, and artists in general spend a
| great amount of time just creating content that no one will
| ever see.
| snowmaker wrote:
| Yes, this is an excellent point.
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| I'm sorry but only at my most very dedicated periods of work
| did I work 100 hour weeks, and that was like 3 or 4 weeks tops.
| I highly doubt that anyone sustains a 100 hour work week for
| much longer. Eighty hour work weeks? Sure, that is doable, but
| sleeping at the job site because you are pulling a 100 hour
| work week is just not sustainable.
| Kranar wrote:
| Rules changed in 2003, but until then medical residency
| programs routinely had doctors working 100+ hours a week or
| longer. In 2003 a cap of 80 hours a week was instituted along
| with a maximum of 24 hours in any given period, but programs
| found various loopholes around that cap which still had
| doctors working close to 100 hours a week. So further
| restrictions were placed so that over any 4 week period
| there's a hard cap of 320 hours, no exceptions.
|
| At any rate, for most of the HN crowd who work a fairly
| routine IT or an office job, 80+ hours sustained for months
| and months might seem impossible, but join the military, work
| on a ship, work on a farm, work the oil fields, work in
| investment banking, work in a film crew which threatened to
| go on strike in 2021 for having 98 hour work weeks for months
| on end... and you find that while it's not common, it
| certainly happens in various fields.
| JambalayaJimbo wrote:
| Are residents and people working on ships actually making
| decisions for 100 hours a week? It's the cognitive load
| that I find difficult to believe about these numbers, not
| the
|
| At one point I was also working crazy hours at a fast food
| shop. But that was only possible because I could "zone out"
| and just pour the customer's coffee and make sandwiches.
| Writing code for that long would have been impossible.
| throwaw12 wrote:
| My advice to 20 year olds, don't go to startups, go to big tech
| while it still pays good salary, build up your wealth, network
| and how things work at such corporations.
|
| Then at mid 30s get hired as Dir/VP of engineering in smaller
| Series A startup.
|
| You will have higher chance to retire early and/or afford
| yourself to work on things you like later on.
| throwaw12 wrote:
| Don't forget why YC wants more young people to work for
| startups, they benefit from couple of successes and their
| metric is to increase number of companies they want to invest,
| which requires more number of cheap engineers/interns giving
| their life.
|
| Your chances of success is lower than YC's chances of success
| because they invest to many companies in parallel, but you can
| only work for 1 company
| boringg wrote:
| Understanding people and companies incentives doesn't mean
| that it is inherently bad as you are implying. YC is also
| investing in a bunch of people and putting money towards new
| ideas. Lets not forget that innovation is difficult and
| fraught with failure.
|
| People who want to go that route and feel strongly about it
| should give it a shot with their eyes open.
| joshdavham wrote:
| Relevant blog post: https://www.gayle.com/blog/2011/10/29/why-
| coders-shouldnt-jo...
|
| Something ironic I found when I was on my last job search (and
| applying to some YC startups) was that, despite startups often
| being critical of big tech, when describing their past
| experience, the founders (and their teams) never failed to
| 'name drop' the brand-name companies they've worked for.
|
| Additionally, I think the reason a lot of founders threw my
| resume in the trash was because they couldn't recognize the no-
| name startups I've worked at... Luckily I'm at a household name
| company now and even non-tech people recognize the company I
| work at.
| boringg wrote:
| Doesn't part of your soul die when you start working for big
| tech? All that youthful energy and hope to push a potentially
| meaningless product. Such a sad thing to watch potential and
| idealism get crushed.
|
| I understand its provocative statement - your play is the risk
| free life route - perfect for many many people but not
| everyone. Certainly not people who want to build things that go
| into the wild.
| mikestew wrote:
| _Doesn 't part of your soul die when you start working for
| big tech?_
|
| I learned more at Microsoft than any of the startups I worked
| at. I shipped product to more users than at any startup I
| worked at.
|
| _I understand its provocative statement..._
|
| Meh, more of an example of "begging the question" than
| anything else.
| guywithahat wrote:
| I've interviewed at a few YC companies, and the issue with really
| young companies is that they don't know anything about running a
| company. Experienced people don't want to work for a 27 year old,
| and so it's a bunch of people who don't know what they're doing,
| making promises out of ignorance and not delivering.
|
| I'm tempted to think that YC knows better than I do here, but my
| experience suggests this is a bad idea. The worst managers I've
| had were inexperienced, and someone who's 22 won't know when they
| need someone experienced, or how to talk to customers. Many of
| them may be too nervous to act, and since they can apply under
| the safety of also applying for jobs they may not be as
| motivated. I suspect this is just a ploy to get more Stanford
| grads to apply but I'm not sure it's the best way to go about it.
| umutisik wrote:
| It does make me uneasy that founding companies is becoming
| another tracked thing that people feel they can apply high-IQ
| pattern-matching to. Especially when startups are where first-
| principles thinking is the most valuable.
|
| That being said, I can see this being useful to a lot of kids.
| Certainly beats going to grad school for someone who wants to
| start a company. Keep in mind that a 500K SAFE doesn't force a
| founder to go big or zero-out.
| laidoffamazon wrote:
| This pattern of extending the peripheral aspects of elite
| undergrad into high school and after actual undergrad
| seems...wrong. I disliked the Google cultural tendency of trying
| to mirror grad school but this seems worse.
| cdelsolar wrote:
| lol come on guys let kids live a little
| omosubi wrote:
| I don't know why there's so much negativity. I see this as a big
| win for students interested in it.
|
| 1. it's a short commitment - only 3 months. more time-bound
| opportunities should be available to kids coming out of school.
| too many people go straight to big finance/law/tech/etc and get
| stuck because they don't want to give up the salary or safety.
|
| 2. get access to a network that is very difficult to get access
| to otherwis
|
| 3. better status boost than most other things you could be doing.
| There are likely better status signals about someone's
| abilities/intellect than YC, but i'm guessing they are few for
| people in the valley.
|
| 4. Get to work on something you are interested in
|
| 5. learn a lot very quickly.
|
| 6. gives you a lot of optionality
|
| yes, YC is trying to make money but they do seem intent on
| developing talent and this is a good avenue for that.
| snowmaker wrote:
| This is a good way of thinking about it!
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