I found that filling in the application, without even sending it, is a useful exercise. It makes you think hard about what it is you are trying to achieve with whatever it is your building. It's very helpful when you come to talk with clients.

You know how they say launch fast, launch early? That's part of it, because launching means talking about it to other people. Those people will have questions or objections or an incomplete understanding of pre-existing solutions. A lot of the application is about this kind of stuff.

Personally, I wanted to fill the application irrespective of YC. I figured, if I'm serious about building something useful, I shouldn't just build it and que sera, sera. I should know what to focus on. And since they've learned a bunch about building companies, if they care about something enough to ask about it, that's a good pointer that I should care enough about it to be able to answer it.

For example, I filled it in when a solution was just an idea, as if it were already built. So it made me set expectations, and clarify what I want this thing to be. Then, once it was built, the first thing that happened when that solution met with clients was this: I'd give them the short description I've written in the application, and they'd ask - Oh, but does it have to do just that?

Without the application, there wouldn't have been the short description, without which there wouldn't have been the useful client feedback...So, again: do it for yourself, not for the approval.

Decided to take a risk with the founder video. On my first 2 applications I did what everyone does and shot 100 takes to get one "right"... On this one though, I shot the whole video in one take (with warts and all) and used our own software to edit it, and then used that as the demo as well[0].

In a way, it feels like I can't win on this video thing

- if we follow instructions to "not edit" the founder video, the result is 100 takes for a basic video that is unworthy of a video-based startup.

- If we use our own tool, the video is "too polished" (even though it took less work to do!).

Hopefully the application stands on its own merits. A year ago I took the first rejection hard. I really really hate applying for stuff or having some kind of "jury" reviewing things when the only truth is what the market wants and whether people use what I've created. So as an engineer I prefer marketing to fundraising, by far.

If we don't get into YC I'll just keep bootstrapping. I see the value though, because with the right pointers we could grow way way faster. So, fingers crossed!

[0]: https://my.onetake.ai/b9502ad6/9dcd6eb6/

Why would you even want to join YC? They give the same deal to everyone. So you're lumped into a batch that basically has 30% of people in it with just an idea. It's pretty offensive if you actually proved yourself and your business idea. But don't worry, you prob still won't get in

We always think that our current stage is pretty high up the mountain already (see a rough July 2022 ARR update[0] when I thought I was on top of the world) but if you zoom out, you see things with much better perspective (18 months later, the whole year of 2022 looks way less impressive[1])

If we're on the road to $100MM+ in ARR, the current spot we're at will be flattened to almost zero when you look back with perspective a few years down the line.

So there's that.

And then, "why join YC", well the answer is simple.

- We are growing, but we could grow so much faster. Everything is still on a shoestring budget.

- We have an epic roadmap and could grow the product to mind-boggling levels of awesome. YC could help us shave years off of that.

- Plus we finally cracked breakeven acquisition on cold traffic but we're strapped for cash.

- And finally, I've joined several founder "communities" in the last few months (online and local) and those are all just a dump-your-promo Slack channel with zero added value or interaction. The local "startup" events are full of startup consultants on the hunt, designers, would-be employees and the like (but zero founders). So it feels a bit lonely when you've got a challenge which is clearly in the "thousands of founders must have solved this exact same problem before, so why should I bang my head on the wall" category.

So: advice, founder-friendly terms, a network of peers, and not having to chase investors for capital. That's why I applied.

[0]: https://nuro.video/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Capture-de%CC%...

[1]: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSEOGmySAAyv...

Overall the money isn’t a lot. It sounds like you’re strapped for cash. If you optimize for that you’ll likely find much better terms. The point about cohort being so many idea stage is that they focus on that and have resources geared towards those people. And the community (cohort) will be much less mature business wise. They give you the golden touch which helps for cos selling vapor ware. I think you’re beyond that and can go more traditional route to raise money. Did you reach out to other vcs?

The $375k is an uncapped safe with mfn, but you do get the whole $500k upfront.

Source: https://www.ycombinator.com/deal

Also sourced from getting said $500k, thus the confusion on my end.

Maybe, I misunderstood then! I thought they were referring to next funding round to hand over rest of $375k. But in fact, it was just the calculation to explain the valuation of the company in ref to that balance.

I’d actually love to use it as a hobbyist, but the pricing is a bit steep. Anyway to come down to 30$ or so?

Your costs must be high, have you considered colo or lower cost cloud providers like Hetzner? I'm sure you have but just sayin!! :)

But I'm curious what have other investors said? It seems like with your combination of desire to raise, AI, revenue and great product you will have investors already beating a path to your door??

I don't know if it's just me but your site takes some time to load(on my laptop)

The written applications forces you to articulate your ideas in a concise yet easy to understand way.

And as much as YC doesn't recommend this, the mock YC interviews we did with alums was one of those most beneficial things that happened to us. Because so rarely will you get the opportunity to ask dozens of other YC founders to grill your business, and have 80%+ of them say yes.

We did about 30 at the time, which is a lot of time to be taken off product/building, hence probably why they don't recommend it, but looking back it *really helped us understand our own business. Given how young/naive/early we were.

I'm seeing this a lot through the comments but I have to ask, why is it? Do people just not think about how their product will make money, who the competition is or how are they going to get customers?

The short answer is "yes, people don't think about those things."

The longer answer is that they think that they've thought about those things, but in reality, they put more thought into what they had for dinner last night than they did into those things.

Honest it was quite inspiring to chat with these founders who were in a different world, and realizing that they're not all that different from myself.

So yea, maybe I was young dumb n broke.

Meh. Sharping your concept, yes. It is a snapshot of your concept.

The best way to sharpen your idea/business is to sell. That way, the "sharpening" process is iterative instead of a once-off event.

Honestly, YC isn't what you think it is. PS: I have a few YC customers and their founders aren't what the media make them out to be.

NVDA just tanked 10% today and with it a whole bunch of AI valuations. Did YC startups from in the 2022 batches see positives or negatives?

What is the upside to fundraising in the next few months vs waiting for a better environment? If we have a startup and it’s profitable, does it make sense to apply it to wait?

I do know that one reason the YC deal is far larger than it used to be is to give founders resilience against market ups and downs. You get a lot of runway now.

Your deepest motivation should be to build something amazing that people want to use, to create a great business, to have fun, to go on a great adventure.

If stock market performance plays a major role in your decision to start a business or raise capital then perhaps your motivations might need a rethink.

There’s a very good argument to be made that they shouldn’t care and that their investment theses should be more stable as well as their criteria, but that’s an academic argument that doesn’t do a whole lot for the founders who have been attempting to fundraise amid those varied VC spasms.

You make it sound like you have a 100% success rate. A lot of applicants apply multiple times so getting in at a worse rate vs not getting at all, what's the pick?

> (1) "probably not good enough / won't get in" - you'd be surprised at how many people feel that way, whether because of impostor syndrome, lack of credentials, whatever—and often they turn out to be among the best founders. So this a terrible reason not to apply!

I have nothing going on at the moment. I am starting to apply to new jobs (have an interview with Google coming up). But I'm open to do the entrepreneurship thing. I always wanted to do it for years, strongly (I created my study program in such a way that it'd help if I'd ever do entrepreneurship). Nowadays it's not strong, I'm simply open to it.

> (2) "too early" - there's no such thing. YC looks for good potential founders—meaning anyone who can learn what they teach—and nothing else. You're already yourself, which is all you need.

Well, I don't have a project started. I have nothing. I did build stuff in the past and I do have a bunch of ideas, which I showed in my application. So let's see if there is no such thing indeed ;-)

> Some of YC's big successes start off as last-minute applications on a whim

Basically this.

"Conflict is essential to human life, whether between different aspects of oneself, between oneself and the environment, between different individuals or between different groups. It follows that the aim of healthy living is not the direct elimination of conflict, which is possible only by forcible suppression of one or other of its antagonistic components, but the toleration of it—the capacity to bear the tensions of doubt and of unsatisfied need and the willingness to hold judgement in suspense until finer and finer solutions can be discovered which integrate more and more the claims of both sides. It is the psychologist's job to make possible the acceptance of such an idea so that the richness of the varieties of experience, whether within the unit of the single personality or in the wider unit of the group, can come to expression." Marion Milner, 'The Toleration of Conflict', Occupational Psychology, 17, 1, January 1943

More generally Montaigne's writings (which you may well know) are sometimes cited as "mindfulness" long before the term was invented [1].

[0] https://psyche.co/ideas/for-montaigne-verbal-jousting-is-the...

[1] https://thehouseilivein.me/2023/10/21/my-year-with-montaigne...

I remember during COVID that there was a remote option, but I don’t believe that’s available now. So for someone more established (erm, no longer 20) that lives in the middle of the country, I’m not sure it’s a great fit.

But man am I interested… I can never quite tell myself “no” and move on either… I’d love to be wrong. Because I’ve got a great one cooking right now!…

A startup founder who is 40 years old is 2.1x more likely to start a successful venture than a 25-year-old. [1] The kind of people who tend to have kids and families.

And it’s kind of pathetic for an industry that’s supposed to be creating innovations like spatial computing, augmented reality, and fully remote companies to be unable to set up an online school.

[1] https://www.founderjar.com/startup-statistics/

If this is your belief, I strongly advise you to reconsider your life choices and priorities

How do I balance this encouraging advice with everything I've heard online about YC basically being a post-Ivy League thing? Seems like there's basically a 0% chance a random person would get into YC. And often those who did get in went to Stanford, Harvard, etc. and don't even have a product - sometimes they don't even know what they're going to build yet.

I wrote the idea of VC stuff off long ago. My wife and I have a profitable business here in SF that would be perfect as a startup, but the concept of raising funds to expand literally hasn't even crossed our minds because it seems so geared toward post-grads - like something only Stanford and Harvard people get access to after they graduate.

Not only that, we're profitable, and can even articulate a realistic vision about how it becomes the next $100M household name, but the numbers I've read online that most VCs want to see are not realistic - or if we were hitting those numbers I wouldn't even need a VC, we would be able to fund our own expansion.

So we're just doing it on our own.

> So we're just doing it on our own.

IMO if you can become a $100M household name without VC, that's absolutely the way to do it.

Even if you do take the VC path, YC for me was a massive boost in network, knowledge, and resources that I didn't have before, but it's also not the only way to acquire those things. You can even find that YC knowledge online, e.g. https://www.startupschool.org/.

That said, if anyone's even considering applying to YC, I'd recommend it, at a minimum it's a forcing function to think more deeply about your idea or business when assembling the application.

Yes, but did you go to one of those colleges where dropping out is even better than graduating? Because most of us didn't even get the chance to drop out of one of those.

Why not just give it a shot? Find the powerful parts of your story (I'm sure they exist) and share them!

We applied, as GP advocates for, mostly to sharpen our thinking. Just the application process would've been worth the time, even if we had gotten declined immediately. The interview 10x'd that value, then the YC batch itself was another multiple on top of that.

Honestly I feel like some of these are negative indicators when it comes to engineering cred.

Meanwhile, stellar engineering schools like Caltech, Stanford, and MIT are in a league of their own.

This comment is mostly to complain that using "Ivy League" as a shorthand for prestigious engineering schools is inaccurate.

For example, a lot of people drop out of RPI because it’s actually difficult to get good grades there (not why I did it FWIW). That’s not why anyone drops out of Harvard.

My impression of the YC application process was that it was way more holistic than just educational background.

- Do I even understand your idea.

- Have you talked to customers.

- Am I impressed in your use of time.

- Do I believe that your team is capable of delivering.

- Is it a good idea.

Most people can't get past the first two but obsess over the last two.

The result surprised me as well but it also makes sense. Investors would be more eager to invest if the founders were already part of some of their networks. People from these schools also tend to be more inclined to be higher achievers than other places on average.

The only time where there was more educational diversity was probably only during the 1st two years of YC.

Has it changed in recent years? I would rather be wrong on this one.

Not just from an equality perspective, but also that good ideas and founders can come from anywhere. Top Schools are going to produce one type of founder and idea. People that have walked different paths, another.

Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with what YC is doing. Startups are hard enough as is, and they found a formula that works consistently.

As a unknown university dropout (2001) I wouldn't feel intimidated to apply, and may well go after the next batch (have just found a cofounder). I have to trust that they'll evaluate me on merits rather than prestige.

I was filling out the Co-Founder matching service application and it has a required text area for education. The placeholder text examples? Standford MS in Comp Sci, NYU BS in Physics.

As a college dropout with "some college" but a 14+ year career in systems/software engineering roles, that was quite discouraging.

What I'm basically trying to tell everyone, and hoping to convince a few, is: don't listen to any of this, just do it.

Gates, Jobs, and Zuck all famously dropped out of college of course.

It's an interesting and tricky social dynamic matching within and between these somewhat distinct groups.

Harvard, Reed, Harvard.

Any drop out from any of those has hurdled more than 98% of the general college corps. Or at least that would be a rational assumption by the VC cadre that is probably in the top 0.1% and an Ivy League grad.

Is the point that just having been accepted to those schools is a strong signal? I would concede that it could be, sure.

But a lot of people drop out of Ivy league schools and simply flame out. Many would consider dropping out of those schools after a few semesters as failure. And many companies still require degrees; a few semesters at Harvard won't cut it.

I guess my point is that college dropouts are also successful at creating startups. Two have started the two most valuable companies in the world.

These people dropped out to chase extremely lucrative business opportunities - that they created as a student, likely aided by structural/networking support inside that institution - due to timing risk.

One could argue they not only got into a highly prestigious institution, but they quickly leapfrogged everyone there. That's the opposite of flaming out.

You could argue YC wants people that wouldn't be discouraged by that. I'd argue that due to survivorship bias that would be hard to quantify, and that YC is competing with others for the best ideas so they might just end up somewhere else.

To expand a bit; I wasn't actually discouraged.. I was more put-off and slightly offended. It did make me stop filling out the co-founder match in the moment, but I was always planning to swing back around on it.

There is a trend I notice where people just drop low effort argumentative responses. They aren't even fully realized counter arguments. I try not to engage when they are targeting me; it's better for a third party to shut them down. It's super bad on Reddit and unfortunately ruins r/dotnet .

Zuck and Gates both dropped out of Harvard after founding their companies.

Sometimes I wish I went there instead of my Alma mater.

I don't personally believe that -- I'm confident in my 23 years of experience. It's unlikely I'll apply this weekend, but I did find a cofounder through the YC dating app. Maybe next batch.

How about a native South African, born in SA?

Edit: I asked my informant and they said that YC has funded 6 South African founders since 2017, which I guess is how far that data goes back to. We agreed that it seems like there should be more!

I'll keep in mind, so won't make it for this intake.

Still on the fence on whether I need the rocket fuel or not, and my co-founder hasn't yet weighed in either (we're still in exploratory phase of some potential products, so not in 100% yet).

Everyone I met in our batch was very friendly, curious, and razor-sharp. Many people have credentialed backgrounds, many people do not.

I generally buy YC’s justification that many of the smartest people happen to go to Stanford/Ivy which is why they are over-represented.

There's no way this is even possible, let alone true.

This might be a hot take but if you're under the age of 25, it's likely that you know very few things total. And the things you do know, you're just not going to have a master level of understanding of in your 20s yet nor the drive to focus on it the way it needs, especially with other social pressures at play. What is extremely high in your 20s is your ambition - your loftiness of ideas and goals and your expectations of yourself - these can land you exceptional jobs, opportunities, and get you to a great starting point, but that's not the same as intelligence and ability.

For manual labor work, there's a definite peak - college age and the years just after. But for knowledge work, math, programming, business, politics, etc. being older is almost always an asset - you get better at things, you get smarter, your networks grow, you become an adult among the children and are far more aware of timing and can predict and speak on things with more accuracy. You simply know more.

Besides that, I don't think raw intelligence is selection criteria for a good founder anyway. It has a lot more to do with your particular situation - how well you're situated to pull it off, which can mean many things. In terms of personal qualities it probably has more to do with determination and obsession (work ethic) than intelligence, especially these days where information is so cheap and available.

I think there's different benefits at different ages, and agree on importance of determination and obsession. A good market is the only thing that might be more useful.

However, my usage of the following words deviate from yours:

* intelligence - raw intellect, having absolutely nothing to do with anything ever learned

* smarts - synonym for raw intellect, but often more on the 'crafty' side of raw intellect

* ability - short for 'capabilities', and is a merge of 'intelligence' and 'learned information'. Information is useless without intellect, and intellect is vastly reduced in capability without learned information. Ability is a metric for these two conjoined. 'Skilled' fits here too.

So from where I sit, you never get "smarter" as you age. You do however grow your abilities, you may become "wise", and skilled.

By the way, agree 100% with the context of what you're saying. And just passing on term usage from another geolocation.

I think you _can_ say that many smart people go to Stanford/Ivy.

I agree that the cofounder dating was intimidating, and even some of the people fit into that category. Far more didn't though, and I've found an exceptional cofounder through it, which is one of the most exciting things in a very long career.

(I'll get around to doing YC at some point)

Those were some fun times.

I have a lot of friends of mine who are decade+ YoE first time founders who have done very very well in YC.

Lots of Enterprise SaaS companies have went thru YC and done very well - you just don't hear about them as much because Direct Enterprise Sales doesn't require as much marketing.

There are similar B2C successes by older founders and non-Ivy/Ivy Tier founders.

> we're profitable, and can even articulate a realistic vision about how it becomes the next $100M household name

You could easily pitch a Seed or Pre-Seed round depending on the numbers and location right now.

I guarantee you that you are a 2nd or 3rd degree connect with plenty of VCs.

Leverage that network you have and doors will open

The YC label does help to open doors if you don't know or don't have the network to do it.

(Note: this advice is US centric)

i feel like if you went back 5 years it would be hard to even find more than 1-2 companies that has achieved a moderate level of mainstream success in the same way

One notable mid-late state Enterprise firm I've been following is Vanta. Others have been very successful acquihires (eg. Squeen becoming a core part of the Security BU at Datadog). Salt Security is a good product as well, but will most likely be acquihired.

Usually, most enterprise companies choose to be acquired because even though the pot of gold at IPO is amazing, it is annoying to work on the same product for 10-15 years (though occasionally you do have startups just being stupid at strategy - looking at you Lacework smh, coulda acquihired Wiz or Orca 4-5 years ago).

You end up spending alot of time trying to pitch your work. I've had a few idea guys expect me to build MVPs for free with an offer of like 1% or something silly like that. Never any pay, poorly thought out concepts.

I've accepted I'm never going to be rich, it's easier this way.

For twenty-somethings ideas are easy and all opportunity is in front. Might as well swing for the fences and yes people do hit home runs. At this stage, debating the actual statistics is misguided use of energy. Because justifying a reason not to play still means you're not playing.

And the older you get the more gray this calculus is. There's more reasons not to do something. We put the filters on ourselves.

This isn't a moral argument. No one really knows how the statistics will land, we can only back analyze them. Yes it's statistically very unlikely you're going to get funded. So you stopped trying. Maybe your ideas really weren't very good. That's ok, you've got a lifetime.

edit: fwwiw I've always wanted to be an entrepreneur and now decades later when I'm more financially secure and the reality is here, I really really really question if I am cut out to be an entrepreneur. I don't think I care all that much. Not really.

It's the equivalent of singing with a guitar outside of Columbia records. It's not like Paul McCartney is going to just tell you to step into his office and record a demo.

I do plan on taking some time off to work on my side projects though. Maybe I'll try again...

I may apply to this YC round for giggles, but totally get the same feeling as you that I’m probably not good enough in their eyes. As Paul Graham said, if you are out chasing VC funding, you are not building your product. So just going to focus on making my life comfortable and launching another successful product or service.

Good luck!

I'm basically a hobbyist game dev outside of work and games are just so risky as a business.

- Hospice

Games should be developed for fun. I would totally fund game development with profits from another venture.

Otherwise the way to get to them is via accelerators like YC. And the way to get into accelerators with no credentials is to launch something and get some traction. It doesn’t even need to be a lot of traction. Just having users who use your product regularly puts you near the top of the pile.

It fails us in two very distinct ways. It encourages us to think that is the only viable option and it's unethical. Primarily because it requires the perception of customers (and often employees) as a means to an end (not humans).

However, the possibility for ethical, sustainable business models is still very real. I tend to believe we're going to see another wave of those soon as people figure out that it's actually easier to make a living that way.

Those exist everywhere in the trades. Every major city has dozens of small businesses doing plumbing, electrical, roofs, etc., with the goal of sustainable, loyal customers based on doing a good job at a fair price.

The real value is probably in new product models that can only exist given an ethical perspective. Perhaps reviving the mostly dead pay once use forever model of software would work well.

That model requires abandoning DRM which the unethical companies will never do.

The main difference in the software world is that you can potentially build things "once" (or rather, keep building it forever) for a huge global market, which means that it's hard to know when something is good enough. With roofing or coffee, you do good enough work (differs between companies, sure) and move on to the next customer.

But you don't think about adding continuously running rainfall test for the roofs you do to ensure no regressions (leaks) appear.

The only way that would happen is a bug. YC always responds to applicants. Rejections usually aren't personalized because that can't scale - but not hearing back at all should never happen.

If you want me to look into what might have happened there, I'd be willing to try if you email hn@ycombinator.com.

I double checked my emails.

Anyway, I'm realistic in knowing my ideas aren't going to garner investment.

I would love if you had a YC Junior for just getting help on ideas vs capital.

Your best bet is to go to onto Reddit, Discord etc, find the startup communities and ask for advice there. There are a lot of people who want to support other founders. Or even better go on Linkedin, find some prospective customers and ask them for advice. I've had about 10% of people reply back some with page long answers.

If you are willing to spend money there are plenty of services like Kintell, Intro.co which will allow you to book an hour with investors or successful founders. But there are plenty of free options that I would start with first.

That depends on what you mean by "specific."

Several Sand Hill Angels members, who are investors, provide feedback almost every month. (It's in the context of a pitch, but...)

See https://www.sandhillangels.com/raw

("pitch practice" is somewhat misleading.)

[edited to add some detail]

The typical angel-group pitch has three parts, the pitch, the Q&A, and then the "with the entrepreneur out of the room" discussion.

This event lets participants listen to that discussion, as well as those three parts for the other folks pitching the same night.

Then there's an "ask investors anything" session at the end.

In addition to the application, it's worth exploring https://www.startupschool.org/ if you're looking for a "YC Junior"

But yeah, I'm not building out and MVP without pay for 1%.

Startup equity is pretty much objectively a terrible deal except for founders. Be a founder or get paid market comp in cash.

There are different roles founders hire for under the "founding engineer" umbrella.

There is your fresh out of bootcamp "founding engineer" brought on during pre-seed or seed stages to help bash out POCs and mocks used to sell the vision.

Then there is the "founding engineer" they bring in post money and customer commitments to actually deliver the MVP and help build out a professional engineering program.

I'm in the later category and those roles can pay very well for early stage startups.

The problem with startup equity is that this is a very rare scenario, and most of the other scenarios aren't so good. If the company doesn't exit, your equity is worthless. If they exit at a value below your strike price, and you exercised your options, you could end up in debt. Lots of ways for this to end badly.

I assume you are referring to employees who have an equity stake in the company. Can you explain how the scenario you describe happens?

Keep doing what you're doing.

Being VC funded shouldn't be the holy grail - the holy grail is having a business you enjoy doing, that's making you the life you want.

For some the life you want is pitching, raising, getting the kudos of the big numbers, onto the next raise etc.

For some the life you want is the complete opposite and bootstrapping it.

For some it's just all about the technical aspect, coding the next crazy thing.

There's no wrong or right answer in how you get to the 'happy place'.

You know in your heart of hearts what drives you, and what you'll be happy doing.

Me : I'd been with the money men for a period of years and it's super stressful, board reporting, projections, market analysis etc.

Now I've got my little B2B SaaS startup that's blended a life long passion with my software chops, and our clients love us, we get to work with the absolutely best people in our industry, we're making a difference in their lives, and they in turn pay us money.

It's hard, rewarding, graft. At the end of the week when the money lands in stripe (for me..) there's nothing artificial, there's no projections, there's no-one to pay back, it's a 100% value exchange of 'heres my(our) hardwork, here's a product and you're giving me money for it'.

Sure - could I potentially have gone the VC route (maybe!). Would it be different, hell yes. Would I (probably) earn more ultimately 5 years down the line (sure?). That 5 years would be very, very different...

> we're making a difference in their lives, and they in turn pay us money

We've felt this too in our community, it's the real meaning of "Make something people want" (and why we haven't had a day off in like 62 days or something lol). It's strange to refer to our business as a "startup", but it is one, moreso than most VC-funded ones and I bet we have more customers, higher revenues, and a better growth outlook than the average local seed-funded startup. For us, a loan or VC route would just let us expand nationally right now to other major cities, instead of focusing first on the Bay Area and expanding nationally over the next several years which feels inevitable.

The amount a VC might pressure us to go in the wrong direction is another worry, and because it's just capital we'd need (not advice), they might just get in the way and throw off timing or team structure.

Thanks for your comment! I needed the reminder of how rewarding it is compared to conventional employment as today has been exceptionally hectic!

As you say, a lot of YC founders don't have a real business yet, but they're not there because they're well connected. They're there because YC thinks they fit the profile of someone who really wants to build a big business and might pull it off. They're wrong most of the time but it's a numbers game.

I think a lot of VC backed founders aren't just in it because they want to get rich though. Sure, we all want that, but we're also all predisposed to irrationally believe that we're the exception. That trait (for better or worse) comes with implications, and many founders I speak to are simply compelled to try because it's hard, and it's theirs, and they're impatient.

I also very much agree with the sibling though. Getting rejected does not carry that much signal, because YC are wrong more than they're right. So just keep trying.

That process was super worth it. Ultimately we got rejected, but going forward I'll use that (well I try) to do that when joining/founding any startups.

Worst case scenario is they say no, best case scenario... :-)

I used to be part of the leadership team for a YC company. Here's where the four YC founders I know off the top of my head went to school: SUNY, Oxford, Epitech, Tufts. Only Oxford among those is truly elite, though the other three are good schools. The one who went to Oxford (Harj Taggar) is a bit of an odd one out here, since they were a partner with YC itself first before founding the company that I know them from. Granted, three of these were founders many years ago, so perhaps this has changed, but one (the Tufts alum) got funding only about a year ago.

I looked up a few other founders that are second- or third-degree connections and found the same: a handful of truly elite schools, a peak in A-tier-but-not-truly-elite schools, and a handful of no-name schools like my own alma mater. I expect that that's a reasonably representative distribution of where you find extremely smart people, and especially smart+motivated ones.

As for this bit:

>> And often those who did get in went to Stanford, Harvard, etc. and don't even have a product - sometimes they don't even know what they're going to build yet.

YC is pretty explicit that they try to pick founders, not ideas, most of the time. That approach is all over the Startup School videos, for example; they don't exactly make a secret of it.

>> but the numbers I've read online that most VCs want to see are not realistic - or if we were hitting those numbers I wouldn't even need a VC, we would be able to fund our own expansion.

Growth demands, both realistic and unrealistic, are a much fairer criticism IMO. They're the primary reason I haven't sought VC funding personally (from YC or otherwise).

Out of curiosity, I'd love to know more about what you're doing - I checked your HN profile but it didn't have a link or anything.

If Y Combinator truly prioritizes founders over ideas, as indicated in their Startup School videos, repeated rejections might suggest a fundamental mismatch. If you haven't been accepted after one or two tries, it may be a signal that you're not the type of founder they're looking to fund. People do not change that much usually.

I don't know what YC thinks about this, but I disagree with this pretty strongly. None of the skills or advantages I think I have as a founder were things I had five years ago. I would never in a million years have been able to do even the things I've done in the last 24 hours if I had tried to when I first arrived in the Bay Area for my first "real" job.

People's fundamental values and motivations usually don't change that much, but their philosophy, resilience, and pool of cached ideas absolutely can. That's especially true for people who, like me, came in from outside. It takes time to get your bearings and learn how business is done, what things matter and what things don't, what a normal level of "on fire" is, and even a person with a low of raw intellectual ability/domain talent still needs time to train their internal models.

You'd be right if YC were perfect at assessing founders every time, but of course they're not. Applying repeatedly gives you a chance to prove that they got you wrong the first time (and the second, and the third, and so on, if need be). Not only does this work, it's the majority case (I just double checked this). Most founders that YC funds are repeat applicants.

Applying repeatedly demonstrates persistence, which is one of the qualities YC looks for. Better still, if you can show continued progress since your previous application, that demonstrates resourcefulness, another core quality. Repeated applications can move the needle on what sort of founder YC thinks you are. Especially if you were a borderline call the last time—keeping going, and applying again, is a way to get on the other side of the line.

This pattern not only questions the sincerity of YC's stated values but also suggests a broader inconsistency. If such a discrepancy exists in their evaluation of persistence, one can reasonably doubt the authenticity of other virtues YC promotes. This insight casts a shadow over the overall integrity of their selection criteria, hinting that what YC publicizes may not always align with their actual priorities.

If there's a most-reliable-indicator at all, it would be something like what pg called 'relentless resourcefulness'. The includes persistence and a lot of other things as well.

You are running a profitable business, why play that game?

Not my first choice, but neither is it irrational.

The other side to it, as rfrey said, is it would enable a hyper growth mode and let us make moves earlier.

But stable growth mode is working fine, and overall there's not a huge reason to take out a loan or raise money, it doesn't feel like we're racing against a clock on some trend or any other reason to rush things.

Many people are happy running a small business without much pressure.

When and who to share ideas with - and any market traction you may have as proof points there's an opportunity - is possibly the most important part of executing, and where you may be shooting yourself in the foot if sharing that with people in the business of funding ideas.

Well said, and you reminded me to be more careful about what I share haha

If ideas are worth nothing then a great team executing well should be able to create a billion dollar company selling dog droppings.

Anyone who says ideas are worth nothing is flat out wrong.

There's no success without eventually finding a good idea, especially since 'successful in the end' is practically the definition of 'good idea', or close enough to be inseparable.

So it's not so much "ideas don't matter" as "starting ideas don't matter", as long as you're the type of founder who can excecute on an idea, change it as needed, and drop it when necessary.

However, it is true that without great execution, timing and luck, a great idea will go nowhere.

Trouble is there are many people who have heard "ideas are worth nothing" and failed to understand that the full sentence is "ideas are worth nothing without execution" - that is certainly true, but it is a totally different statement to "ideas are worth nothing".

If people do want to play the VC industrial complex game - then at least understand the pros and cons of it; otherwise it's good to understand it so you know how to better position yourself.

This is simply not true.

There are countless examples of people from outside the US or who went to non-Ivy league schools. Does it move the needle ? Probably. But it's easy to counteract it by having better answers to the other questions e.g. traction, team.

Our team has build a business without venture capital in a space where it’s commonly sought after.

Instead we did find a strategic partner in the industry who invested earlier on but then later we established a venture banking relationship and credit facility.

I had almost no idea the options that existed so wanted to post some ideas here for anyone reading.

Venture Capital is one source of funding. So is Growth Equity or even private equity —- but different from “venture”. It sounds like you’re past the “venture” stage anyway.

We’re paying about ~9% interest on a multi-million credit facility now from a bank (several other banks will do this type of lending - not just SVB I also learned along the way recently). There is also minimal warrant coverage provided of 1-1.5% equity which we are happy with.

Some names of banks who are lending - just a few names but wanted to share some ideas as alternatives to venture capital, especially if you have revenue:

* Texas Capital Bank * Cambridge Trust * East West Bank * Bridge Bank

A bank seems like a much better option if you just need the capital but you don't want to give up too much (or any) equity. That's likely the route we'd go if we ever wanted to tap into funding.

Both private equity and venture funding seem more like you have to give up the company and go work for the investor. Investors bring some value sure, network and what-not, but I wonder how valuable their "advice" and network really is.

I don't think we would be taken seriously by YC even though this would be perfect educational setting for them. BTW, kids are 17 and 15 and 11, not sure if I would fully include all of them.

(and if it's true that everything you hear about YC is telling you otherwise, then YC has a serious messaging problem)

It does. I've met some founders who went with Tribe8 (edit: Team8) or Sequoia Surge due to YC messaging issues and the (imo incorrect) perception that it's B2C or SMB B2B SaaS oriented.

The Open-Core RFS will probably help though, but maybe highlighting additional successes beyond B2C or Coinbase types would help.

People have been signaling this for quite some time.

Throughout this thread you attempt to dispel this perception, but I can't help but wonder why this isn't being addressed on a higher level at YC. Whether misperception or not, this view is certainly not contained to just HN, and is even shared by those who have no idea that this forum exists.

And being a somewhat exclusive post-academic institution is not a bad image or message IMO. Maybe there are more pros than cons in terms of curation (of content, of founders).

Really didn't see it as a "everyone should apply!" kinda place, thought the messaging was intentionally "here's the latest out of Stanford" which I'm fine with.

When it comes to YC, however, I'm way closer to the "everyone should apply" end of the spectrum. Or rather: everyone who thinks they might like to start a high-growth startup.

One of YC's biggest impacts has been in growing the number of startups that get created in the first place. It's not so much about picking founders out of a limited pool, it's about the much larger set of potential founders who can maybe get bumped out of the "I could never do that track" into the adjacent "maybe give it a try track"...which can lead to life-changing places.

pg's essays have been one of the biggest such bumping devices. I would like HN to be that too. (While remaining interesting in all the other ways it can be.)

My intuition was that there are more overly-confident types who think they want to be a founder rather than those not confident enough to do it, but after reading some comments here maybe my intuition was off. Then there's people like me who became a founder out of survival lol I'm a founder whether or not I want to be, need a cohort for that! xD

Thanks for sharing the motivating insights!

I think it would be awesome to see YC break at least some of itself off into some more elite and disruptive units (where elite refers to the quality of the intake and YC expertise, not the founder education history).

I've walked a similar path and, while I'll never be a multi-millionaire, I'm very comfortable and have more than I need. Small, stable, businesses that offer good secure jobs are the backbone of the economy.

All that said, there are investors out there who are interested in folk like you and me. A track record of success, coupled with potential, and immediate returns is attractive.

VC investors are ultimately investing in people, not businesses. The idea matters to some extent, but its more of a pitch in the person or team. This is partly why college is so predominately material. In the folk "starting out" there's little else to look at.

(Always have your first date on a famous college campus, then you can forever drop "we met at harvard" into the conversation.)

To be honest, VC investing isn't for me at this stage in my life, and it may or may not be a good fit for you. For many it's a great fit though, and in some ways their "first good job".

So I think the advice in thr post is fine - if you -want- to go this route then go for it. The worst they can say is "no".

> track record of success

This is another factor - I didn't work at Facebook or Google and am not a member of the Bank of Mom & Dad, so if I got into investing I'd want to have enough extra time and money built up that I could participate in (or lead) the round and get a number of others involved, rather than being a candidate/applicant asking for funds and help - I'd want to be active in it.

Great points, thanks for sharing!

That was hilarious. Do people really do that?

Unfortunately this is too low for a VC/YC. The min valuation they are looking for is around $1B

If you aim for $10B and hit $100M that’s great, you aimed for the Sun and landed on the Moon! But if the max you can hit is $100M, then everything needs to go right to reach the Moon, and the Sun is fully out of reach — and it will be much harder to raise money.

> "... we felt this was unlikely to be a unicorn, even though it might have a solid chance of reaching 10-100M in valuation."

You don't owe an apology because you are not the one rejecting it. However keep in mind that what your beliefs are, they are not the same held by colleagues/friends/families.

What if regarding slavery or horses as transportation people were like "that's essentially how the world operates", not that investing has anything to do with those, but that this excuse doesn't add a ton of insight if you think about it.

There are a lot of ways the world has operated that are not fair or optimal. It would be a logical fallacy - an appeal to tradition - to use that as an argument against the way things could be, or according to OP the way things should be (are intended to be).

Investing is a regulated activity that affects the economy and individuals, so I think it's at least worth exploring things like nepotism and exclusivity when it comes to the flow of capital. And it's obviously important to notice when the same relatively tiny group of people keep receiving the majority of "acceptance" (investment) while the vast majority outside that circle are totally ignored and/or marginalized.

Here's the last batch.[1] Gives a sense of what's being funded.

Ideas:

- MoneyNow - leverages the new FedNow instant payment system. FedNow is run by the Fed and transfers money in seconds with a charge of just US$0.045 per transaction. And they mean seconds. If the money isn't there in 10 seconds, the transaction times out. Few banks support it yet, but some do. It needs consumer-facing support. The Fed just does the back end. There's a big security problem with consumer side payments - these are irrevocable no-holds transfers, like cash. Figure out how to handle that. Competes with Venmo and PayPal; could make them obsolete. Venmo isn't really instant; try to withdraw the money you just "received".

- Reading Teacher - teach illiterate kids to read with a phone app using AI. Text to speech and speech to text all work now. A true automatic reading teacher should be possible. Gamify it so kids use it. Sell to parents, not schools.

- Rust Game Engine - the Rust language ecosystem has some game engines and libraries that almost work, but the open source maintainers got bored and didn't finish the job. Modest amounts of cash would push that over the top. Monetize by selling back-end services for such games.

[1] https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/?batch=W24

Eh, I feel like it's partly true but not by design. The people who are smart enough or connected/rich enough to get into ivy league schools are more likely to be able to dedicate resources to an idea or creating a better sales pitch. I would guess that post-grads and ivy league grads are over-represented compared to the population in general or the population of college grads.

Of course a good idea can come from anywhere, but I'd imagine the data supports the idea that the odds are better for some groups vs others.

As for the 'uncredentialed' thing, there are a ton of forces at play and I'm sure there will be more credentialed folks applying due to financial and access reasons. I'm an uncredentialed person (state SUNY school) who got flown out for an interview for YC Winter 2020. I didn't get selected due to my proposal itself and shortcomings within it, not due to a lack of any credentials. I enjoyed the experience and learned a bit about it. I may apply again at some point for another venture I'm working on.

[1] https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/meet-the-yc-winter-2024-bat...

But there’s a second caveat here: YC invests in people, not in ideas. From pg himself: https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/the-reddits

> Their idea was bad though. And since we thought then that we were funding ideas rather than founders, we rejected them. But we felt bad about it. Jessica was sad that we'd rejected the muffins. And it seemed wrong to me to turn down the people we'd been inspired to start YC to fund.

So it might be worth applying with a particularly bad idea. Or at least it used to be; I have no idea whether YC ever encourages strong founders with a bad idea to re-apply with a better one, or if you get any feedback from the partners that they almost accepted you but rejected because of the idea. (One of my neat memories as a 19yo is getting a thoughtful email from pg saying we almost made it to the interview with an idea that was essentially “blackboard sucks; make better school software," but the biggest factors against us were my age and the fact that selling to schools was about as hard as selling to governments back in 2008.)

Better school software is worth another go-round, now that we have large language models.

Somebody already emailed me offering to fund the MoneyNow idea. That's a bad idea for another reason. The big problem with money transfer is fraud. PayPal is mostly a fraud-management service. Money transfer and user interface are the easy part.

I suspect you have a few ideas, but it becomes a different sort of question when you imagine yourself committing to one for the next 10 years. Which idea could you see yourself throwing all of your effort into growing each week till you’re today+10 years old?

I don't think this is a helpful frame, because you can't know this in advance, and I'd hate for anybody to read something like this, feel "I have no idea what could grow 5% per week minimum", and close the page on getting started. No one knows this in advance.

What YC teaches is to start by making something a few people actually want, no matter how small it is or seems, and then iterate. It's much more important, for example, to work on something you're personally interested in than something you've persuaded yourself has a chance at growing "5% per week minimum".

Happy one-decade anniversary, by the way. I just noticed https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/meet-the-people-taking-over... was almost exactly 10 years ago.

The trouble with your frame is that you can’t know what people actually want until you try to get them to use what you’ve built. There’s a sort of chicken and egg problem here: you have to think of an idea first, before you build anything. "Choose what people actually want" begs the question.

It’s probably true that it’s better to work on something that you personally believe in (in the https://paulgraham.com/earnest.html sense), because you’re more likely to find ways to grow it. It’s hard to be earnest about an idea that only interests you because it might grow at 5% per week. But pg chose Viaweb, and he couldn’t have known ahead of time that anybody would actually want it, since it was the first webapp. Nobody even understood how to try it out, since this was the era of desktop software. All he had was a hunch that lots of people would soon want websites for their businesses.

So which frame would you choose, if you had to decide today? Suppose you and Scott were trapped in a room, and the door unlocks only after you pick something to build together. How would you decide, other than "X seems most likely to be something that people will actually want"? (Which is similar to "has a chance of growing at 5% per week," just phrased a little differently. pg originally thought museums would want websites; if he’d asked himself whether it might morph into an idea that could grow at 5% per week, he probably would’ve realized museums didn’t actually want that.)

I would argue that if you’re building something in a vacuum, you’re wasting your time. You should find your customers first. Find their pain points in their industry. See how those could be fixed.

It’s surprising because your description can’t possibly be a recipe for generating startup ideas. pg was most passionate about lisp. There must be more to it than what you said.

I try not to dismiss ideas out of hand, but this seems like bad advice for someone explicitly trying to become wealthy. It’s great advice for YC to be giving, because it would maximize YC’s returns over decades: if everyone works on what they’re most passionate about, YC would get a flood of applications from exactly the type of people most likely to be effective founders. But for every passionate founder that chooses to build Stripe, there are dozens who would choose to work on programming languages, or game engines. “Passion project" is practically synonymous with an artist not intending to make money.

Even if today you were most passionate about spreadsheets, would you really choose to build skysheet again?

It’s impossible to imagine pg writing "If I wanted to start a startup, I would work on what I was most passionate about, since it’s the most likely way I’d succeed." The sentence seems mistaken, so pg must have said something more precise.

I think the basic philosophy is that your starting point is not so important—you can get anywhere from anywhere, as long as you are (in pg's phrase) relentlessly resourceful. Given that starting point isn't so important, you're better off starting with something you have a lot of energy for. You're going to need it.

Of course I would work on Skysheet again! When did spreadsheets stop being the most important thing in programming?

Is the US ever gonna have true free instant transfers? Without none of this venmo paypal shenanigans?

> Contrary to what many believe, SEPA transfers are not entirely free. Sure, most banks do not charge for SEPA transfers, but some banks still do. When there are charges, you pay the same price for a SEPA transfer as you would for a domestic wire transfer. Regulation 924/2009 mandates banks to apply the same charges to cross-border euro transactions as they do for domestic transfers. Banks are prohibited from levying different charges based on the recipient bank's location. Therefore, if your bank in France charges you nothing for making transactions within France, then you will also pay nothing for euro transfers to Portugal, for example.

https://www.quanloop.com/en/investing/are-sepa-payments-real...

I was unable to find out what the cost to banks was, but it's possible there is one and it's covered by the monthly fees that European banks charge, which are relatively rare in the US.

There is no real downside to applying. In fact, as others have said, applying helps you to refine how you pitch your startup.

The only negative is that there's a 99% chance that you will be rejected, and rejections can hurt. But being able to deal with rejection is important in itself.

The main thing is to demonstrate progress since your last application.

* Edit: I asked the team and got back: "most is true! for w24 companies, 58% had applied previously"

(Edit: disappointingly to me at least, 12 turned out to be a bug. The highest number of applications for W24 was 6. Still pretty high!)

Good luck with your application if you go ahead with it!

It would take too long to refute them all, but just remember the HN readerships' view of YC is pretty distorted. ("it's all about VC money" , "it's just for ivy league grads" etc).

I could go on, but just read Paul Graham's essays - that's probably the best way to understand how YC thinks.

This is the equity deal: https://www.ycombinator.com/deal

What if I don’t want to raise any more than the 7% (which in itself is $125k I don’t really need but happy to give 7% for the higher P(success))

What if I want to bootstrap from that point or at least keep options open?

I now run a $XM SaaS (scale-up, not startup) growing at Y00%/annum. 100% bootstrapped with a healthy profit margin. Thanks YC.

The only thing I'd say that YC is good for is their network of existing startups. Then again, startups aren't the best customers IMO given that they die too much.

Advice is free on the internet as marketing material these days. And there are better VCs.

Instead of "Just apply to YC", I'd recommend to just start a company.

Samosa because they are versatile across many dimensions: ingredients, taste, shelf-life, and can be easily made in a combinatorics space of these dimensions. They are kind of like how Bubba describes shrimp to Gump.

I once wondered if YC is a good platform for such a business?

...

I started with a pitch and it became a late night commercial.

I find that desis and non-desis alike are samosa fans.

I tell every startup I talk to to fill out the YC app, even if they never turn it in.

I've been building startups for a long time, and have applied to YC several times, mainly with the same idea (although I've always listed 4-5 other ideas I'm interested in as well). I have always gotten rejected, and while that was disappointing, I 100% understood that getting into YC was the exception rather than the rule, as YC had a smaller acceptance percentage than Harvard.

After a few batches of these rejections, I decided to take a break from applying and instead build up my startup experience more by working at growth-stage startups, and just in general started focusing on my career as well.

Fast forward a few years, and about a year ago YC reaches out to me (via automated email) saying they had identified me as being in the top X% on the Cofounder matching platform, and encouraged me to apply to their next batch cycle.

I was reluctant to do so -- I hadn't been thinking too deeply about any new startup ideas in the past few months (so I'd most likely have to apply with a previous startup I had built), but after encouragement from friends and family I decided to take a chance anyways and apply once again.

I went all out on the application -- I reached out to some YC friends and mentors to get their recommendations, and had them help me edit and perfect my application as well. I even traveled for a month to San Francisco, just so I could absorb more of the ecosystem, network with as many entrepreneurs as possible, and help give back to the community if I could.

I submitted my application, waited for the fateful "interview email" day, and when that day came -- I got the standard "...we're sorry, we're not going to move forward with your application".

I'll admit -- getting that email stung. I know looking back there were a lot of things I could have done better (e.g. not applying with the same idea as previous applications, among other things), and just like when I applied years ago, I knew that the chances of getting to the interview stage were slim to none.

But yet somehow, that rejection hurt more than any of the others.

I've come to discount any form of flattery in intro emails. E.g. when a FAANG recruiter emails me "wow, we were impressed by your public project!", I used to believe it.

Now I know it's just a synonym for "join the back of the line of 17,639,838 applicants."