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Ask News.YC: What are the most useful things Y Combinator provides its startups?
Here's my list (in descending order):
1) exposure to investors at Demo Day (EDIT: exposure to the right people throughout the process)
2) guidance and mentoring (both from principals and alums)
3) forcing you into an intense, focused schedule
4) validation of your abilities and ideas
5) contacts and streamlining the legal/financial issues
6) free publicity
7) a few thousand dollars
Did I miss any? Anyone disagree with the order?
- edw519 19y agoI would guess that #3 is most important. Amazing what you can do when the pressure is on and the obstacles removed. I also like the "binaryness" of it. Perform and leverage the other 6. Don't perform and nothing else matters. (The irony is that you don't need YC to do #3. You can do it yourself. So if you don't get into YC, do #3 anyway. It may not be as good as being part of YC, but I bet it would still be a great start.)
- deleted 19y ago[deleted]
- jamiequint 19y agoThis is what I think matters (in this order) 1) exposure to the right people (not just investors, and not just at demo day) 2) great product advice 3) a fast schedule and competitive environment that will make you work harder than you've ever worked before That being said, YC mostly provides greater opportunities (and more of them), its still up to you to make the most of that.
- pg 19y agoHere's our list: http://ycombinator.com/about.html http://ycombinator.com/about.html I don't think Demo Day is the most important. Demo Day was a joke the first time (we just looked at the guest list, and there were 12 people), but Reddit and Loopt both came out of that batch. As well as Kiko, the predecessor of Justin.TV. So it doesn't seem that Demo Day is the active ingredient. I think the most valuable things the average startup gets from YC are product advice, help in dealing with later stage investors, and the atmosphere/network created by all the other YC funded startups, which now comprises about 200 people. I suppose by now the YC brand also confers some baseline legitimacy. Pretty much every VC firm will at least give you a meeting, every online pub write about you if you ask them, every startup law firm give you a deferred fee deal, etc.
- ALee 19y agoCan someone elaborate more on product advice from YC (an example would be sweet)? We heard some advice from the Digg/flickr guys and they said that it doesn't really matter what you write it in (just as long as code is manageable and your interface usable), just get it out there, and then iterate and optimize (because you'll have to change things later anyway).
- SwellJoe 19y ago#1 for me is on your list in indirect form: The dinners with a bunch of equally intensely focused people. Every single dinner we were exposed to something new that caused us to look at our product differently. I can point at about a dozen features in our product and tell you what interaction they sprung from. Google Analytics support was written while AT a dinner in response to something someone said earlier in the evening. Everything mobile in our product (quite a lot, at this point--alerts, mobile access, etc.) came from discussions with the guys from Tsumobi and Heysan. And the UI is still undergoing a massive transformation that started last year during those dinners. So, for me, the other founders were the most valuable part of the experience.
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- rms 19y agoMoral support
- andr 19y ago8) free tshirt :)
- Alex3917 19y agoThe first t-shirt is free, but the second will cost you your soul. :-)
- thingsilearned 19y agoMy order: 8, 3, 4, 2, 5, 1, 6, 7 where 8 is 8) Peer network. It makes you feel pressured to work, launch, and get investment. It also makes it seem almost normal. Like you're not crazy for doing this.
- sharpshoot 19y agoThe belief to take on a huge market and think you can win
- hooande 19y agoWhat's the deal with the schedule? I'm not understanding. I thought YC kind of let you do whatever you want during the week (with goals and progress checks, etc) and the biggest demands they placed on you were the weekly dinners and demo day.
- pg 19y agoThere's no schedule in the sense of having to do specific things at specific times. The only scheduled thing is Demo Day, and even that's optional. I think what he meant is that everyone tends to buckle down and work really hard. But it's the situation that makes them do that. You have a demo to around 130 (= practically all) top startup investors coming up in 10 weeks; you're surrounded by other people working hard; so you end up working hard yourself.
- ivankirigin 19y agoYou missed one of the biggest: the YC alumni network.
- bluelu 19y agoI think the biggest useful thing Y Combinator provides is the marketing/publicity at the start. As someone else mentioned, many online blogs will write about you, as you are a y combinator startup. Also I see a tendency of other yc startups promoting other startups (like justin.tv clickpass, disqus clickpass, etc...)
- mchristoff 19y agopg's homecooking
- escopolis 19y agoWhile I agree with your list, I would like to add that working side by side with professionals in the industry for which you are trying to get funding for could be the most valuable resource available. This allows you to gain an insight as to how a particular industry works as well as being able to network with the right people to help move you forward. Having the right team and the right people working along side you, can be a greater asset to any company wanting to achieve success. Without great people, there's no great success.
- blader 19y agoThe best chili I've ever had.