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I disagree. They didn’t do anything except open up the grant application part to everyone (no cost to them) and promise everybody that they would get some credi

I disagree. They didn’t do anything except open up the grant application part to everyone (no cost to them) and promise everybody that they would get some credits (probably no cost to them). The course was always able to be audited. What this really does is make clear the desire of the people at ycombinator to open their pre screening program (which is what startup school is, essentially) to more startups. The value to them is clear - they now get more companies that have an initial touchpoint with ycombinator, and they can maybe make money off them or whatever. But they don’t have to scale the thing that was most useful about startup school - that is, the advisors and small groups. For ycombinator this actually is a win win - they can now phase out advisors next round if this is a success and then the course would be very simple to run (and mostly free to create!). The value that they were really providing (advisors, small groups) doesn’t scale for a free program, and with this new method of acceptance they aren’t offering that value to the newly “accepted” startups. For me personally, If I wanted to independently learn the things they teach in startup school, I already had the ability to watch last years lectures and read last years course material. If there are credits, that will be valuable I suppose. But, again, I want to emphasize that ycombinator isn’t giving startups anything of real value here that it wasn’t already giving away (except, I guess, the ability to save face if you had already excitedly told friends that you were in this program).

dustingetz 8y ago
This – Every serious founder already audited last years startup school via the youtube and podcast. The content was amazing but I saw this as a way for us who don't live in the valley to network our way into YC. However, a YC branded forum exclusively for active founders seems valuable so lets see what happens.
- tragicjordan 8y ago
  How valuable can a forum with 15,000 companies (most of which are bad) spamming their services ever offer any real value? If you're lucky to have a good group you might find value, otherwise it's going to be pointless. I'd encourage seeking out other, smaller founder mastermind groups - you'll get much more value there.
  - mindcrime 8y ago
    How valuable can a forum with 15,000 companies (most of which are bad) How do you know they're bad? And maybe it's the case that having ONE person in your group, who is the "right" person, will actually be what makes the group valuable... Not saying that will prove to be the case, but I think you're rushing to judgment a bit.
  - punnerud 8y ago
    Does that mean you think HN should turn into a private group, and that way get better than it is now?
    - privacypoller 8y ago
      I'd put a lot more effort and expect far more value out of a private, vetted startup school then I would say, this response.
      - dang 8y ago
        Please don't post uncivilly here.
  - snowmaker 8y ago
    We're going to work hard to moderate the community to prevent that from happening. I think Hacker News itself shows that it is possible to run a large community site that's open to everyone and still keep the content interesting and non-spammy.
    - tragicjordan 8y ago
      Yeah, I suppose it's a fair point that if anyone's going to moderate this properly it's you guys. Don't mind my negative commentary - I know this was a difficult day for you, and I appreciate the hard decisions that need to be made. As a founder, though, I have a very hard time finding groups of other founders who have reached a certain level of success and was very excited to be a part of that. It's very difficult finding something like that and I really hope you guys can consider my ideas here.
- ModernMech 8y ago
  > Every serious founder already audited last years startup school via the youtube and podcast. I didn't. I'd consider myself to be serious, and I'll presume out of 15,000 other companies there exist some more people like me. I don't think you'll be disappointed by the experience.
ctvo 8y ago
Agreed. It's great for YC. If there's a large amount of negative feedback, they can use the excuse that this was an experiment (and the result of their... high integrity) and revert.
chrismorgan 8y ago
There’s quite a lot of extra organisational and support work that they will have to do to support another 11,000 people. That’s going to be roughly 450 more groups of 25 people to sort out, four times as many people to still interact with to some extent, and a whole lot more traffic. When they say “we’ve decided to use our error as a forcing function to find a way to make Startup School work for all founders who applied”, that really is a fair way of describing it. Making this work is possible, but it will be quite a lot more work for them—work they had not reckoned on.
tragicjordan 8y ago
Agreed. I was excited by the prospect of being a part of a network of other vetted founders. If they're letting literally anyone in, it's no more useful than every other founders mastermind group on FB. Huge misfire by YC. Startup School had the chance to be a wonderful network of promising early stage companies - not only that, you've alienated a lot of the promising companies who were properly accepted. YC simply does not have the stomach to deal with even an ounce of bad press, and it showed today. I would be very wary as a promising company to jump on board with an organization that will probably throw you under the bus rather than go through the fire with you if ever your company, for whatever reason, incites a mob. I will no longer be applying to the YC accelerator, and from my conversations with other great founders, I'm not the only one.
- ModernMech 8y ago
  > I was excited by the prospect of being a part of a network of other vetted founders. I mean, that's what YC is supposed to be. Startup school is an effort to bring YC to more people, which obviously is going to involve less vetting. How hard can you vet early age startups that answered 3 questions with 150 words anyway? You're making it a bigger deal of it than it is.
  - tragicjordan 8y ago
    I get that, but there was still some form of vetting - enough to disqualify 2/3 of candidates. I'm not making a big deal out of it. Quite the contrary - I don't care about Startup School anymore, whereas I did before. Note to anyone reading this: please build a mastermind group that requires an MRR of at least $15k. I'd pay good money to be a part of that.
    - mindcrime 8y ago
      I get that, but there was still some form of vetting - enough to disqualify 2/3 of candidates. But that's just the thing... nobody actually knows if that level of vetting is meaningful... it may perform no better than chance in terms of identifying "good" startups (however you define that). This experiment will actually be very interesting exactly in that it will help YC see if their vetting IS as good as they think it is. please build a mastermind group that requires an MRR of at least $15k. I'd pay good money to be a part of that Sure, having a $15K MRR shows something about a company, but why do you think that is the best criteria to identify founders/companies to network with?
kcorbitt 8y ago
Hi, I was involved in the decision to open Startup School to all applicants and am the developer primarily responsible for writing the software we’ll need to make this scale. We're all planning on working overtime for the next 12 weeks as we prepare for and go through the course. Although we don't have the resources to assign an advisor to every group, we do want to provide human attention to every single company we've accepted. In general, we're committed to making Startup School an excellent experience for all 15,000 of the companies that applied. This is going to be a great deal of effort for all involved, but it's a point we wanted to get to anyway (even though the timing and communication that lead to this decision was a terrible mistake that we're still really sorry for).
- Gabriel_Martin 8y ago
  Thanks for your time and commitment. I'm not even an applicant, but it is still quite an admirable thing.
- allanmacgregor 8y ago
  Thank you, as someone that has been on the other end of snafus like this, I know owning up and opening the program to an additional 11K people is not easy.
- jackconnor 8y ago
  KCorbitt, thanks to you and the team, I was really impressed with how this was handled.
- chriselles 8y ago
  Cheers kcorbitt!

dustingetz 8y ago

This – Every serious founder already audited last years startup school via the youtube and podcast. The content was amazing but I saw this as a way for us who don't live in the valley to network our way into YC. However, a YC branded forum exclusively for active founders seems valuable so lets see what happens.

tragicjordan 8y ago
How valuable can a forum with 15,000 companies (most of which are bad) spamming their services ever offer any real value? If you're lucky to have a good group you might find value, otherwise it's going to be pointless. I'd encourage seeking out other, smaller founder mastermind groups - you'll get much more value there.
- mindcrime 8y ago
  How valuable can a forum with 15,000 companies (most of which are bad) How do you know they're bad? And maybe it's the case that having ONE person in your group, who is the "right" person, will actually be what makes the group valuable... Not saying that will prove to be the case, but I think you're rushing to judgment a bit.
- punnerud 8y ago
  Does that mean you think HN should turn into a private group, and that way get better than it is now?
  - privacypoller 8y ago
    I'd put a lot more effort and expect far more value out of a private, vetted startup school then I would say, this response.
    - dang 8y ago
      Please don't post uncivilly here.
- snowmaker 8y ago
  We're going to work hard to moderate the community to prevent that from happening. I think Hacker News itself shows that it is possible to run a large community site that's open to everyone and still keep the content interesting and non-spammy.
  - tragicjordan 8y ago
    Yeah, I suppose it's a fair point that if anyone's going to moderate this properly it's you guys. Don't mind my negative commentary - I know this was a difficult day for you, and I appreciate the hard decisions that need to be made. As a founder, though, I have a very hard time finding groups of other founders who have reached a certain level of success and was very excited to be a part of that. It's very difficult finding something like that and I really hope you guys can consider my ideas here.
ModernMech 8y ago
> Every serious founder already audited last years startup school via the youtube and podcast. I didn't. I'd consider myself to be serious, and I'll presume out of 15,000 other companies there exist some more people like me. I don't think you'll be disappointed by the experience.

ctvo 8y ago

Agreed. It's great for YC. If there's a large amount of negative feedback, they can use the excuse that this was an experiment (and the result of their... high integrity) and revert.

chrismorgan 8y ago

There’s quite a lot of extra organisational and support work that they will have to do to support another 11,000 people. That’s going to be roughly 450 more groups of 25 people to sort out, four times as many people to still interact with to some extent, and a whole lot more traffic. When they say “we’ve decided to use our error as a forcing function to find a way to make Startup School work for all founders who applied”, that really is a fair way of describing it. Making this work is possible, but it will be quite a lot more work for them—work they had not reckoned on.

tragicjordan 8y ago

Agreed. I was excited by the prospect of being a part of a network of other vetted founders. If they're letting literally anyone in, it's no more useful than every other founders mastermind group on FB. Huge misfire by YC. Startup School had the chance to be a wonderful network of promising early stage companies - not only that, you've alienated a lot of the promising companies who were properly accepted. YC simply does not have the stomach to deal with even an ounce of bad press, and it showed today. I would be very wary as a promising company to jump on board with an organization that will probably throw you under the bus rather than go through the fire with you if ever your company, for whatever reason, incites a mob. I will no longer be applying to the YC accelerator, and from my conversations with other great founders, I'm not the only one.

ModernMech 8y ago
> I was excited by the prospect of being a part of a network of other vetted founders. I mean, that's what YC is supposed to be. Startup school is an effort to bring YC to more people, which obviously is going to involve less vetting. How hard can you vet early age startups that answered 3 questions with 150 words anyway? You're making it a bigger deal of it than it is.
- tragicjordan 8y ago
  I get that, but there was still some form of vetting - enough to disqualify 2/3 of candidates. I'm not making a big deal out of it. Quite the contrary - I don't care about Startup School anymore, whereas I did before. Note to anyone reading this: please build a mastermind group that requires an MRR of at least $15k. I'd pay good money to be a part of that.
  - mindcrime 8y ago
    I get that, but there was still some form of vetting - enough to disqualify 2/3 of candidates. But that's just the thing... nobody actually knows if that level of vetting is meaningful... it may perform no better than chance in terms of identifying "good" startups (however you define that). This experiment will actually be very interesting exactly in that it will help YC see if their vetting IS as good as they think it is. please build a mastermind group that requires an MRR of at least $15k. I'd pay good money to be a part of that Sure, having a $15K MRR shows something about a company, but why do you think that is the best criteria to identify founders/companies to network with?

kcorbitt 8y ago

Hi, I was involved in the decision to open Startup School to all applicants and am the developer primarily responsible for writing the software we’ll need to make this scale. We're all planning on working overtime for the next 12 weeks as we prepare for and go through the course. Although we don't have the resources to assign an advisor to every group, we do want to provide human attention to every single company we've accepted. In general, we're committed to making Startup School an excellent experience for all 15,000 of the companies that applied. This is going to be a great deal of effort for all involved, but it's a point we wanted to get to anyway (even though the timing and communication that lead to this decision was a terrible mistake that we're still really sorry for).

Gabriel_Martin 8y ago
Thanks for your time and commitment. I'm not even an applicant, but it is still quite an admirable thing.
allanmacgregor 8y ago
Thank you, as someone that has been on the other end of snafus like this, I know owning up and opening the program to an additional 11K people is not easy.
jackconnor 8y ago
KCorbitt, thanks to you and the team, I was really impressed with how this was handled.
chriselles 8y ago
Cheers kcorbitt!