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'breaking into the startup world' - sigh... How do you break into being a domain expert via 5-10+ years of experience? What do people think start-ups are exact

'breaking into the startup world' - sigh... How do you break into being a domain expert via 5-10+ years of experience? What do people think start-ups are exactly? Random people with no domain expertise coding their way to great products?

immad 8y ago
Someone might have 20 years of relevant domain experience and no coding experience. Also one can't get to 5 years without doing the 1st year. So I don't really see your point.
austenallred 8y ago
1. Who said you have to have 5-10+ years of experience to start a startup? That's likely an advantage, but certainly not a prerequisite 2. Perhaps there are domain experts with 5-10 years of experience in _something_ and them learning to be technical is impactful?
jimbokun 8y ago
Jessica explicitly says in her blog post that many of the women who consider applying to YCombinator have a lot of useful business skills and domain expertise for the business they want to start, but are held back because they can't code an initial version of the product.
- alexashka 8y ago
  My comment was in regards to a young daughter asking how she could break into the start-up world. The author suggested that coding was a good idea. The author went on to mention that learning in the span of a summer would help pick a good team member or even build a prototpe him/herself. We know from both studies and personal experience, that tech interviews just don't work all that well. This is tech interviews done by professional programmers and managers. We don't know how to pick people who are good vs talk like they're good! This is not anecdotal - it is well known via studies, done by top psychologists. Given that - how would a summer coding bootcamp help pick a co-founder? It's certainly better than nothing. It is also not clear how much one would benefit from 3 months versus taking one of the many excellent online courses and working at your own pace, such as Harvard's CS50, freely available on youtube. Regarding building your own prototype after 3 months of programming - I just want to throw my hands up in the air of this wishful thinking that 3 months is anywhere close to enough time. You will need someone who's tech savvy, and then you're right back to the same difficulties.

immad 8y ago

Someone might have 20 years of relevant domain experience and no coding experience. Also one can't get to 5 years without doing the 1st year. So I don't really see your point.

austenallred 8y ago

1. Who said you have to have 5-10+ years of experience to start a startup? That's likely an advantage, but certainly not a prerequisite 2. Perhaps there are domain experts with 5-10 years of experience in _something_ and them learning to be technical is impactful?

jimbokun 8y ago

Jessica explicitly says in her blog post that many of the women who consider applying to YCombinator have a lot of useful business skills and domain expertise for the business they want to start, but are held back because they can't code an initial version of the product.

alexashka 8y ago
My comment was in regards to a young daughter asking how she could break into the start-up world. The author suggested that coding was a good idea. The author went on to mention that learning in the span of a summer would help pick a good team member or even build a prototpe him/herself. We know from both studies and personal experience, that tech interviews just don't work all that well. This is tech interviews done by professional programmers and managers. We don't know how to pick people who are good vs talk like they're good! This is not anecdotal - it is well known via studies, done by top psychologists. Given that - how would a summer coding bootcamp help pick a co-founder? It's certainly better than nothing. It is also not clear how much one would benefit from 3 months versus taking one of the many excellent online courses and working at your own pace, such as Harvard's CS50, freely available on youtube. Regarding building your own prototype after 3 months of programming - I just want to throw my hands up in the air of this wishful thinking that 3 months is anywhere close to enough time. You will need someone who's tech savvy, and then you're right back to the same difficulties.