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What I Learned Going Through YC as a 17 Year Old
- lordnacho 6y agoIt may be true that you don't need to have worked in a white shoe firm to be respected in SV, but I'm pretty sure there's certain characteristics that are advantageous: - Got into a top university. Good grades are popular, unsurprisingly. A proxy for intelligence and hard work. - Speaks English. How many YC folks don't? I'm sure there are a lot of smart people in the world who just didn't grow up with English and so are somewhat cut off from SV. Not insurmountable though. - High EQ. Helps smooth interactions with just about everyone, including investors and employees.
- petejames 6y ago> Speaks English. How many YC folks don't? It creates practical difficulties. Similar to when founders have accents so strong that people can't understand what they're saying: http://www.paulgraham.com/accents.html http://www.paulgraham.com/accents.html
- ffggvv 6y agofunny hearing you say high EQ and then looking at Zuck, Elon and even bill gates. all of whom are bordering on the spectrum
- 256lie 6y agoMaybe being a Harvard dropout with low EQ appeals more to VC. Elon makes up for it by working really work and having savior ego/massive hype that appeals to his fans and investors.
- SamReidHughes 6y agoLow EQ people seem more trustworthy. Maybe the super high EQ play low EQ as an act.
- tjchear 6y agoI vaguely remember Paul Graham said (and I'm paraphrasing very much) good grades or bigco background sends a signal that you're more cut out for working for others than running a business. But of course, the two don't have to be generally mutually exclusive.
- jedberg 6y agoWhich is ironic coming from a guy with a PhD from Harvard.
- emit_time 6y agoHe also went to an expensive private school.
- troquerre 6y agoThere will always be characteristics that are advantageous, but what's beautiful about SV is that it's possible to succeed without those advantages. I'm not sure I've seen that anywhere else — at least not at the scale of SV.
- hellofunk 6y ago> Experience is only loosely correlated with age It’s very important to remember that just as youth is not necessarily a disadvantage, so too is being older than the average anything to worry about.
- tenbino 6y ago>> No one knows the right answer Hmmmm. Be careful about this. Lots of people do know the right answer. Youth energy and enthusiasm count for a lot, especially backin the earliest days of computing like when bill gates got started. That was because adults knew very little. > Experience is only loosely correlated with age These days age and experience count for a lot. Lots of older people have incredibly valuable answers to common challenges in competing and business.
- 1DRACOSEA8 6y agoThe container revolution that I witnessed made half of my co workers obsolete quicker than you can say JDBC ORACLE EAT MY SHORTS EAT MY SHORTS OBSOLETE DOUBLY
- parasubvert 6y agoThere is a pretty good book called “the Death or Expertise” that discusses the broad trend towards people with little specialized knowledge feeling they can learn a domain quickly and know more than experts. So many problems we have in society seem to be caused by this mass weaponized Dunning-Kruger effect.
- derivagral 6y agoI personally view this as less DK and more just removing fences[1] until the externalizations blow up. By then you've probably moved on or can divert some profit to putting the fences back. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence
- c0nsumer 6y ago> ...we realized we needed to build a services business more than a technology business and that's not what we set out to do... Welcome to one of the cold, hard realities of forming a company and selling something. If you don't make something that someone wants to buy, you won't succeed. And that something needs to be more than just a shiny or useful object. (Those are commodities and can be replaced -- it's your service which'll set you apart and make you worth paying.) Even if tech is your primary focus, that needs to be bundled up in some sort of package that makes it worth paying for. Doubly (or more) so if you are going to have actual customers and aren't going through the startup process in the hopes that some other company buys you out.
- alehul 6y ago> East Coast VCs are much more conservative, which is ultimately bad because it results in less moonshots succeeding. This is really accurate, at least from my experience as someone of a similar age working on my first startup at the time. With cold outreach to VCs in NYC I had zero responses, and only two meetings with BigCos curious about us; they seemed easier to get the attention of. When I reached out to investors on the west coast it was entirely different. I still remember getting my first reply. It was a rejection, but a super-detailed one from Topher Conway of SV Angel that stuck with me. Despite it being a cold email, he offered up a lot of points that helped me adapt my strategy and address what investors may be concerned about. I was a kid with anxiety and never replied back to that rejection email (pains me to this day), but I have so much appreciation for people like that, who are aplenty in the Bay Area.
- adammunich 6y agoReply to his email now?
- alehul 6y agoI lost the domain of the email address a while back so I can’t even see it anymore... Will try to guess his email address to send a thank-you later today; better late than never even if very late? One of those funny situations of “ah, yes, now with my own domain Gmail can never take my email away from me!” but then my payment failing and my domain going to auction before I notice.
- quickthrower2 6y agoYuk! Domains suck in that regard.
- lemonberry 6y agoA little old fashioned, but you could try a snail mail thank you card. I'm definitely showing my age a bit here, but it's something that I've started doing with my clients. Regardless, it's definitely never to late to say thank you whether it's via email or some other medium.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ykevinator 6y agoI hope he got his college degree. Yc chews up young people and spits then out, unless they are the lucky 1% who make it big.
- blocked_again 6y ago> Silicon Valley doesn't care about your background This is BS. You have a much higher chance of rasing money for the same idea if you worked in FAANG than if you worked in Accenture. Same goes to someone who went to Harvard vs someone who went to University of Colorado.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- petejames 6y agoI think you are right if trying to raise money at the idea stage but if you have built something people want, investors don't care about your background. Growth chart will get anyone funded.
- blocked_again 6y agoGrowth chart will get anyone funded anywhere. Not only in silicon valley.
- barry-cotter 6y agoPatio11, we need you! Tell us of the atrocious funding environment in Tokyo. Tptacek, tell us of how much more conservative the funding environment is in Chicago! Patrick Collision, pc, speak of why you live in the US, not Ireland! A growth chart very much who not get you funded anywhere. Numbers that would have people writing cheques in Silicon Valley or even Boston would be lucky to get a loan, personally guaranteed from the founder, for a quarter of that amount in most of Europe. People raise in the Bakery w because it’s the best place to raise. This indie hacker, growth fund, Earnest Capital, lifestyle business to selling to PE funnel thing is distributing that and building a smoother thing between VC and small business but you cannot raise anywhere else like the Valley, except perhaps China. Even the Israelis go to the US to raise.
- patio11 6y agoI endorse the above comment in my personal capacity. Valuations in Japan are below a fifth of similarly situated YC companies, where funding is available, and there are founder/business profiles trivially fundable in the Valley which would never raise a yen here.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jheriko 6y agoPrivilege... love it.
- dang 6y agoCan you please not be a jerk in HN comments? Maybe you don't owe better to people you feel are privileged, but you owe better to this community if you're commenting here. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful. Note that they include: "Be kind. Don't be snarky." "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Schwan 6y agoPuh you can read the unexperiennce in this blog post in every sentence. And the most weird thing is, that it feels that he sees himself now as an entrepreneur. He just might not realize that those snowflakes like Uber or Microsoft are what they are snowflakes. He will learn that either he becomes very quick and disruptive to an specific industry with a lot of luck and a lot of hard work and then he might have a chance in 1 to 1 million to make it big or he accepts that he just gets used by YC Type of people who are willing to risk something their money, but the personal life comes from the entrepreneur with a small chance of real success. For every Bill Gates is probably a Million and more People who did not make it. Its still way easier and much safer and much healtier to try to get into FANNG. Not saying people shoulnd't try but please understand whats going on, you are not that close to becoming Elen Musk, Bill Gates, Suckerburg etc.
- dang 6y agoThis crosses into personal attack, and we ban accounts that do that on HN, regardless of who you're attacking. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the spirit of this site more to heart when posting here, we'd be grateful.
- Schwan 6y agoHow is it a personal attack? Aren't comments here to be able to show/tell my own opinion on a article/blog/whatever? I'm really not sure what exactly is an attack. Stating an opinion and being open for discussions.
- dang 6y agoYou're welcome to share your view of the underlying topic or interesting questions, but please don't frame it as a supercilious analysis of the author. That's cheap, and a step into nastiness.
- lanstein 6y agoDoes that mean you signed up for HN when you were 10?!? Awesome!
- neom 6y agoFrom my experience east cost VCs are mostly former wall st folks, lawyers or family offices who are playing VC. Very few of them have any operating experience, and if they do, it's at BigCo, not in or around startups. I don't think they are well tuned to what non-traditional success looks like, and as a result they have problems pattern matching.
- rdlecler1 6y agoThis has been exactly my experience. Even in the earliest stage startupS they’ll be looking for the fastest line to profitability rather than prioritizing to build something that’s big and important. It’s low conviction investing where the financial model matters more than traditional west coast indicators of future success.
- jariel 6y ago"they’ll be looking for the fastest line to profitability rather than prioritizing to build something that’s big and important" First - don't assume that the 'big thing entrepreneurs are building' is in any way 'important'. 9 times out of 10 the 'big thing' is just neat idea, a project, and may have nothing to do with profiability. Most 'grand visions' are that. MS, Amazon, Snap, FB, Insta, Google - they all started pretty small, and worked at a fairly small scale. Surely they had visions, but they were fulfilling needs from the get-go. I think what you are confusing is probably 'risk profile' of smaller VC funds, who in fact, don't have the patience to worry about building large marketplaces for example. It has to do with mentality, but also the size of the funds, and their experience with bigger bets. And of course, nothing compares to SoftBank in terms of a 'massive fund looking to support global penetration'.
- rdlecler1 6y agoEither you missed the point or you’d be a bad VC.
- austinl 6y agoThis reminds of startups founded by folks that were former executives at BigCos. Of course, it varies from person to person, but many of them reek of big business formalism that's kind of off-putting. Certainly there are pros and cons that come with that experience.
- bt3 6y ago> But I was able to get a job in SF with a single cold email and zero connections. Care to share anything more about this, purely out of intrigue? My own experiences have shown me that folks aren't as quick to respond, especially when you have limited value (experience) to show, even if you're just looking for mentorship.
- teachrdan 6y agoIn addition to OP being a strong candidate, this line basically screams, "I was very lucky."
- ffggvv 6y ago“silicon valley doesn’t care about your background” >> went to MIT
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- emit_time 6y agoAlso went to an expensive private school.
- aroundtown 6y agoWhat I learned from this article: 1. Privilege opens doors not available to others. 2. Those with privilege are often oblivious to the advantages they have.
- exolymph 6y ago"Coming from a Boston suburb" was enough for you to dismiss his talent and effort as irrelevant? Geez.
- ritchiea 6y agoI’d like to point out his site has pages and content other than this particular blog post.
- sbisker 6y agoOn another part of his homepage it says he went to MIT around the same time he did YC. As someone who interviewed for YC myself while attending MIT, I am not even going to pretend I got the interview entirely independent of my background and the opportunities it gave me - and indirectly, my ability and decision to finance a very expensive education, even after financial aid. Now, he obviously had talent to even get into a top engineering school at that age, so there is some correlation as well as causation here. Still, unless he wasn’t admitted yet or actively hid the fact from YC, it seems highly unlikely it didn’t carry some weight - especially at that age, with so much less track record to look at.
- jpxw 6y agoHow many people are not going to MIT because they are financially unable? I’m curious.
- cauliflower2718 6y agoI know several people who chose Harvard over MIT because Harvard had better financial aid.
- 6y ago
- troughway 6y ago>we realized we needed to build a services business more than a technology business and that's not what we set out to do Wouldn't surprise me if this applies to majority of applicants.
- saagarjha 6y ago> In school, the experts — teachers — always knew the right answer Now I'm wondering what school they went to where they went to, since all the ones I have attended this hasn't been even close to being true…
- Mathnerd314 6y agoThe teachers present themselves as knowing the answer. They also get really mad if you point out mistakes they make, at least in middle school / high school.
- realmod 6y agoWould like to know how he at 16/15 years of age got a fulltime job at teespring. 2014 - Moved from Boston to San Francisco to work as a fulltime engineer at Teespring instead of doing my junior year of high school.
- troquerre 6y agoI sent a cold email to Walker Williams who was the CEO of Teespring at the time. I created a functional clone of Teespring and shared the demo with him which got me the job.
- troughway 6y agoI wish we could take comments from threads like these and turn them into a kind of compendium of HN, so that outsiders can know what to expect of this site. Need to determine if it fits under the "Race Baiting" or the "Educating Adolescents on Privilege" category.
- saagarjha 6y agoI feel like cherry-picking from a particular thread is the exact opposite of what a "compendium" is.
- tmpz22 6y agoAs someone who had some small success early in life I want to send a message directly to this kid that may be unpopular on Hacker News: Pace yourself, do NOT pin your happiness on the occurrence of great wealth or success early in your life, spend a large amount of time appreciating the great success you've already had, take things slowly and experience as much "normal" life as possible - get a girlfriend, try out a normal job with minimal responsibility but strong mentorship, and appreciate that the world is filled with vast knowledge that will not be gained instantaneously and MOST CERTAINLY is not contained in any mono-culture such as the tech-startup scene. To everyone else, the mid-west front-end developer making 55k who thinks he's a failure because he hasn't had the same success as a 17 year old MIT student and YC alum... happiness is an internal force that comes from inside you and not from external luxuries. Its OK that you didn't go to MIT, its OK that your company didn't go through YC. Its OK that you don't post a 200k+ salary on levels.fyi. Many people who have had those accolades are currently MISERABLE or have faced many hard failures since. Those hard failures are rarely publicized. We all will face great hardships in life... its the human condition. Instead of worrying about these things focus on finding your own internal happiness and pride.
- troquerre 6y agoAuthor here. I appreciate you sharing this message and I completely agree — I think it's really important to separate happiness from being dependent on success. So much of success comes from luck and timing that basing happiness off it is a recipe for being unhappy most of the time. Have you read The Courage to be Disliked or A Guide to the Good Life? These books resonated with me and it seems like you may enjoy them too :)
- ian-g 6y agoI have a lot of thoughts about this. I'm glad he's seen some success! That's great for him! I just don't know that all or even much of what he's learned is transferable > I was able to get a job in SF with a single cold email and zero connections This seems like sheer dumb luck. For every one of him (or you, if you're reading this) there's a lot of people who thrash and struggle. I went through 80+ job applications before I got one offer last search, and that's less than I thought I would need > You don't need experience to get started This one seems situational. Best example I saw recently (and I can't find the twitter thread, I'm sorry) was weirdly shaped food startups. The large point was that there are stores for oddly shaped food, they're just ones rich people don't normally shop at (WinCo anybody?). And there are uses for damaged food, like juice. Sometimes you think you've found a niche, but you should still research it a bit > Silicon Valley doesn't care about your background Sure it cares less than other places. It still cares a lot. It's not everywhere people would support you that way. My silicon valley high school wouldn't have allowed folks to try and make scheduling software for them, not a chance. > Failure is acceptable This one, I somewhat like. Avoiding failure is definitely prioritized. I think maybe we should emphasize fallback plans maybe? Some people just can't afford to fail completely unless they have people who will support them through it
- troquerre 6y ago> This seems like sheer dumb luck. For every one of him (or you, if you're reading this) there's a lot of people who thrash and struggle. I went through 80+ job applications before I got one offer last search, and that's less than I thought I would need Author here. There was definitely luck involved (the luckiest part imo was that Teespring was an incredible company to work at and I had no idea when I reached out), but I think cold emails are a surprisingly effective tool that are underutilized for some reason. I sent two emails, one to the CEO of Teespring and one to the CEO of Y Combinator at the time (Sam Altman). Both replied (though sama politely declined my request to be his summer intern haha) so getting a response from high profile entrepreneurs is definitely possible without much luck.
- sarakayakomzin 6y ago>) so getting a response from high profile entrepreneurs is definitely possible without much luck. ...not the premise of the argument and clearly blind to self-awareness.
- sailfast 6y ago> In the East Coast experience and status are highly valued. Bill Gates created class scheduling software in high school, and I wanted to replicate that. I approached our school admin about doing the same when I was 16 and was promptly shut down because I was too young and "entire companies are required to create scheduling software." I wasn't even given the chance to fail. I mean, when Bill Gates was in High School computers weren't really in general use, so they probably were still doing it on paper. Why say no? They wouldn't have to use it if he failed. Also, did he build it first, or ask for the business first? Whereas it sounds like this person asked his school if they would convert to his scheduling tool before he had built it to try out? I can imagine a school administrator saying "we'll probably stick with our enterprise contract, thanks" in the 2010s, and it would be a reasonable answer. I wouldn't personally recommend that one experience be the basis for your East Coast / West Coast judgments.
- jedberg 6y ago> Silicon Valley doesn't care about your background To an extent yes, but generally it still matters a lot. Look at any big tech company, and you'll find a significant number of Ivy League grads and Forbes top 25 grads. Or look at YC itself. Anecdotally I'd say at least 50% of the YC founders have a degree from a Forbes top 25 school (it would be great if someone had the real stats).
- jariel 6y agoSilicon Valley cares very much about your background. 50% of VC's are Harvard/Stanford. FB, Insta, MS, Snapchat, Amazon, Google etc. - Ivy League or Stanford. (Ok, Amazon and MS are not 'Valley' but ...) So the industry is more open to 'outsiders' of the cliques than say, banking - definitely, but it's still a clique, don't kid yourself.