6 ms·

YC W21 Remote Batch

82 points by aacook 6y ago

aacook 6y ago
YC W21 will be remote. Applications are due in 10 days on the 23rd. I put together this Google Doc to make it easy to draft and share with proofreaders. To make your own copy go to File > Make a Copy. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1P0IzDEwKQ7C8kXKdSm1WQmQ_BOyV7ejAEn0T1ogrznw/edit https://docs.google.com/document/d/1P0IzDEwKQ7C8kXKdSm1WQmQ_... I'm applying with NanaGram (https://nanagram.co https://nanagram.co). NanaGram is a service that helps you send regular printed photos to your grandparents in the mail. All you have to do is text your photos. What makes it different is you can add siblings and cousins to curate photos as a group. It's bootstrapped, solo, and profitable. I've been on-and-off full time. There's so much room to grow. I'm doing the Startup School build sprint (https://blog.ycombinator.com/announcing-yc-build-sprint-and-20-equity-free-grants https://blog.ycombinator.com/announcing-yc-build-sprint-and-...). It's been so helpful to have somewhere to report to each week. I'm planning to focus on NanaGram exclusively the next 6 months with continued weekly reporting cadence.
- numakerg 6y ago
  I really have to applaud your courage to start in a space that's already occupied. I know I couldn't do something that wasn't absolutely novel because the marketing chops aren't there. EDIT: Absolutely brilliant. Your service is the top result on Google for "send photos to grandparent" and you snuck an ad into the featured result listicle. Not to mention this very "informative post" that doubles as an ad. How did you develop your marketing skills?
  - aacook 6y ago
    There are some giants in the space for sure: Walmart, Amazon, CVS, Walgreens, Shutterfly, Snapfish, and many more. None of them did what I needed: Nag all my siblings on a regular basis to send photos to my elderly grandparents. Print quality in the industry is surprisingly varied: https://nanagram.co/photoprintingnearme https://nanagram.co/photoprintingnearme
    - numakerg 6y ago
      Here's a concern I'd have investing in this space. What percent of the population* prefers receiving physical photos from loved ones instead of digital ones, and how do you expect that group to change within the next few decades? * Within the geographic area that you plan to serve, e.g. USA and potentially Canada, West Europe
      - aacook 6y ago
        We ship worldwide. This is a good question. To be honest, I'm not thinking decades out. My siblings and I tried to set my grandparents up with devices which never worked. People often tell me the same when signing up for NanaGram. Products like digital photo frames are great but require set up and internet. An envelope of 10 prints can be mailed in a couple minutes and provide joy in several places throughout the home; after delivering the first set of photos to my grandparents, I came back the next week and my grandmother taped photos across her entire kitchen. :) There's also something about printed photos that a glowing pixel can't beat. The closest analogy is vinyl records.
        JoshTriplett 6y ago
        All businesses need to adapt to their customer's changing needs as time goes on; some know that in advance and some don't. I think you've built something incredible here: you've taken the lowest-friction way your customers want to share photos (texting them), and made that your primary interface. You took a real-world impedance mismatch, and you serve as the interface between people so that all of them can interact in the way they most want to interact. There are a lot of potential businesses there, and I'm sure you'd be well positioned to grow into future such adaptation layers; I can imagine a brand built around a family of such inter-generational adaptations, in both directions.
        thaumaturgy 6y ago
        A close relative of my partner's just passed away and one of the first things the family did was dump out a couple of boxes of photos and spread them out so they could go through a bunch of memories together. Then they picked out a bunch of the photos and attached them to some posterboard today for tomorrow's small service. These people aren't luddites. It's just easier to do this stuff with physical photos. The tech-obsessed might forget about that sometimes.
  - exolymph 6y ago
    > I know I couldn't do something that wasn't absolutely novel because the marketing chops aren't there. You actually need more marketing chops if you're doing something absolutely novel.
- paul7986 6y ago
  Cool and good luck! I applied with my roomba/robot outdoor trashcan (Trashie).. never have to wheel that stupid thing down to the curb again; automatic and it texts you reminders that tomorrow is trash day. Please fill me!
  - aacook 6y ago
    You too! That's awesome. Text reminders are where it's at. Do you have a website yet?
- 101008 6y ago
  Hey, I loved the idea of NanaGram: not only sounds good, but also it is a startup that makes the wolrd a better place. However, after a few minutes checking your website, I noticed that all the old people I know (my partner grandmother, my friends' grandparents, etc), they all use Facebook or Whatsapp in one way or another, so it is really easy to send them digital photos. And considering I am from 3rd world country, I wonder how that is not the case in the United States.
  - aacook 6y ago
    I really appreciate this feedback. We have plenty of people who are on those services and still enjoy NanaGram. There are also lots of younger grandparents who love getting physical prints too. I'm not super well versed on printed photo habits in 3rd world countries but in the US people like to display printed photos in frames around the home, sometimes on the fridge. We ship around the world if you want to give it a try. There's a way to send 3 photos completely free or if you want to send more you can sign up for a paid account which is backed by a money-back guarantee.
  - MattGaiser 6y ago
    My grandparents are theoretically all on these services as well, but just like getting stuff in the mail. I will be using the service.
    - aacook 6y ago
      Sweet! With all the junk mail we seemingly all get, something from a loved one is cherished for sure. Related, we're about to print 20,000 NanaGram envelopes (up until now it's been basic white envelopes) with a red foil liner to make "NanaGram day" even more exciting. We're printing them at one of the USA's last remaining envelope factories, run by a veteran and in business since 1921.
- sjg007 6y ago
  I believe there was a previous YC startup that did this... maybe... I’ve definitely used an app to do this for like $1. I think they even sent it to England. Still great idea!
  - aacook 6y ago
    I'm not aware of one but I'd love to know about it. I wonder if it was a postcard you sent? There are a couple native apps that focus on postcards that are doing well.
    - sjg007 6y ago
      Yeah might not have been yc..
      - aacook 6y ago
        Could've been PicPlum: https://web.archive.org/web/20120108183334/https://www.picplum.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20120108183334/https://www.picpl...
  - jonpurdy 6y ago
    Bill Atkinson’s PhotoCard has been around on iOS since 2010. $1 to get a 4x6 print mailed anywhere in USA or Canada. Yes, the Bill Atkinson from the original Macintosh team. He’s also been a photographer for decades and presumably used his printing knowledge to get the meatspace logistics set up.
    - aacook 6y ago
      This is so awesome. Didn't know about this until your comment. Thanks so much for sharing. I love how bill lets users use his photographs for the postcards. I've dabbled with releasing a text-to-postcard service but standard 4x6 prints have kept me pretty busy. I'm doing a postcard experiment of sorts: I commissioned my brother-in-law to create unique monthly art and we're adding a free blank postcard in each shipment. My dog Yoda was the subject in July: https://www.instagram.com/p/CE9qMA-FMVo/ https://www.instagram.com/p/CE9qMA-FMVo/
beck5 6y ago
For those with young children going to SF for several months made YC near impossible, I hope they keep a remote option in the future.
- tmcneal 6y ago
  Me too. My co-founder and I both have young children and we were in the last YC batch. We live on the east coast and wouldn't have been able to do it if it wasn't remote. If anyone is applying and is looking for someone to review their application or has questions about the remote batch, feel free to email me (email is in my profile). I was helped by many people over the past few months and would love to pay it forward. Edit: And for anyone wondering about it being remote vs. in person - YC was an overwhelmingly positive experience for me and I would encourage you to apply.
  - gigantecmedia 6y ago
    Hi Todd, I'm Loc from Gigantec Media. Congrats on your great YC journey! I will shoot you an email and hope I can learn a thing or two from your experience. Great idea btw!
- shubidubi 6y ago
  Not just people with children, people who don't want/cannot commute there in general. This is a more inclusive option.
imedadel 6y ago
I was a bit hesitant about applying since it's remote (thus less opportunity to build connections when you're outside the US), but it seems that the last remote batch was more than successful. Are there any S20 participants who'd like to share their experience? :)
- zain 6y ago
  I was in S20 and also W10, so I did a remote batch and a non-remote batch ten years apart. Overall, it was indeed more work to get to know your batchmates, and the serendipity was gone a little. However, on the flip side, all the structured pieces were very on-point -- e.g. weekly talks, written materials, office hours, and advice. With few exceptions, I would recommend YC to anyone on the fence.
- kiwicopple 6y ago
  We[1] did S20, here are a few thoughts - Pro: The YC partners and staff went out of their way to make the remote experience as good as the in-person experience. We're in Singapore and the partners would make time whenever we needed it on our schedule/timezone - even though it was late/early for them - Pro: The tooling is awesome. I didn't know this before the batch, but YC has a whole software team building tooling. They have some amazing systems in place, and as this article points out they are constantly improving it. - Pro: Fundraising was better/easier (at least for us). This isn't particular to YC I guess, but because everything is on Zoom you can line up the meetings back-to-back, instead of commuting around the Bay instead of in-person meetings. This may be personal preference, but I find commuting exhausting and don't mind pitching over zoom. - Pro: even though it's remote, you still get many of the things that make YC great - the brand, the network, the internal forums, the knowledge base, accelerator deals, advisors etc - Con: Timezones. This is only relevant if you're living in a timezone that isn't handy to ET. Since we're in Singapore at the moment, most of the batch talks ("YC dinners") were midnight-2am. This is understandable - they chose a timezone which is best for the majority of the batch, and it would be tough to cater for everyone - Con: It's harder to make connections with your batchmates. Overall it's a strong recommendation from me - definitely worth doing. [1] https://supabase.io https://supabase.io
petra 6y ago
Does anybody know:out of those 28,000 introductions in S20, how do the funding stats look like ?
- threeseed 6y ago
  I think this year they are investing in more companies at a smaller amount. So I believe it's roughly 28,000 -> 280 (1%).
threeseed 6y ago
Unlike most other years startups should be very wary of going down the YC/VC path. There is so much money around courtesy of rolling funds, micro-VCs etc that it's almost certain that you will raise a decent sized seed round. But that money seems to be concentrated in the early stages so the competition for a Series A is significantly higher. Which means unless you hit product market fit, have incredible unit economics and lots of traction within the first 18 months you are going to die. Or you will just keep raising Seed+, Seed++ etc until you have no equity left. And unfortunately there just isn't enough accurate data on what the conversion rate is going from Seed to Series A so it's hard for startups to make educated risk decisions. More and more I think the smart path is to try to bootstrap your way for the first few years and then go for the Series A at which point you will have all of the leverage since you can simply say no since you are profitable.
- tmpz22 6y ago
  > Which means unless you hit product market fit, have incredible unit economics and lots of traction within the first 18 months you are going to die. Dieing after 18 months is a winning scenario for many founders, especially those who already came from privileged career positions such as former positions at Google. They get to raise their ~500k-2m and pay themselves pretty solid salaries while building industry connections. Then they either return to their old job, take a long vacation with their FANNG + founder savings, or jump into their next startup.
  - Judgmentality 6y ago
    In my experience, very few founders of startups that are only at the seed stage give themselves significant salaries - in fact many don't pay themselves anything. I don't have any statistics, I can only speak anecdotally.
  - brianwawok 6y ago
    Do you have any sources? Seed round founder salary is almost never market rate. At least in anyone I know who has done this.
- 6y ago
bignoggins 6y ago
I did W20 and S20 back to back (had to pivot due to COVID). I much preferred the remote S20 batch it’s not even close. There are so many advantages and almost no drawbacks in my opinion.
rayshan 6y ago
My team at LTSE (S17) just added W21 support to https://Captable.io https://Captable.io. If you're deciding whether the YC Deal [0] is worth it to you, you can use Captable.io to model the impact of the YC post-money safe to your cap table when you raise your future priced round. All free. [0] https://www.ycombinator.com/deal/ https://www.ycombinator.com/deal/
random_username 6y ago
We, Cybersenshi for cybersecurity testing automation & simplification https://cybersenshi.com https://cybersenshi.com, have applied to W21. I wish all the best for all the applicants. Can't wait for the results.

82 points by aacook 6y ago

YC W21 will be remote. Applications are due in 10 days on the 23rd. I put together this Google Doc to make it easy to draft and share with proofreaders. To make your own copy go to File > Make a Copy. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1P0IzDEwKQ7C8kXKdSm1WQmQ_BOyV7ejAEn0T1ogrznw/edit https://docs.google.com/document/d/1P0IzDEwKQ7C8kXKdSm1WQmQ_... I'm applying with NanaGram (https://nanagram.co https://nanagram.co). NanaGram is a service that helps you send regular printed photos to your grandparents in the mail. All you have to do is text your photos. What makes it different is you can add siblings and cousins to curate photos as a group. It's bootstrapped, solo, and profitable. I've been on-and-off full time. There's so much room to grow. I'm doing the Startup School build sprint (https://blog.ycombinator.com/announcing-yc-build-sprint-and-20-equity-free-grants https://blog.ycombinator.com/announcing-yc-build-sprint-and-...). It's been so helpful to have somewhere to report to each week. I'm planning to focus on NanaGram exclusively the next 6 months with continued weekly reporting cadence.

numakerg 6y ago
I really have to applaud your courage to start in a space that's already occupied. I know I couldn't do something that wasn't absolutely novel because the marketing chops aren't there. EDIT: Absolutely brilliant. Your service is the top result on Google for "send photos to grandparent" and you snuck an ad into the featured result listicle. Not to mention this very "informative post" that doubles as an ad. How did you develop your marketing skills?
- aacook 6y ago
  There are some giants in the space for sure: Walmart, Amazon, CVS, Walgreens, Shutterfly, Snapfish, and many more. None of them did what I needed: Nag all my siblings on a regular basis to send photos to my elderly grandparents. Print quality in the industry is surprisingly varied: https://nanagram.co/photoprintingnearme https://nanagram.co/photoprintingnearme
  - numakerg 6y ago
    Here's a concern I'd have investing in this space. What percent of the population* prefers receiving physical photos from loved ones instead of digital ones, and how do you expect that group to change within the next few decades? * Within the geographic area that you plan to serve, e.g. USA and potentially Canada, West Europe
    - aacook 6y ago
      We ship worldwide. This is a good question. To be honest, I'm not thinking decades out. My siblings and I tried to set my grandparents up with devices which never worked. People often tell me the same when signing up for NanaGram. Products like digital photo frames are great but require set up and internet. An envelope of 10 prints can be mailed in a couple minutes and provide joy in several places throughout the home; after delivering the first set of photos to my grandparents, I came back the next week and my grandmother taped photos across her entire kitchen. :) There's also something about printed photos that a glowing pixel can't beat. The closest analogy is vinyl records.
      - JoshTriplett 6y ago
        All businesses need to adapt to their customer's changing needs as time goes on; some know that in advance and some don't. I think you've built something incredible here: you've taken the lowest-friction way your customers want to share photos (texting them), and made that your primary interface. You took a real-world impedance mismatch, and you serve as the interface between people so that all of them can interact in the way they most want to interact. There are a lot of potential businesses there, and I'm sure you'd be well positioned to grow into future such adaptation layers; I can imagine a brand built around a family of such inter-generational adaptations, in both directions.
      - thaumaturgy 6y ago
        A close relative of my partner's just passed away and one of the first things the family did was dump out a couple of boxes of photos and spread them out so they could go through a bunch of memories together. Then they picked out a bunch of the photos and attached them to some posterboard today for tomorrow's small service. These people aren't luddites. It's just easier to do this stuff with physical photos. The tech-obsessed might forget about that sometimes.
- exolymph 6y ago
  > I know I couldn't do something that wasn't absolutely novel because the marketing chops aren't there. You actually need more marketing chops if you're doing something absolutely novel.
paul7986 6y ago
Cool and good luck! I applied with my roomba/robot outdoor trashcan (Trashie).. never have to wheel that stupid thing down to the curb again; automatic and it texts you reminders that tomorrow is trash day. Please fill me!
- aacook 6y ago
  You too! That's awesome. Text reminders are where it's at. Do you have a website yet?
101008 6y ago
Hey, I loved the idea of NanaGram: not only sounds good, but also it is a startup that makes the wolrd a better place. However, after a few minutes checking your website, I noticed that all the old people I know (my partner grandmother, my friends' grandparents, etc), they all use Facebook or Whatsapp in one way or another, so it is really easy to send them digital photos. And considering I am from 3rd world country, I wonder how that is not the case in the United States.
- aacook 6y ago
  I really appreciate this feedback. We have plenty of people who are on those services and still enjoy NanaGram. There are also lots of younger grandparents who love getting physical prints too. I'm not super well versed on printed photo habits in 3rd world countries but in the US people like to display printed photos in frames around the home, sometimes on the fridge. We ship around the world if you want to give it a try. There's a way to send 3 photos completely free or if you want to send more you can sign up for a paid account which is backed by a money-back guarantee.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  My grandparents are theoretically all on these services as well, but just like getting stuff in the mail. I will be using the service.
  - aacook 6y ago
    Sweet! With all the junk mail we seemingly all get, something from a loved one is cherished for sure. Related, we're about to print 20,000 NanaGram envelopes (up until now it's been basic white envelopes) with a red foil liner to make "NanaGram day" even more exciting. We're printing them at one of the USA's last remaining envelope factories, run by a veteran and in business since 1921.
sjg007 6y ago
I believe there was a previous YC startup that did this... maybe... I’ve definitely used an app to do this for like $1. I think they even sent it to England. Still great idea!
- aacook 6y ago
  I'm not aware of one but I'd love to know about it. I wonder if it was a postcard you sent? There are a couple native apps that focus on postcards that are doing well.
  - sjg007 6y ago
    Yeah might not have been yc..
    - aacook 6y ago
      Could've been PicPlum: https://web.archive.org/web/20120108183334/https://www.picplum.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20120108183334/https://www.picpl...
- jonpurdy 6y ago
  Bill Atkinson’s PhotoCard has been around on iOS since 2010. $1 to get a 4x6 print mailed anywhere in USA or Canada. Yes, the Bill Atkinson from the original Macintosh team. He’s also been a photographer for decades and presumably used his printing knowledge to get the meatspace logistics set up.
  - aacook 6y ago
    This is so awesome. Didn't know about this until your comment. Thanks so much for sharing. I love how bill lets users use his photographs for the postcards. I've dabbled with releasing a text-to-postcard service but standard 4x6 prints have kept me pretty busy. I'm doing a postcard experiment of sorts: I commissioned my brother-in-law to create unique monthly art and we're adding a free blank postcard in each shipment. My dog Yoda was the subject in July: https://www.instagram.com/p/CE9qMA-FMVo/ https://www.instagram.com/p/CE9qMA-FMVo/

beck5 6y ago

For those with young children going to SF for several months made YC near impossible, I hope they keep a remote option in the future.

tmcneal 6y ago
Me too. My co-founder and I both have young children and we were in the last YC batch. We live on the east coast and wouldn't have been able to do it if it wasn't remote. If anyone is applying and is looking for someone to review their application or has questions about the remote batch, feel free to email me (email is in my profile). I was helped by many people over the past few months and would love to pay it forward. Edit: And for anyone wondering about it being remote vs. in person - YC was an overwhelmingly positive experience for me and I would encourage you to apply.
- gigantecmedia 6y ago
  Hi Todd, I'm Loc from Gigantec Media. Congrats on your great YC journey! I will shoot you an email and hope I can learn a thing or two from your experience. Great idea btw!
shubidubi 6y ago
Not just people with children, people who don't want/cannot commute there in general. This is a more inclusive option.

imedadel 6y ago

I was a bit hesitant about applying since it's remote (thus less opportunity to build connections when you're outside the US), but it seems that the last remote batch was more than successful. Are there any S20 participants who'd like to share their experience? :)

zain 6y ago
I was in S20 and also W10, so I did a remote batch and a non-remote batch ten years apart. Overall, it was indeed more work to get to know your batchmates, and the serendipity was gone a little. However, on the flip side, all the structured pieces were very on-point -- e.g. weekly talks, written materials, office hours, and advice. With few exceptions, I would recommend YC to anyone on the fence.
kiwicopple 6y ago
We[1] did S20, here are a few thoughts - Pro: The YC partners and staff went out of their way to make the remote experience as good as the in-person experience. We're in Singapore and the partners would make time whenever we needed it on our schedule/timezone - even though it was late/early for them - Pro: The tooling is awesome. I didn't know this before the batch, but YC has a whole software team building tooling. They have some amazing systems in place, and as this article points out they are constantly improving it. - Pro: Fundraising was better/easier (at least for us). This isn't particular to YC I guess, but because everything is on Zoom you can line up the meetings back-to-back, instead of commuting around the Bay instead of in-person meetings. This may be personal preference, but I find commuting exhausting and don't mind pitching over zoom. - Pro: even though it's remote, you still get many of the things that make YC great - the brand, the network, the internal forums, the knowledge base, accelerator deals, advisors etc - Con: Timezones. This is only relevant if you're living in a timezone that isn't handy to ET. Since we're in Singapore at the moment, most of the batch talks ("YC dinners") were midnight-2am. This is understandable - they chose a timezone which is best for the majority of the batch, and it would be tough to cater for everyone - Con: It's harder to make connections with your batchmates. Overall it's a strong recommendation from me - definitely worth doing. [1] https://supabase.io https://supabase.io

petra 6y ago

Does anybody know:out of those 28,000 introductions in S20, how do the funding stats look like ?

threeseed 6y ago
I think this year they are investing in more companies at a smaller amount. So I believe it's roughly 28,000 -> 280 (1%).

threeseed 6y ago

Unlike most other years startups should be very wary of going down the YC/VC path. There is so much money around courtesy of rolling funds, micro-VCs etc that it's almost certain that you will raise a decent sized seed round. But that money seems to be concentrated in the early stages so the competition for a Series A is significantly higher. Which means unless you hit product market fit, have incredible unit economics and lots of traction within the first 18 months you are going to die. Or you will just keep raising Seed+, Seed++ etc until you have no equity left. And unfortunately there just isn't enough accurate data on what the conversion rate is going from Seed to Series A so it's hard for startups to make educated risk decisions. More and more I think the smart path is to try to bootstrap your way for the first few years and then go for the Series A at which point you will have all of the leverage since you can simply say no since you are profitable.

tmpz22 6y ago
> Which means unless you hit product market fit, have incredible unit economics and lots of traction within the first 18 months you are going to die. Dieing after 18 months is a winning scenario for many founders, especially those who already came from privileged career positions such as former positions at Google. They get to raise their ~500k-2m and pay themselves pretty solid salaries while building industry connections. Then they either return to their old job, take a long vacation with their FANNG + founder savings, or jump into their next startup.
- Judgmentality 6y ago
  In my experience, very few founders of startups that are only at the seed stage give themselves significant salaries - in fact many don't pay themselves anything. I don't have any statistics, I can only speak anecdotally.
- brianwawok 6y ago
  Do you have any sources? Seed round founder salary is almost never market rate. At least in anyone I know who has done this.
6y ago

bignoggins 6y ago

I did W20 and S20 back to back (had to pivot due to COVID). I much preferred the remote S20 batch it’s not even close. There are so many advantages and almost no drawbacks in my opinion.

rayshan 6y ago

My team at LTSE (S17) just added W21 support to https://Captable.io https://Captable.io. If you're deciding whether the YC Deal [0] is worth it to you, you can use Captable.io to model the impact of the YC post-money safe to your cap table when you raise your future priced round. All free. [0] https://www.ycombinator.com/deal/ https://www.ycombinator.com/deal/

random_username 6y ago

We, Cybersenshi for cybersecurity testing automation & simplification https://cybersenshi.com https://cybersenshi.com, have applied to W21. I wish all the best for all the applicants. Can't wait for the results.