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It's definitely good to see a strong increase in entrepreneurship in Europe, though I do wonder whether the Y Combinator program can keep up its quality and val

It's definitely good to see a strong increase in entrepreneurship in Europe, though I do wonder whether the Y Combinator program can keep up its quality and value-add as they themselves scale up. It's one thing to have weekly sessions with experienced leaders like PG and others, and a small enough cohort whereby you can swap stories and learn as you progress through the program. On an industrial scale though, you lose a lot of that intimacy and you have to default to cookie-cutter approaches. Learning via mentors originally, vs. learning in the classroom currently. I know many founders use Y Combinator as a badge of merit to increase their chances of follow-on funding, but there is an interesting question of how much value-add it now adds to the original type of startup team (young, scrappy, more inexperience than product-market-fit and customers).

ThePhysicist 5y ago
The weekly video sessions that StartupSchool offers are great. I participated in them during the first batch when they were led by YC alumns (I think now they're just self-organized), they basically just consist of people taking turns telling the group what they did last week and what they plan to do this week. In retrospect it was really great thing and helped me enormously to focus and make progress. Especially as a solo founder it's hard to keep focused as there's no one to "yell" at you if you're getting distracted, so having a group of peers that are in the same situation and that provide a bit of social pressure and encouragement was really great. Also, people would sometimes share stuff they struggle with, which also helped a lot to put things in perspective as startup life can get pretty grim, so it helps to laugh about failures with other people. Really sad they
- ant6n 5y ago
  I think something guy cut off. Aren't all these videos available online still as part of the startup school material?
  - ThePhysicist 5y ago
    Ah my mistake, I originally though they discontinued these but actually they still exist, albeit without being led by YC alumns (I think).

ThePhysicist 5y ago

The weekly video sessions that StartupSchool offers are great. I participated in them during the first batch when they were led by YC alumns (I think now they're just self-organized), they basically just consist of people taking turns telling the group what they did last week and what they plan to do this week. In retrospect it was really great thing and helped me enormously to focus and make progress. Especially as a solo founder it's hard to keep focused as there's no one to "yell" at you if you're getting distracted, so having a group of peers that are in the same situation and that provide a bit of social pressure and encouragement was really great. Also, people would sometimes share stuff they struggle with, which also helped a lot to put things in perspective as startup life can get pretty grim, so it helps to laugh about failures with other people. Really sad they

ant6n 5y ago
I think something guy cut off. Aren't all these videos available online still as part of the startup school material?
- ThePhysicist 5y ago
  Ah my mistake, I originally though they discontinued these but actually they still exist, albeit without being led by YC alumns (I think).