5 ms·

Definitely understand the appeal for first time founders, and founders who are early in their careers so don't have contacts in the industry they are building p

Definitely understand the appeal for first time founders, and founders who are early in their careers so don't have contacts in the industry they are building products for, but having gone through an accelerator myself, I can't really imagine going through an accelerator a second time. Maybe for second time it still makes it easier to get introductions for b2b customers? But the accelerator I went through also taught a ton of strategies/tools for getting early customers without depending on just other companies in the network using each others products.

lbriner 5y ago
I think it is fair to say that YC are not just "an accelerator", they have a massive pool of investors and advisors. I too was in an accelerator but although famous, was nowhere near as potent as YC. Sure, there are things that you get frustrated at (like some 20 year old telling you, at 40, how to do finance, when you would rather be building) but it sounds like the biggest thing is the culture and being prepared to delegate a lot of what you think you know to the way YC tell you to do it. I think a lot of Entrepreneur types don't like being told that their way is not correct!
corry 5y ago
There are many reasons - (1) the halo effect for future rounds of funding, not to mention Demo Day itself; (2) access to absolute god-tier advisors in areas that even though you're not a first-timer, you may not have experience with (e.g. you founded a B2B SaaS company before but now are trying a B2C thing); (3) help with hiring (YMMV on this). Also the nature of a highly focused sprint for 90 days to see if something is ready to take-off can be a great forcing function too (maybe on its own that's not compelling enough, but across these various items it seems reasonable to do it again).

5 ms·

Definitely understand the appeal for first time founders, and founders who are early in their careers so don't have contacts in the industry they are building p

by poorjohnmacafee 5y ago

lbriner 5y ago
I think it is fair to say that YC are not just "an accelerator", they have a massive pool of investors and advisors. I too was in an accelerator but although famous, was nowhere near as potent as YC. Sure, there are things that you get frustrated at (like some 20 year old telling you, at 40, how to do finance, when you would rather be building) but it sounds like the biggest thing is the culture and being prepared to delegate a lot of what you think you know to the way YC tell you to do it. I think a lot of Entrepreneur types don't like being told that their way is not correct!
corry 5y ago
There are many reasons - (1) the halo effect for future rounds of funding, not to mention Demo Day itself; (2) access to absolute god-tier advisors in areas that even though you're not a first-timer, you may not have experience with (e.g. you founded a B2B SaaS company before but now are trying a B2C thing); (3) help with hiring (YMMV on this). Also the nature of a highly focused sprint for 90 days to see if something is ready to take-off can be a great forcing function too (maybe on its own that's not compelling enough, but across these various items it seems reasonable to do it again).