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How to get into Y Combinator
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- veyron 15y agoHow important is the video component in the application process?
- jmonegro 15y agoFrom what I've read over the years, very. It's an opportunity for the reviewers to get a feel of your team's overall personality, how well you seem fit together, and another view of your product.
- pg 15y agoIt's important not to skip it. It's also very important not to read from a prepared text; we tell people over and over not to do that, and for some reason they keep thinking they can fool us. It's not important that the video have high production values, or that you sell us on the idea within it.
- fbuilesv 15y agoDo you think into account the fact that for non-native speakers this is complicated? Our application sounds a lot like a sales pitch but only because we have to train many, many times to make ourselves understood. Even if we're fluent in english, it's not natural for us to speak it (much less against a camera) so it ends up sounding like we're reading from a script or something.
- jpiasetz 15y agoI wish there were concrete examples of deep insights. Would help understand how you come up with deep insights. Plus it would be an interesting read I'm sure.
- pg 15y agohttp://dl.dropbox.com/u/27532820/app.html http://dl.dropbox.com/u/27532820/app.html
- ChuckMcM 15y agoLooking outside and seeing people get wet as they go from their car to the lobby is observation. Noting that you could put a place to borrow/leave umbrellas in the lobby and near where cars park is an insight. Figuring out that the reason they are coming and parking and going into the lobby can be re-interpreted so that they don't have to leave home/office and even bother getting wet is a 'deep' insight. The link that pg gives to the drobbox app is full of win. It isn't about shared storage 'per se' its about the things that currently suck and will suck less with less effort when this capability is available. Insight is looking past the problem and finding the underlying intent, and then re-working the solution based on that intent.
- brackin 15y agoThanks for writing this. Glad you've cleared up some of the questions I hear a lot. I've seen a lot of posts which claim to have some kind of template to get in, which doesn't make any sense in my opinion.
- alexhaefner 15y agoMy friend (and co-founder) and I have applied for winter 2012. Even if we don't get in, I don't think it will change much of who we are, or what we're driven by. But I guess my biggest question has been this: In the event that we (any anyone else going through this process) don't get in, how hard should we spend thinking about that? And what I mean is, every time I've done something I spend some amount of time evaluating how it went and what I learned from it. In the case of YC, it's about the idea + founders, so if we didn't get in, I would need to spend some amount of time evaluating the idea + founders and deciding what it means. That doesn't scare me, instead I think that's the most exciting part. To be incredibly self-critical is the only way to make great things. As much as we were writing our answers for those who will evaluate them, we were also writing them for ourselves. Great post, makes me feel more optimistic about the entire ordeal. Edit: meant winter 2012
- pg 15y agoI wish I could say it means a lot if you don't make it to the interview stage, because that would imply we're really good judges. But unfortunately we know we miss a lot of good applications. We have thousands of applications to read, and not much time to do it in. It's difficult for us to distinguish between applications that are genuinely weak, and those where the founders just don't present themselves very well.
- jonpaul 15y agoCouldn't the point be made that those founders who don't present themselves well, might have a bit more trouble presenting their startup to customers? i.e. They can't sell themselves well, so it could be argued that they might have trouble selling the benefits of their startup to customers? Thoughts?
- brlewis 15y agoGood point, but there are still two ways YC could miss good applicants: (1) they present themselves better in some other medium that customers care about, or (2) they don't know how to sell yet, but have an aptitude for learning to sell. That said, I don't know how the YC application process could be changed to catch either of those situations.
- dgunn 15y agoHow likely are edits that I make to our application to be read? I've updated once or twice just to fix some glaring typo or to update on our progress (I feel like we make notable strides almost weekly). If our application has already been read, do updates get reflected in such a way that the readers know to re-read it?
- pg 15y agoDepends when. Right now few of us are more than skimming applications, so it's unlikely anyone saw your earlier versions.
- abstractbill 15y agoWe want to fund founders that are going to be successful. I love Y Combinator, and I'm proud to be a part of it, but I've been thinking a lot about this recently... Many many organizations exist, whose purpose is to filter people who want to do something down to the few percent who are most likely to succeed at that thing, and then to help those people get even more likely to succeed at it. But that seems like it's actually a kind of operating on diminishing returns. If I take someone who is 90% likely to succeed at something, and help them to become 95%, is that really a better use of my time than if I take someone who is at 50%, and bump them up to 80%? From an investment point of view of course I can see why people would do the former. But I wonder if the world might be a better place if we could figure out how to do the latter?
- michaeldhopkins 15y agoSure, if you take 100 people at 90% and get them up to 95%, you have five fewer failures whereas 100 people from 50% to 80% means 30 fewer failures. However, the 90% are mostly under their own power and need small amounts of guidance and money. The 50% would need a lot more equity and time to learn everything the 90% know. So, the number of people who could participate would be a lot smaller. Fortunately, there is a very scalable thing that gets people from 50% to 80% and it's answers.onstartups, PG essays, Art of the Start, etc. When people graduate from all that, advanced programs are ready for them.
- huangm 15y agoIt depends on your view of what makes the world a better place. For tech startups, the distribution of world-changing impact probably closely follows the distribution of investment returns. If it's extremely bimodal, then it makes sense to concentrate on generating big wins.
- pg 15y agoIt depends how hard the problem is. In an introductory writing class, you get maximum utility by letting anyone in. Whereas a graduate math class will usually have pretty stiff prerequisites; the median undergraduate would get zero benefit from such a class. Startups are more like a graduate math class. Most people aren't suited to it. Also, I think your numbers are off. We're not funding people whose chance of succeeding is 90%. I doubt anyone starting a startup has a 90% chance of succeeding. We'd be delighted if our success rate was as high as 50%. Maybe we're bumping people's chances up from 30% to 40%.
- littlegiantcap 15y agoI know the average age of applicants is something like 26 or so, but my team and I are all juniors and seniors in college. Do you have any tops on how to make younger applicants stand out?
- Conor_B 15y agoMyself and my co-founder are only 17 which we realize is quite young. Any tips would also be greatly appreciated.
- nhangen 15y agoMy partner and I are applying, but like others have said, we're not betting the farm on it. If we get accepted, great, if not...well, we keep doing what we're doing, which is make software. We just want to have an opportunity to work on our idea full-time.
- larrys 15y agoI think part of the issue with focusing on applying to YC is the filter. It is much easier to get a job or get funded if you are not competing with others and are only evaluated on your own merits. (Or to get a date for that matter. Would you rather be in a room competing with other guys/gals or just on your own making a pitch?) To many people decide to line themselves up and be compared. It can make more sense to separate from the pack and be creative and pitch other likely sources. It's not about getting into YC. It's about getting your idea off the ground and getting funded. If all you have is the wherewithal or creativity to apply to YC or Techstars etc you aren't an entrepreneur. I got a job in tech years ago at a valley company that I was in no way qualified for by getting in an airplane and flying to a trade show in CA to walk the floor and meet with sales managers. I had no competition. Even though I was only marginally qualified for any position at this company I got a job.
- alexhaefner 15y agoI definitely understand the response. If you have to ask if you're an entrepreneur, if you have to even think about it, you're not. I get that. However for someone like me it's not so simple. I have two years of school left in the midwest. I have little interest in finishing school. But I came from a blue collar town and so I have no connections, and a lot of school debt. So I work on my projects at night, and classes during the day. I get internships in the bay, and continue to build and iterate on what I've made. I have no intention of stopping at YC, or just building these projects to fluff up a resume. I do both of these things because they are worthwhile to me. But realistically, I can't just leave school and start a business, because my loan debt would kill me and my business. Without some sort of connection to funding I'm dead in the water. So I will continue to build my personal projects with my co-founder, and use them to learn and work towards having a sustainable business that someone wants to fund. I'd be curious to hear your feedback.
- GB_001 15y agoI'm planning on applying for the Summer 2012 round as a single founder, plus a friend who helps me with marketing (whom I had a prior agreement with). After reading the essay on the main page, it left me a little unsure about the chances of getting in whilst applying solo. Although after reading this post, I feel more sure of myself about the issue. Mainly because he didn't mention anything about the number of founders per startup, but purely the quality. Glad this was posted.
- alexwolfe 15y agoThanks for the short write up. Pretty simple and to the point. I like the part about building a demo, I think it shows ambition, drive, and vision on many levels. Thanks again.
- fbuilesv 15y ago"Startups at this stage need to be building their product and talking to their users" What happens when a startup like ours is not building their product (due to complicated legal issues) but they're talking to customers? How can we show that we've been doing our homework in this regard?
- rhizome 15y agoSounds more legal than anything that would be called a "startup," (yet). I'd say that showing your work in your context would involve being able to reassure people that the complicated legal issues are not issues.
- Hitchhiker 15y agoIn general, the harder the filter, easier it is for those selected. You can think of yC as prep-school for what is ahead at Sand Hill. The correct question perhaps is " how to clear demo day and land an A round from top-tier VC ?". An effort within striking zone of that will ensure that you don't waste the opportunity at yC.
- Hitchhiker 15y agoI like the analogy that Paul used re a grad math class. In our masters program, < 10 survived out of ~30. Many chose to get out at the grad-dip level as their goal was to get a job. In some ways, a start-up is remarkably more difficult than any structured class. It is not a co-incidence that many of the most successful start-ups ( i.e. Google / Facebook et.al. ) started as projects. Investors like to think about markets and path to revenue. But to build stuff , you'd need to love the problem itself and care deeply about what you're building. Because at many points in the ride, the financial or commercial end will not be in sight. Another correct question perhaps is " How to pick an addictive problem ? " A group that some of us love : http://groups.google.com/group/gremlin-users http://groups.google.com/group/gremlin-users One of the stacks Gremlin works atop is neo4j which raised an excess of 10M recently.. again I would have to warrant that the game is to pick a difficult problem , preferably few years ahead before it becomes " hot ". Here's a powerful section from a beautiful film: " He does, an assignment to refurbish the Sistine Chapel for him. But after an attempt at some saints, he leaves Rome, and flees to his beloved Carrara. There, surrounded by mountains, he has a vision at sunset and suddenly knows what he must do. Obtaining Julius's reluctant permission, he sets to work covering that modest ceiling with tremendous figures, a bearded Jehovah, a recumbent Adam touched to life by a divine spark, the world's most famous fresco painted from a homemade scaffolding; in spite of illness, missed meals, filth, deprivation, cold, an injury that nearly costs him his eye and more, including the Pope's indifference to his intense passion for his art, Michelangelo endures. "When will you make an end?" Julius cries. "When I have done," the artist insists. "[1] [1] - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058886/reviews http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058886/reviews
- ycapply2011 15y agoQuestions about the demo: - When will it actually be accessed? Can we continue make updates after the application deadline? - Should the demo be tailored so that anyone can use it without one of us guiding him?