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Life skill for you: putting a message into a bottle and then flinging it onto the Internet could get it read, but that isn't the way to bet. Here's a hypotheti

by patio11 15y ago

Life skill for you: putting a message into a bottle and then flinging it onto the Internet could get it read, but that isn't the way to bet. Here's a hypothetical for you: how many people do you think have social permission to contact a YC partner and say "X is awesome and deserves a look." I'd ballpark that in the hundreds to low thousand range. Many of them are accessible on the Internets and less overwhelmed with suitors than the YC partners are. How about solving a meaningful problem for one of them and having the next application say "We built a $WHATEVER for $SOMEONE which increased their customer base by 10%, like they told you over email earlier." P.S. This advice had wide application beyond YC and beyond "applications." Indeed, part of me thinks that applications (in general) are a backup filtering mechanism for people who haven't figured out a more effective way to get what they want yet.

endlessvoid94 15y ago
> applications (in general) are a backup filtering mechanism for people who haven't figured out a more effective way to get what they want yet. It blows me away how many people don't get this.
- _delirium 15y ago
  The flipside is that there are a surprising number of organizations with lots of money that haven't figured out a better way of distributing it, so applications can still be a good way of getting funds. One of my acquaintances, for example, just got $100k in seed funding (with no equity in return) entirely based on a 15-page application sent to a funding body, having had no previous contact with the funder.
  - davemel37 15y ago
    Having painstakingly gone through the process of writing 35 page Grant Proposals for a hospital and getting funding from the government on all three occasions, I can assure you that the application process was just a formality and legal requirement. The funding came through because the grantor had a relationship with the department heads that received the funds. Obviously, you need to meet the required criteria, and a perfectly crafted application is a requirement, but all things being equal it boils down to relationships.
    - _delirium 15y ago
      I've also done that several times; it really depends on the funder. In a surprising number of cases, the funder has wound up with a pile of money and not enough contacts with relevant people, so they really do choose people out of the applicant pool. It can also vary by country. In Europe, for example, how much relationships matter seems to vary north-to-south. In southern Europe it is pretty much 100% about relationships. Perhaps in reaction to what's perceived as southern-European corruption, in Scandinavia there is substantial pressure on funders to make their decisions based on the official application process. There's a worry that "contacts" means your old grad-school buddy, someone you know from a sports club or weekly board-game get-together, etc., as opposed to scientific merit. There's also (what seems to me, as a foreigner) a strong worry that the process shouldn't be perceived as a sham, which means that at least some proportion of the funds have to be doled out according to the official application route, to prove to everyone that the system works like it says it does. In practice that ethos is upheld at some places more than others, of course, but in some circumstances you really can just apply and get money.
      - hef19898 15y ago
        The only difference between north and south in this case is that they are more open about it south.
  - RuggeroAltair 15y ago
    Not sure what you guys mean. For example, I don't think of YC as a way of getting funding, but as a way of getting things done well, thank to the possibly unbeatable amount of white board advice from so many good people that it's very hard to get otherwise. You can have a great idea, have a great team and even have good money, but you could still make a mistake in choosing one of the key strategies of your product. I, for example, think that YC is perfect at trying to avoid making this kind of mistakes and helping you make your idea stronger.
  - jerryji 15y ago
    Dear lord, I'd love to know who this funder is.
    - GFischer 15y ago
      In the case of my country's government (or Chile's), you can get a grant for your startup without having prior contact. However, in my country at least, I do know they give more weight to applications from people they know (I don't know how, the others might get processed later or whatever, or they skew in their favor). So, you might get funded without contacts, but it's less likely (I guess you have to be outstanding in some sense, either killer business plan or credentials).
    - MehdiEG 15y ago
      The government most likely. There are several places in this world where startups, and businesses in general, almost drown in free money like this. The downside to this is that in order to get this free money, you first have to go through a senseless amount of paperwork, bureaucracy and bullshit. But, to be honest, it's a small price to pay for what you get. Northern Ireland for example is a startup paradise. InvestNI, the government body in charge of giving away free money, recently had to give back a whooping £39m (that's $62m!) because it couldn't find enough businesses to give the money to quickly enough. Sadly, many entrepreneurs in these places have never experienced what doing a startup in the "real-world" is like and they don't realise what an incredibly competitive advantage these grants give them. So instead of leveraging this opportunity, many spend most of their time whining and complaining about the paperwork and bureaucracy involved.
      - dkersten 15y ago
        Northern Ireland for example is a startup paradise. I can confirm this. One of the guys on my team has contacts in InvestNI and I'm told that they want and need to give money away or else they won't get as much for their budget next year, so its really easy to get free money off them.
  - danbmil99 15y ago
    > One of my acquaintances, for example, just got $100k in seed funding (with no equity in return) One of my distant relatives won the lottery.
DavidChouinard 15y ago
Agreed. Figuring out a way around the admissions process is the admissions process.
littlegiantcap 15y ago
http://b.qr.ae/Hktlyv http://b.qr.ae/Hktlyv This explains our dilemma. Frankly, we are a bunch of "nobodies" in the middle of Iowa. We don't know any Y Combinator Alums, and even if we were to reach out the best we could hope for is a lukewarm they seemed "nice". We have a lot of drive and are trying to prove ourselves any way possible. That's what we're trying to do with this post.
- collint 15y ago
  A good way to stop being a "nobody" is to get your names on your online properties. Twitter handles on your blog posts would be a good thing. It took way too much effort to track you guys down on angel.co, and even then I don't have twitter handles. ( ps: I'm also hanging out in Iowa, hacking on a startup. Hit me up @collintmiller, maybe we can cook up some ways to remind people this is the state that brought you the computer. )
  - noahc 15y ago
    Yes, please add it to your website. Or even better to your HN profile page. I'm in Iowa too and I wanted to give you some non-public, very specific (and hopefully helpful) feedback.
    - littlegiantcap 15y ago
      jeromy@seedlauncher.com I look forward to hearing from you. :)
- mbreese 15y ago
  Getting into YC isn't the goal here... having a successful company/product is. I would try to just build something that solves a pain point for you. If you want to prove yourself based on what you can build in 72 hours, then pick something and do it[1]. That will get you more consideration than something like this. [1] But, I'm not a fan of "look what we built in 72 hours" types of projects, so you may want to just try to build your product.
beambot 15y ago
There is an article on HN frontpage about "Be Specific (especially during PG's office hours)." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3795517 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3795517 This blog article has virtually no specifics or concreteness, with the exception of "we're from Iowa." As Patrick mentioned elsewhere, your location is relatively immaterial. Evan Williams (of Blogger / Twitter fame) made it out of Nebraska (my home state, fwiw), so I'm sure you can too.

by patio11 15y ago

endlessvoid94 15y ago

> applications (in general) are a backup filtering mechanism for people who haven't figured out a more effective way to get what they want yet. It blows me away how many people don't get this.

_delirium 15y ago
The flipside is that there are a surprising number of organizations with lots of money that haven't figured out a better way of distributing it, so applications can still be a good way of getting funds. One of my acquaintances, for example, just got $100k in seed funding (with no equity in return) entirely based on a 15-page application sent to a funding body, having had no previous contact with the funder.
- davemel37 15y ago
  Having painstakingly gone through the process of writing 35 page Grant Proposals for a hospital and getting funding from the government on all three occasions, I can assure you that the application process was just a formality and legal requirement. The funding came through because the grantor had a relationship with the department heads that received the funds. Obviously, you need to meet the required criteria, and a perfectly crafted application is a requirement, but all things being equal it boils down to relationships.
  - _delirium 15y ago
    I've also done that several times; it really depends on the funder. In a surprising number of cases, the funder has wound up with a pile of money and not enough contacts with relevant people, so they really do choose people out of the applicant pool. It can also vary by country. In Europe, for example, how much relationships matter seems to vary north-to-south. In southern Europe it is pretty much 100% about relationships. Perhaps in reaction to what's perceived as southern-European corruption, in Scandinavia there is substantial pressure on funders to make their decisions based on the official application process. There's a worry that "contacts" means your old grad-school buddy, someone you know from a sports club or weekly board-game get-together, etc., as opposed to scientific merit. There's also (what seems to me, as a foreigner) a strong worry that the process shouldn't be perceived as a sham, which means that at least some proportion of the funds have to be doled out according to the official application route, to prove to everyone that the system works like it says it does. In practice that ethos is upheld at some places more than others, of course, but in some circumstances you really can just apply and get money.
    - hef19898 15y ago
      The only difference between north and south in this case is that they are more open about it south.
- RuggeroAltair 15y ago
  Not sure what you guys mean. For example, I don't think of YC as a way of getting funding, but as a way of getting things done well, thank to the possibly unbeatable amount of white board advice from so many good people that it's very hard to get otherwise. You can have a great idea, have a great team and even have good money, but you could still make a mistake in choosing one of the key strategies of your product. I, for example, think that YC is perfect at trying to avoid making this kind of mistakes and helping you make your idea stronger.
- jerryji 15y ago
  Dear lord, I'd love to know who this funder is.
  - GFischer 15y ago
    In the case of my country's government (or Chile's), you can get a grant for your startup without having prior contact. However, in my country at least, I do know they give more weight to applications from people they know (I don't know how, the others might get processed later or whatever, or they skew in their favor). So, you might get funded without contacts, but it's less likely (I guess you have to be outstanding in some sense, either killer business plan or credentials).
  - MehdiEG 15y ago
    The government most likely. There are several places in this world where startups, and businesses in general, almost drown in free money like this. The downside to this is that in order to get this free money, you first have to go through a senseless amount of paperwork, bureaucracy and bullshit. But, to be honest, it's a small price to pay for what you get. Northern Ireland for example is a startup paradise. InvestNI, the government body in charge of giving away free money, recently had to give back a whooping £39m (that's $62m!) because it couldn't find enough businesses to give the money to quickly enough. Sadly, many entrepreneurs in these places have never experienced what doing a startup in the "real-world" is like and they don't realise what an incredibly competitive advantage these grants give them. So instead of leveraging this opportunity, many spend most of their time whining and complaining about the paperwork and bureaucracy involved.
    - dkersten 15y ago
      Northern Ireland for example is a startup paradise. I can confirm this. One of the guys on my team has contacts in InvestNI and I'm told that they want and need to give money away or else they won't get as much for their budget next year, so its really easy to get free money off them.
- danbmil99 15y ago
  > One of my acquaintances, for example, just got $100k in seed funding (with no equity in return) One of my distant relatives won the lottery.

DavidChouinard 15y ago

Agreed. Figuring out a way around the admissions process is the admissions process.

littlegiantcap 15y ago

http://b.qr.ae/Hktlyv http://b.qr.ae/Hktlyv This explains our dilemma. Frankly, we are a bunch of "nobodies" in the middle of Iowa. We don't know any Y Combinator Alums, and even if we were to reach out the best we could hope for is a lukewarm they seemed "nice". We have a lot of drive and are trying to prove ourselves any way possible. That's what we're trying to do with this post.

collint 15y ago
A good way to stop being a "nobody" is to get your names on your online properties. Twitter handles on your blog posts would be a good thing. It took way too much effort to track you guys down on angel.co, and even then I don't have twitter handles. ( ps: I'm also hanging out in Iowa, hacking on a startup. Hit me up @collintmiller, maybe we can cook up some ways to remind people this is the state that brought you the computer. )
- noahc 15y ago
  Yes, please add it to your website. Or even better to your HN profile page. I'm in Iowa too and I wanted to give you some non-public, very specific (and hopefully helpful) feedback.
  - littlegiantcap 15y ago
    jeromy@seedlauncher.com I look forward to hearing from you. :)
mbreese 15y ago
Getting into YC isn't the goal here... having a successful company/product is. I would try to just build something that solves a pain point for you. If you want to prove yourself based on what you can build in 72 hours, then pick something and do it[1]. That will get you more consideration than something like this. [1] But, I'm not a fan of "look what we built in 72 hours" types of projects, so you may want to just try to build your product.

beambot 15y ago

There is an article on HN frontpage about "Be Specific (especially during PG's office hours)." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3795517 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3795517 This blog article has virtually no specifics or concreteness, with the exception of "we're from Iowa." As Patrick mentioned elsewhere, your location is relatively immaterial. Evan Williams (of Blogger / Twitter fame) made it out of Nebraska (my home state, fwiw), so I'm sure you can too.