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Do YC after you graduate: Early decision for students

219 points by snowmaker 1y ago

We announced something today at YC called Early Decision, specifically for students. It's a relatively small change, but we thought people might be interested to hear the thinking behind it, even if you don't happen to be a student graduating this year. A year ago, YC went from running 2 batches / year to 4 batches / year. We did this because we wanted to give founders more flexibility to do YC at the right time for them. It seems to have worked - a lot of founders have told us that they were only able to do YC because the new schedule fit their timeline. Early Decision was driven by the same motivation. We talked to a lot of college students, and we learned that most graduating seniors interview for their after-graduation job in the fall of their senior year. For the ones who are interested in doing their own startup, this creates a bit of a dilemma. If they don't interview for jobs in the fall in order to apply to YC later, they're risking that they might be left without any options. We created Early Decision so that they can apply to YC at the same time they're doing recruiting for regular jobs, the fall of their senior year. If they get into YC, they can confidently turn down their other job offers without worrying they'll be left without anything. Note: this isn't really a new idea. We've quietly done this from time to time since 2018, but we didn't create a dedicated flow in the application software for it, so most people didn't realize it was an option. Hopefully by productizing and popularizing it, we'll make it easier for college seniors to start companies.

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cassonmars 1y ago
Does YC ever intend to revisit doing remote batches again? There's many founders in the country who are just as driven and motivated, but have real-world situations that cannot allow uprooting themselves for several months, two very common ones: - new parents - disabled family members, or are themselves physically disabled The discourse on Hacker News has frequently chastised companies demanding RTO, and some of the companies in your portfolio are remote-first (or remote-only), why does YC make the same kind of RTO demand with batches?
- _--__--__ 1y ago
  People in those situations can and should start companies without an accelerator (or at least without this one). The joke around the SF scene is that even a founder with a boy/girlfriend is a sign of a startup doomed to fail, and YC doesn't seem particularly invested in changing that culture.
  - aetherspawn 1y ago
    I don’t usually wear my ring day to day because it’s poorly fitting, but I wear it to meetings with private equity because I want to filter out anyone with that mentality.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
  - nenenejej 1y ago
    [flagged]
  - dang 1y ago
    This doesn't resemble anything I've ever heard at YC in the many years I've been here. People don't think or talk that way at all...they're far more normal and decent than that.
  - DonHopkins 1y ago
    Unless your girlfriend is your laptop. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmFoNXkQTt8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmFoNXkQTt8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkZ8MAk2oH4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkZ8MAk2oH4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Z-_py5WgOM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Z-_py5WgOM
- snowmaker 1y ago
  We might, and I'm sure you're right that there are many great founders not applying to do YC because they don't want to move here. But I think it would be a better analogy to compare YC to a university, rather than to a company. It's true that many companies operate remotely very effectively. But essentially zero universities have stayed remote since the early days of the pandemic.
gkoberger 1y ago
I loved YC and can't recommend it enough. But if you're going to start a company, please consider working at another company first, even if briefly. (And make it a company you respect and want to emulate.) The amount of wheels you won't have to reinvent if you work at another company are astronomical. From engineering practices to sales to management, there's a lot you don't want to innovate on. Starting a company is really hard, and it's even harder if you've never seen first-hand how a functional company works. Your future employees will thank you.
- 0x696C6961 1y ago
  > if you've never seen first-hand how a functional company works. You can go an entire career without seeing how a functional company works.
  - throwawaymaths 1y ago
    also helpful to see a dysfunctional company (or four) to cover your bases on shitty management practices
  - gkoberger 1y ago
    Great, then at least you can see what you don't like! (But really, I intentionally said a company you want to emulate, because I do agree – no point in taking this advice if you go to a bad company)
  - cultofmetatron 1y ago
    > You can go an entire career without seeing how a functional company works. having worked at a few dysfunctional companies, there's value in it. you learn to spot red flag decisions and the kinds of people that tend to cause organizations to explode from within. a Lot of the success at my current company can be attributed to decisions I've made that came from experience at failed startups where we did the opposite.
    - htrp 1y ago
      Exactly! being able to recognize the wrong thing is just as valuable as recognizing the right thing
mikert89 1y ago
This is basically ensuring YC starts to get more absolute top graduates. Entrepreneurship is more and more seen as the default path for top people in the USA. All other career paths are for people that want to take the risk of ending up in a 50 year assembly line. This is probably good for society If you want to get rich by 30, you basically have to start a startup or get into a top small hedge fund out of undergrad.
- toomuchtodo 1y ago
  How many YC founders end up rich before 30? Or even at all? I think it’s likely a highly valuable experience running a business experiment someone else will fund (not to mention connections you wouldn’t otherwise make), but the odds of actual, liquid wealth from the experience and time spent are very low.
  - mikert89 1y ago
    Alot of them do, not only that, they build skills that help them start their next company. Many of which are bootstrapped and profitable. This whole idea that startups are a complete lottery ticket is not only false, its increasingly less false, more money is being made now in startups than ever
    - toomuchtodo 1y ago
      Based on public exit and liquidity event information, startups still remain a lottery ticket for most. 90% of startups fail entirely, for example (CB Insights). YC startups have more longevity, and more get to a Series A then non YC startups, but the best batches based on performance have been between 2009 and 2013. 10% achieve an exit, 4.5% became unicorns. Only 17 companies backed by YC (out of almost 5k) have gone public, and all except Airbnb, Instacart, and Reddit have underperformed post IPO. Have fun, learn, develop and grow your skills and network, take the investment, but it’s important to be honest with one’s self about odds of success and outcome. If you win, respect and appreciate the lottery ticket for what it was. Hard work and years of grinding is table stakes, but you can still fail (and most do). https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/pulling-back-the-curtain-on-the-magic https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/pulling-back-the-curtain-... https://www.marketsentiment.co/p/the-yc-report https://www.marketsentiment.co/p/the-yc-report
barbarr 1y ago
To what extent is YC's current strategy a form of "cookie-licking"? I.e. capture a small fraction of every plausible startup created by the next generation of students?
- cde-v 1y ago
  100% at this point. The industry's leading AI for start-up ideas has run out of AI for _____ suggestions. It was pretty obvious they were scraping the bottom of the barrel a month ago when I made this list from their current batch: Acrely — AI for HVAC administration Aden — AI for ERP operations AgentHub — AI for agent simulation and evaluation Agentin AI — AI for enterprise agents AgentMail — AI for agent email infrastructure AlphaWatch AI — AI for financial search Alter — AI for secure agent workflow access control Altur — AI for debt collection voice agents Ambral — AI for account management Anytrace — AI for support engineering April — AI for voice executive assistants AutoComputer — AI for robotic desktop automation Autosana — AI for mobile QA Autotab — AI for knowledge work Avent — AI for industrial commerce b-12 — AI for chemical intelligence Bluebirds — AI for outbound targeting burnt — AI for food supply chain operations Cactus — AI for smartphone model deployment Candytrail — AI for sales funnel automation CareSwift — AI for ambulance operations Certus AI — AI for restaurant phone lines Clarm — AI for search and agent building Clodo — AI for real estate CRMs Closera — AI for commercial real estate employees Clueso — AI for instructional content generation cocreate — AI for video editing Comena — AI for order automation in distribution ContextFort — AI for construction drawing reviews Convexia — AI for pharma drug discovery Credal.ai — AI for enterprise workflow assistants CTGT — AI for preventing hallucinations Cyberdesk — AI for legacy desktop automation datafruit — AI for DevOps engineering Daymi — AI for personal clones DeepAware AI — AI for data center efficiency Defog.ai — AI for natural-language data queries Design Arena — AI for design benchmarks Doe — AI for autonomous private equity workforce Double – Coding Copilot — AI for coding assistance EffiGov — AI for local government call centers Eloquent AI — AI for complex financial workflows F4 — AI for compliance in engineering drawings Finto — AI for enterprise accounting Flai — AI for dealership 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optimization NOSO LABS — AI for field technician support Nottelabs — AI for enterprise web agents Novaflow — AI for biology lab analytics Nozomio — AI for contextual coding agents Oki — AI for company intelligence Okibi — AI for agent building Omnara — AI for agent command centers OnDeck AI — AI for video analysis Onyx — AI for generative platform development Opennote — AI for note-based tutoring Opslane — AI for ETL data pipelines Orange Slice — AI for sales lead generation Outlit — AI for quoting and proposals Outrove — AI for Salesforce Pally — AI for relationship management Paloma — AI for billing CRMs Parachute — AI for clinical evaluation and deployment PARES AI — AI for commercial real estate brokers People.ai — AI for enterprise growth insights Perspectives Health — AI for clinic EMRs Pharmie AI — AI for pharmacy technicians Phases — AI for clinical trial automation Pingo AI — AI for language learning companions Pleom — AI for conversational interaction Qualify.bot — AI for 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neilv 1y ago
If the funding is available immediately (not just an immediate commitment for funding once they start a batch), would it address the following problem I've run into a few times? In the last year alone, I've had to bow out of co-founding two promising startups with good biz co-founders, because first-year MBA students wanted to finish their degree before they sought funding. Two ways funding could help: 1. I couldn't afford to work over a year as a technical cofounder, executing in full-time startup mode like usually needs to be done, with no income. While they were part-time, and getting an MBA and networking out of it during this period. Even ramen lifestyle funding would've made this closer to an equitable balance of contribution and risk among the cofounders. 2. There's also the concern that MBA programs seem to push students to have a hypothetical startup, so there's always a chance that the MBA student won't be fully committed to actually do the startup once they graduate. Maybe accepted funding could make this a firmer commitment. (Even if there's no contractual obligation to pursue the startup, I'd guess that new MBA graduates don't want to burn bridges in the small world of investors, so would take the commitment fairly seriously.)
- snowmaker 1y ago
  Yes, I think it would.
- aetherspawn 1y ago
  Being able to burn away at a startup while you are studying would be great. Uni was the most productive time in my whole life due to all the free time.
- yaacov 1y ago
  If your cofounder isn’t full time, that’s not your cofounder. That’s a part time contractor who owns 50% of your company.
  - neilv 1y ago
    Mostly I agree. But I also think that someone who is very good, and in a very good MBA program, can do their share of contributions, iff they're committed fully to the startup upon graduation. But if the follow-through doesn't happen, then the whole thing was probably a huge waste for non-MBA-student co-founders. (Unless those co-founders weren't really committed themselves.)
wolfcola 1y ago
bad, ideologically-motivated idea when thiel did it, and bad, ideologically-motivated idea now
- dang 1y ago
  "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Jared's description about why YC is doing this now seems clear. If you know more or better, you're welcome to make a substantive argument. But please don't use this site for shallow putdowns—it's not what it's for.
kurtis_reed 1y ago
What do you mean "turn out their other job offers"?
- snowmaker 1y ago
  Whoops - I had a typo! Thank you; fixed.
deadbabe 1y ago
I think this is oddly predatory, and sends the wrong idea to graduating students who have not even entered the real world. There is no need to rush to get into YC, and it would help to get actual experience in a job before setting out to build a whole company.
- __loam 1y ago
  Putting inexperienced kids with good credentials who are amenable to listening to a board in charge of these things is part of the yc business model.
  - tomhow 1y ago
    YC is looking for people who have high agency and can back their own judgement. All the most successful founders fit this profile.
    - defrost 1y ago
      In fairness young people can have high agency, back their own judgements, and have grit, perseverance, et al. and still lack experience and be more easily influenced by perceived mentors than they might be a decade later in their career paths. With no disrespect to YC, of course.
      - tomhow 1y ago
        Sure but the founders who will generate the greatest returns for investors are the ones who won’t be pushed around by boards. Facebook’s board advised Mark Zuckerberg to take Yahoo’s $1B offer in 2006 [1]. He was 22 years old. He refused, and Meta is now valued at nearly $2T. That’s the kind of founder that the most ambitious startup investors are looking for. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/an-ugly-truth-mark-zuckerberg-facebook-yahoo-offer-money-book-2021-7 https://www.businessinsider.com/an-ugly-truth-mark-zuckerber...
        defrost 1y ago
shipitto 1y ago
This is great in principle. A word of advice: Life is short. Play long term games with long term people. While a batch bakes in a season, a cap table rests like a boulder in a hillside. If you’re smart there are better ways to find a lever with which to move the world. Consider incentives. Don’t accept a hammer when you need a bulldozer. Don’t ask which paths exist: find where you want to be, ask what needs to be done. Do it.
- nenenejej 1y ago
  This is a bit riddly. Have a concrete example?
  - asadm 1y ago
    Less riddly: Don't take money if you don't need it. if you have to, take it from people who have values/incentives (with life and business both) aligned with you.
    - NetOpWibby 1y ago
      I like this, thank you.
ralph84 1y ago
If this is what tips the scales for someone in deciding between being a founder and taking a 9-5 job, they don’t have the level of commitment needed to be a successful founder.
fud101 1y ago
[flagged]
- omosubi 1y ago
  uhhh, it's their website. they can promote as much as they want
dvrp 1y ago
Paul Graham Essay and early YC: live your life, don’t start a company in your 20s. You are young only once. Post Paul Graham YC: reserve your YC spot now. There’s no downside!
- josfredo 1y ago
  Whatever statement is more relatable at the time hence better for their business.
- shafyy 1y ago
  Gives me weirdo Thiel vibes who pays (or used to pay) kids to drop out of college and start a company for him.
  - sungam 1y ago
    In fairness, while I’m sure it didn’t work out for all of them, one of these students became one of the youngest self made billionaires in history
    - flkenosad 1y ago
      He did it to the smartest kid in our CS class. I feel bad now because I feel like he deserves a degree.
      - cinntaile 1y ago
        He'll receive plenty of opportunities regardless of degree so I don't see why you feel sorry for him.
        flkenosad 1y ago
        He would have made a fantastic professor in my opinion. But I think also, certain opportunities just require a degree on a policy level.
      - ohyoutravel 1y ago
user3939382 1y ago
Yeah so all our talent can line the pockets of SV.
Maro 1y ago
I can't quite put my finger on it, but this announcement gives me bad vibes.
- gjgtcbkj 1y ago
  They just want warm bodies. Why else would they focus on people that don’t have experience?
  - epolanski 1y ago
    Neither experience nor hard skills, let alone soft ones.
    - gjgtcbkj 1y ago
      Something tells me the business is became the product.
- theplatman 1y ago
  For awhile now I’ve felt like YC has turned into another badge for the type people who are obsessed with prestige. It’s all about checking a box and not about the substance of what they want to do. This is evident in how disappointed certain people are when they’re rejected from YC. Their startup is merely a vehicle to get into the club.
  - mnky9800n 1y ago
    Better to start our own club then. All things have a life cycle. Despite what yc wants you to believe, it will come and go. Perhaps it’s becoming a prestige institution in the hopes to increase its longevity. That being said, belonging to a group is a central component of being a human as we are highly social animals. So it’s not wrong to want to belong to a group and then being sad when you are rejected. It requires a lot of maturity and stoicism to cut your own path. This is somewhat ironic since traditionally founding your own company is considered cutting your own path but I think yc and others have made it much less so. There is a formula now to follow which is why there is now an in group and an out group. Cutting your own path by definition does not include a set formula.
solumos 1y ago
You should consider placing them into a 1 or 2 year “on the job training” program at another YC company before sticking them in a batch. Maybe you could offer that as a “waitlist” option.
- cosmic_quanta 1y ago
  I like that suggestion. Work experience at a startup is eye opening.
- dang 1y ago
  YC has done that over the years and I believe is planning another such program. Not every prospective founder wants to do that, though, so there's a need for both options.
antonvs 1y ago
Eternal September for the startup world.
ramon156 1y ago
Fun fact, not every startup needs funding. Seems like post paul doesn't really talk about this anymore.
- skeeter2020 1y ago
  AP (After Paul) is much more concerned with traditional VC exits; YC is just another firm now, but because they invented the space get to trade on their name a while longer.
- dang 1y ago
  YC gives founders a lot more than funding.
Illniyar 1y ago
Seems like a good thing for founders, doesn't force them to quit school to start a funded startup. Especially for under-privileged youths who might not be able to miss a high paying job opportunity or have no income for months. Seems like a bad signal for YC though - if you aren't committed enough to quit school or at the very least reject job offers and do your startup anyway - feels like you might not be committed enough to do what it takes? But if anyone does, YC knows how to pick founders with the right mindset.
- snowmaker 1y ago
  I think there is some risk of that. But commitment isn't static. A lot of incredible companies started with founders who were just toying with an idea and weren't committed at all, then they became more committed over time as things started to work.
AfterHIA 1y ago
[flagged]
- hnthrowaway121 1y ago
  Senior year of college, aren’t we talking 21/22 year olds?
  - AfterHIA 1y ago
    Having had friends that went to a technical high school I have a feeling that there's a subtle suggestion that, "graduates" might refer to talented kids coming out of high school. At any rate suggesting to a young person that they should essentially ruin their life to chase a pipe dream is unethical especially when you benefit financially from making these suggestions.
    - hnthrowaway121 1y ago
      That’s clearly not the suggestion of the post. It only mentions college students. There is no child abuse.
    - gh0stcat 1y ago
      In what way is this "ruining your life"? If things don't go as planned, I imagine the person would be in a good position to pivot to higher education/a different job/starting something new. I think this idea that ruining one's life == not following the exact k-12 -> college -> big corporation route is short sighted.
      - tossandthrow 1y ago
        Do a risk based calculation of compensation and learning. Your will see that you are putting you self at risk - especially if you had the opportunity to work at an renowned business. Eg. Having 2 no name defunct businesses on your resume you claim as startups over 3 years will likely not benefit you so much.
tossandthrow 1y ago
I bought into the idea of startups after college. And did It despite having an offer from a good large Corp. I regret that decision. Truth is that it is incredibly difficult to build startup without any good industry knowledge.
podgorniy 1y ago
Young, fool and hungry. The best VC material.
asimpleusecase 1y ago
There is so much online to help jumpstart a young entrepreneur- they can have some small sense of what they are in for. As far as start a company vs get a job, just being told that is an option can be super empowering. I agree that burning up a few years in a failed company as a young entrepreneur does not have a good monetary outcome, but it does help them gain a ton of real world experience that can serve them well their whole life.
FinnLobsien 1y ago
I think everyone criticizing this is comparing it to the wrong thing. Many ambitious students: -graduate and work 100 hour+ weeks as investment banking associates. -join other people's startups where they work crazy hours -work hellish hours in PhDs/med school/law school Yes, being a founder is hard and can be absolute hell at times. But so are some of the "normal" things ambitious students already do post-graduation. It's not like YC is saying you either do an internship with free lunches, corporate yoga classes and kombucha on tap or you dive into the trenches of being a YC founder.
- doctorpangloss 1y ago
  speaking only for recent graduates I know personally well: ambitious students also want to be writers, for example. If only it were so easy as writing more makes you a better writer! So if you have to sit around and get life experiences that are interesting to write about (a good way to be a good writer), do you want to do that while working for Stripe, drinking kombucha and getting free lunches and being able to live in New York? Yes. You don’t want to do that while being an investment banker or a doctor or a YC founder. The thing is those kids still have massive cognitive gifts - I’m not going to use a loaded word like talented or whatever - and have worked very hard in the past. It’s just that the journey to the thing they want to do no longer rewards hours. Paul Graham is like the Mr. Beast of seed investing. He wants to make the best SEED STAGE INVESTMENTS in the world, to mock a Mr. Beast PowerPoint. He doesn’t want to get the kids with the highest potential, or the kids who work the hardest. They are very sincere and supportive - I mean, who the hell in your life is willing to risk $525,000 on an idea with no traction?? - but they are not out to anoint a category of kids as the “ambitious” ones versus the unambitious ones. You can be ambitious about being a writer and find success and wind up writing very little!
  - FinnLobsien 1y ago
    > speaking only for recent graduates I know personally well: ambitious students also want to be writers, for example. If only it were so easy as writing more makes you a better writer! So if you have to sit around and get life experiences that are interesting to write about (a good way to be a good writer), do you want to do that while working for Stripe, drinking kombucha and getting free lunches and being able to live in New York? Yes. You don’t want to do that while being an investment banker or a doctor or a YC founder. But nobody's closing that option, are they? YC is simply offering another path. There are different kinds of ambitions of course. Not all of them are about money, some are about creative fulfillment or family or whatever. That's totally true. But it's not like anyone's yanking those people out of their kombucha-on-tap associate job and forcing them into YC.
throwaw12 1y ago
My advice to 20 year olds, don't go to startups, go to big tech while it still pays good salary, build up your wealth, network and how things work at such corporations. Then at mid 30s get hired as Dir/VP of engineering in smaller Series A startup. You will have higher chance to retire early and/or afford yourself to work on things you like later on.
- throwaw12 1y ago
  Don't forget why YC wants more young people to work for startups, they benefit from couple of successes and their metric is to increase number of companies they want to invest, which requires more number of cheap engineers/interns giving their life. Your chances of success is lower than YC's chances of success because they invest to many companies in parallel, but you can only work for 1 company
  - boringg 1y ago
    Understanding people and companies incentives doesn't mean that it is inherently bad as you are implying. YC is also investing in a bunch of people and putting money towards new ideas. Lets not forget that innovation is difficult and fraught with failure. People who want to go that route and feel strongly about it should give it a shot with their eyes open.
- joshdavham 1y ago
  Relevant blog post: https://www.gayle.com/blog/2011/10/29/why-coders-shouldnt-join-a-start-up-when-they-graduate https://www.gayle.com/blog/2011/10/29/why-coders-shouldnt-jo... Something ironic I found when I was on my last job search (and applying to some YC startups) was that, despite startups often being critical of big tech, when describing their past experience, the founders (and their teams) never failed to ‘name drop’ the brand-name companies they’ve worked for. Additionally, I think the reason a lot of founders threw my resume in the trash was because they couldn’t recognize the no-name startups I’ve worked at… Luckily I’m at a household name company now and even non-tech people recognize the company I work at.
- boringg 1y ago
guywithahat 1y ago
I've interviewed at a few YC companies, and the issue with really young companies is that they don't know anything about running a company. Experienced people don't want to work for a 27 year old, and so it's a bunch of people who don't know what they're doing, making promises out of ignorance and not delivering. I'm tempted to think that YC knows better than I do here, but my experience suggests this is a bad idea. The worst managers I've had were inexperienced, and someone who's 22 won't know when they need someone experienced, or how to talk to customers. Many of them may be too nervous to act, and since they can apply under the safety of also applying for jobs they may not be as motivated. I suspect this is just a ploy to get more Stanford grads to apply but I'm not sure it's the best way to go about it.
umutisik 1y ago
It does make me uneasy that founding companies is becoming another tracked thing that people feel they can apply high-IQ pattern-matching to. Especially when startups are where first-principles thinking is the most valuable. That being said, I can see this being useful to a lot of kids. Certainly beats going to grad school for someone who wants to start a company. Keep in mind that a 500K SAFE doesn't force a founder to go big or zero-out.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
laidoffamazon 1y ago
This pattern of extending the peripheral aspects of elite undergrad into high school and after actual undergrad seems…wrong. I disliked the Google cultural tendency of trying to mirror grad school but this seems worse.
cdelsolar 1y ago
lol come on guys let kids live a little
omosubi 1y ago
I don't know why there's so much negativity. I see this as a big win for students interested in it. 1. it's a short commitment - only 3 months. more time-bound opportunities should be available to kids coming out of school. too many people go straight to big finance/law/tech/etc and get stuck because they don't want to give up the salary or safety. 2. get access to a network that is very difficult to get access to otherwis 3. better status boost than most other things you could be doing. There are likely better status signals about someone's abilities/intellect than YC, but i'm guessing they are few for people in the valley. 4. Get to work on something you are interested in 5. learn a lot very quickly. 6. gives you a lot of optionality yes, YC is trying to make money but they do seem intent on developing talent and this is a good avenue for that.
- snowmaker 1y ago
  This is a good way of thinking about it!
evilfred 1y ago
Gotta catch em while they're young, naive, and malleable.

219 points by snowmaker 1y ago

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

cassonmars 1y ago

Does YC ever intend to revisit doing remote batches again? There's many founders in the country who are just as driven and motivated, but have real-world situations that cannot allow uprooting themselves for several months, two very common ones: - new parents - disabled family members, or are themselves physically disabled The discourse on Hacker News has frequently chastised companies demanding RTO, and some of the companies in your portfolio are remote-first (or remote-only), why does YC make the same kind of RTO demand with batches?

_--__--__ 1y ago
People in those situations can and should start companies without an accelerator (or at least without this one). The joke around the SF scene is that even a founder with a boy/girlfriend is a sign of a startup doomed to fail, and YC doesn't seem particularly invested in changing that culture.
- aetherspawn 1y ago
  I don’t usually wear my ring day to day because it’s poorly fitting, but I wear it to meetings with private equity because I want to filter out anyone with that mentality.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- nenenejej 1y ago
  [flagged]
- dang 1y ago
  This doesn't resemble anything I've ever heard at YC in the many years I've been here. People don't think or talk that way at all...they're far more normal and decent than that.
- DonHopkins 1y ago
  Unless your girlfriend is your laptop. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmFoNXkQTt8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmFoNXkQTt8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkZ8MAk2oH4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkZ8MAk2oH4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Z-_py5WgOM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Z-_py5WgOM
snowmaker 1y ago
We might, and I'm sure you're right that there are many great founders not applying to do YC because they don't want to move here. But I think it would be a better analogy to compare YC to a university, rather than to a company. It's true that many companies operate remotely very effectively. But essentially zero universities have stayed remote since the early days of the pandemic.

gkoberger 1y ago

I loved YC and can't recommend it enough. But if you're going to start a company, please consider working at another company first, even if briefly. (And make it a company you respect and want to emulate.) The amount of wheels you won't have to reinvent if you work at another company are astronomical. From engineering practices to sales to management, there's a lot you don't want to innovate on. Starting a company is really hard, and it's even harder if you've never seen first-hand how a functional company works. Your future employees will thank you.

0x696C6961 1y ago
> if you've never seen first-hand how a functional company works. You can go an entire career without seeing how a functional company works.
- throwawaymaths 1y ago
  also helpful to see a dysfunctional company (or four) to cover your bases on shitty management practices
- gkoberger 1y ago
  Great, then at least you can see what you don't like! (But really, I intentionally said a company you want to emulate, because I do agree – no point in taking this advice if you go to a bad company)
- cultofmetatron 1y ago
  > You can go an entire career without seeing how a functional company works. having worked at a few dysfunctional companies, there's value in it. you learn to spot red flag decisions and the kinds of people that tend to cause organizations to explode from within. a Lot of the success at my current company can be attributed to decisions I've made that came from experience at failed startups where we did the opposite.
  - htrp 1y ago
    Exactly! being able to recognize the wrong thing is just as valuable as recognizing the right thing

mikert89 1y ago

This is basically ensuring YC starts to get more absolute top graduates. Entrepreneurship is more and more seen as the default path for top people in the USA. All other career paths are for people that want to take the risk of ending up in a 50 year assembly line. This is probably good for society If you want to get rich by 30, you basically have to start a startup or get into a top small hedge fund out of undergrad.

toomuchtodo 1y ago
How many YC founders end up rich before 30? Or even at all? I think it’s likely a highly valuable experience running a business experiment someone else will fund (not to mention connections you wouldn’t otherwise make), but the odds of actual, liquid wealth from the experience and time spent are very low.
- mikert89 1y ago
  Alot of them do, not only that, they build skills that help them start their next company. Many of which are bootstrapped and profitable. This whole idea that startups are a complete lottery ticket is not only false, its increasingly less false, more money is being made now in startups than ever
  - toomuchtodo 1y ago
    Based on public exit and liquidity event information, startups still remain a lottery ticket for most. 90% of startups fail entirely, for example (CB Insights). YC startups have more longevity, and more get to a Series A then non YC startups, but the best batches based on performance have been between 2009 and 2013. 10% achieve an exit, 4.5% became unicorns. Only 17 companies backed by YC (out of almost 5k) have gone public, and all except Airbnb, Instacart, and Reddit have underperformed post IPO. Have fun, learn, develop and grow your skills and network, take the investment, but it’s important to be honest with one’s self about odds of success and outcome. If you win, respect and appreciate the lottery ticket for what it was. Hard work and years of grinding is table stakes, but you can still fail (and most do). https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/pulling-back-the-curtain-on-the-magic https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/pulling-back-the-curtain-... https://www.marketsentiment.co/p/the-yc-report https://www.marketsentiment.co/p/the-yc-report

barbarr 1y ago

To what extent is YC's current strategy a form of "cookie-licking"? I.e. capture a small fraction of every plausible startup created by the next generation of students?

cde-v 1y ago
100% at this point. The industry's leading AI for start-up ideas has run out of AI for _____ suggestions. It was pretty obvious they were scraping the bottom of the barrel a month ago when I made this list from their current batch: Acrely — AI for HVAC administration Aden — AI for ERP operations AgentHub — AI for agent simulation and evaluation Agentin AI — AI for enterprise agents AgentMail — AI for agent email infrastructure AlphaWatch AI — AI for financial search Alter — AI for secure agent workflow access control Altur — AI for debt collection voice agents Ambral — AI for account management Anytrace — AI for support engineering April — AI for voice executive assistants AutoComputer — AI for robotic desktop automation Autosana — AI for mobile QA Autotab — AI for knowledge work Avent — AI for industrial commerce b-12 — AI for chemical intelligence Bluebirds — AI for outbound targeting burnt — AI for food supply chain operations Cactus — AI for smartphone model deployment Candytrail — AI for sales funnel automation CareSwift — AI for ambulance operations Certus AI — AI for restaurant phone lines Clarm — AI for search and agent building Clodo — AI for real estate CRMs Closera — AI for commercial real estate employees Clueso — AI for instructional content generation cocreate — AI for video editing Comena — AI for order automation in distribution ContextFort — AI for construction drawing reviews Convexia — AI for pharma drug discovery Credal.ai — AI for enterprise workflow assistants CTGT — AI for preventing hallucinations Cyberdesk — AI for legacy desktop automation datafruit — AI for DevOps engineering Daymi — AI for personal clones DeepAware AI — AI for data center efficiency Defog.ai — AI for natural-language data queries Design Arena — AI for design benchmarks Doe — AI for autonomous private equity workforce Double – Coding Copilot — AI for coding assistance EffiGov — AI for local government call centers Eloquent AI — AI for complex financial workflows F4 — AI for compliance in engineering drawings Finto — AI for enterprise accounting Flai — AI for dealership customer acquisition Floot — AI for app building Fluidize — AI for scientific experiments Flywheel AI — AI for excavator autonomy Freya — AI for financial services voice agents Frizzle — AI for teacher grading Galini — AI guardrails as a service Gaus — AI for retail investors Ghostship — AI for UX bug detection Golpo — AI for video generation from documents Halluminate — AI for training computer use HealthKey — AI for clinical trial matching Hera — AI for motion design Humoniq — AI for BPO in travel and transport Hyprnote — AI for enterprise notetaking Imprezia — AI for ad networks Induction Labs — AI for computer use automation iollo — AI for multimodal biological data Iron Grid — AI for hardware insurance IronLedger.ai — AI for property accounting Janet AI — AI for project management (AI-native Jira) Kernel — AI for web agent browsing infrastructure Kestroll — AI for media asset management Keystone — AI for software engineering Knowlify — AI for explainer video creation Kyber — AI for regulatory notice drafting Lanesurf — AI for freight booking voice automation Lantern — AI for Postgres application development Lark — AI for billing operations Latent — AI for medical language models Lemma — AI for consumer brand insights Linkana — AI for supplier onboarding reviews Liva AI — AI for video and voice data labeling Locata — AI for healthcare referral management Lopus AI — AI for deal intelligence Lotas — AI for data science IDEs Louiza Labs — AI for synthetic biology data Luminai — AI for business process automation Magnetic — AI for tax preparation MangoDesk — AI for evaluation data Maven Bio — AI for BioPharma insights Meteor — AI for web browsing (AI-native browser) Mimos — AI for regulated firm visibility in search Minimal AI — AI for e-commerce customer support Mobile Operator — AI for mobile QA Mohi — AI for workflow clarity Monarcha — AI for GIS platforms moonrepo — AI for developer workflow tooling Motives — AI for consumer research Nautilus — AI for car wash optimization NOSO LABS — AI for field technician support Nottelabs — AI for enterprise web agents Novaflow — AI for biology lab analytics Nozomio — AI for contextual coding agents Oki — AI for company intelligence Okibi — AI for agent building Omnara — AI for agent command centers OnDeck AI — AI for video analysis Onyx — AI for generative platform development Opennote — AI for note-based tutoring Opslane — AI for ETL data pipelines Orange Slice — AI for sales lead generation Outlit — AI for quoting and proposals Outrove — AI for Salesforce Pally — AI for relationship management Paloma — AI for billing CRMs Parachute — AI for clinical evaluation and deployment PARES AI — AI for commercial real estate brokers People.ai — AI for enterprise growth insights Perspectives Health — AI for clinic EMRs Pharmie AI — AI for pharmacy technicians Phases — AI for clinical trial automation Pingo AI — AI for language learning companions Pleom — AI for conversational interaction Qualify.bot — AI for commercial lending phone agents Reacher — AI for creator collaboration marketing Ridecell — AI for fleet operations Risely AI — AI for campus administration Risotto — AI for IT helpdesk automation Riverbank Security — AI for offensive security Saphira AI — AI for certification automation Sendbird — AI for omnichannel agents Sentinel — AI for on-call engineering Serafis — AI for institutional investor knowledge graphs Sigmantic AI — AI for HDL design Sira — AI for HR management of hourly teams Socratix AI — AI for fraud and risk teams Solva — AI for insurance Spotlight Realty — AI for real estate brokerage StackAI — AI for low-code agent platforms stagewise — AI for frontend coding agents Stellon Labs — AI for edge device models Stockline — AI for food wholesaler ERP Stormy AI — AI for influencer marketing Synthetic Society — AI for simulating real users SynthioLabs — AI for medical expertise in pharma Tailor — AI for retail ERP automation Tecto AI — AI for governance of AI employees Tesora — AI for procurement analysis Trace — AI for workflow automation TraceRoot.AI — AI for automated bug fixing truthsystems — AI for regulated governance layers Uplift AI — AI for underserved voice languages Veles — AI for dynamic sales pricing Veritus Agent — AI for loan servicing and collections Verne Robotics — AI for robotic arms VoiceOS — AI for voice interviews VoxOps AI — AI for regulated industry calls Vulcan Technologies — AI for regulatory drafting Waydev — AI for engineering leadership insights Wayline — AI for property management voice automation Wedge — AI for healthcare trust layers Workflow86 — AI for workflow automation ZeroEval — AI for agent evaluation and optimization

neilv 1y ago

If the funding is available immediately (not just an immediate commitment for funding once they start a batch), would it address the following problem I've run into a few times? In the last year alone, I've had to bow out of co-founding two promising startups with good biz co-founders, because first-year MBA students wanted to finish their degree before they sought funding. Two ways funding could help: 1. I couldn't afford to work over a year as a technical cofounder, executing in full-time startup mode like usually needs to be done, with no income. While they were part-time, and getting an MBA and networking out of it during this period. Even ramen lifestyle funding would've made this closer to an equitable balance of contribution and risk among the cofounders. 2. There's also the concern that MBA programs seem to push students to have a hypothetical startup, so there's always a chance that the MBA student won't be fully committed to actually do the startup once they graduate. Maybe accepted funding could make this a firmer commitment. (Even if there's no contractual obligation to pursue the startup, I'd guess that new MBA graduates don't want to burn bridges in the small world of investors, so would take the commitment fairly seriously.)

snowmaker 1y ago
Yes, I think it would.
aetherspawn 1y ago
Being able to burn away at a startup while you are studying would be great. Uni was the most productive time in my whole life due to all the free time.
yaacov 1y ago
If your cofounder isn’t full time, that’s not your cofounder. That’s a part time contractor who owns 50% of your company.
- neilv 1y ago
  Mostly I agree. But I also think that someone who is very good, and in a very good MBA program, can do their share of contributions, iff they're committed fully to the startup upon graduation. But if the follow-through doesn't happen, then the whole thing was probably a huge waste for non-MBA-student co-founders. (Unless those co-founders weren't really committed themselves.)

wolfcola 1y ago

bad, ideologically-motivated idea when thiel did it, and bad, ideologically-motivated idea now

dang 1y ago
"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Jared's description about why YC is doing this now seems clear. If you know more or better, you're welcome to make a substantive argument. But please don't use this site for shallow putdowns—it's not what it's for.

kurtis_reed 1y ago

What do you mean "turn out their other job offers"?

snowmaker 1y ago
Whoops - I had a typo! Thank you; fixed.

deadbabe 1y ago

I think this is oddly predatory, and sends the wrong idea to graduating students who have not even entered the real world. There is no need to rush to get into YC, and it would help to get actual experience in a job before setting out to build a whole company.

__loam 1y ago
Putting inexperienced kids with good credentials who are amenable to listening to a board in charge of these things is part of the yc business model.
- tomhow 1y ago
  YC is looking for people who have high agency and can back their own judgement. All the most successful founders fit this profile.
  - defrost 1y ago
    In fairness young people can have high agency, back their own judgements, and have grit, perseverance, et al. and still lack experience and be more easily influenced by perceived mentors than they might be a decade later in their career paths. With no disrespect to YC, of course.
    - tomhow 1y ago
      Sure but the founders who will generate the greatest returns for investors are the ones who won’t be pushed around by boards. Facebook’s board advised Mark Zuckerberg to take Yahoo’s $1B offer in 2006 [1]. He was 22 years old. He refused, and Meta is now valued at nearly $2T. That’s the kind of founder that the most ambitious startup investors are looking for. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/an-ugly-truth-mark-zuckerberg-facebook-yahoo-offer-money-book-2021-7 https://www.businessinsider.com/an-ugly-truth-mark-zuckerber...
      - defrost 1y ago

shipitto 1y ago

This is great in principle. A word of advice: Life is short. Play long term games with long term people. While a batch bakes in a season, a cap table rests like a boulder in a hillside. If you’re smart there are better ways to find a lever with which to move the world. Consider incentives. Don’t accept a hammer when you need a bulldozer. Don’t ask which paths exist: find where you want to be, ask what needs to be done. Do it.

nenenejej 1y ago
This is a bit riddly. Have a concrete example?
- asadm 1y ago
  Less riddly: Don't take money if you don't need it. if you have to, take it from people who have values/incentives (with life and business both) aligned with you.
  - NetOpWibby 1y ago
    I like this, thank you.

ralph84 1y ago

If this is what tips the scales for someone in deciding between being a founder and taking a 9-5 job, they don’t have the level of commitment needed to be a successful founder.

fud101 1y ago

[flagged]

omosubi 1y ago
uhhh, it's their website. they can promote as much as they want

dvrp 1y ago

Paul Graham Essay and early YC: live your life, don’t start a company in your 20s. You are young only once. Post Paul Graham YC: reserve your YC spot now. There’s no downside!

josfredo 1y ago
Whatever statement is more relatable at the time hence better for their business.
shafyy 1y ago
Gives me weirdo Thiel vibes who pays (or used to pay) kids to drop out of college and start a company for him.
- sungam 1y ago
  In fairness, while I’m sure it didn’t work out for all of them, one of these students became one of the youngest self made billionaires in history
  - flkenosad 1y ago
    He did it to the smartest kid in our CS class. I feel bad now because I feel like he deserves a degree.
    - cinntaile 1y ago
      He'll receive plenty of opportunities regardless of degree so I don't see why you feel sorry for him.
      - flkenosad 1y ago
        He would have made a fantastic professor in my opinion. But I think also, certain opportunities just require a degree on a policy level.
    - ohyoutravel 1y ago

user3939382 1y ago

Yeah so all our talent can line the pockets of SV.

Maro 1y ago

I can't quite put my finger on it, but this announcement gives me bad vibes.

gjgtcbkj 1y ago
They just want warm bodies. Why else would they focus on people that don’t have experience?
- epolanski 1y ago
  Neither experience nor hard skills, let alone soft ones.
  - gjgtcbkj 1y ago
    Something tells me the business is became the product.
theplatman 1y ago
For awhile now I’ve felt like YC has turned into another badge for the type people who are obsessed with prestige. It’s all about checking a box and not about the substance of what they want to do. This is evident in how disappointed certain people are when they’re rejected from YC. Their startup is merely a vehicle to get into the club.
- mnky9800n 1y ago
  Better to start our own club then. All things have a life cycle. Despite what yc wants you to believe, it will come and go. Perhaps it’s becoming a prestige institution in the hopes to increase its longevity. That being said, belonging to a group is a central component of being a human as we are highly social animals. So it’s not wrong to want to belong to a group and then being sad when you are rejected. It requires a lot of maturity and stoicism to cut your own path. This is somewhat ironic since traditionally founding your own company is considered cutting your own path but I think yc and others have made it much less so. There is a formula now to follow which is why there is now an in group and an out group. Cutting your own path by definition does not include a set formula.

solumos 1y ago

You should consider placing them into a 1 or 2 year “on the job training” program at another YC company before sticking them in a batch. Maybe you could offer that as a “waitlist” option.

cosmic_quanta 1y ago
I like that suggestion. Work experience at a startup is eye opening.
dang 1y ago
YC has done that over the years and I believe is planning another such program. Not every prospective founder wants to do that, though, so there's a need for both options.

antonvs 1y ago

Eternal September for the startup world.

ramon156 1y ago

Fun fact, not every startup needs funding. Seems like post paul doesn't really talk about this anymore.

skeeter2020 1y ago
AP (After Paul) is much more concerned with traditional VC exits; YC is just another firm now, but because they invented the space get to trade on their name a while longer.
dang 1y ago
YC gives founders a lot more than funding.

Illniyar 1y ago

Seems like a good thing for founders, doesn't force them to quit school to start a funded startup. Especially for under-privileged youths who might not be able to miss a high paying job opportunity or have no income for months. Seems like a bad signal for YC though - if you aren't committed enough to quit school or at the very least reject job offers and do your startup anyway - feels like you might not be committed enough to do what it takes? But if anyone does, YC knows how to pick founders with the right mindset.

snowmaker 1y ago
I think there is some risk of that. But commitment isn't static. A lot of incredible companies started with founders who were just toying with an idea and weren't committed at all, then they became more committed over time as things started to work.

AfterHIA 1y ago

[flagged]

hnthrowaway121 1y ago
Senior year of college, aren’t we talking 21/22 year olds?
- AfterHIA 1y ago
  Having had friends that went to a technical high school I have a feeling that there's a subtle suggestion that, "graduates" might refer to talented kids coming out of high school. At any rate suggesting to a young person that they should essentially ruin their life to chase a pipe dream is unethical especially when you benefit financially from making these suggestions.
  - hnthrowaway121 1y ago
    That’s clearly not the suggestion of the post. It only mentions college students. There is no child abuse.
  - gh0stcat 1y ago
    In what way is this "ruining your life"? If things don't go as planned, I imagine the person would be in a good position to pivot to higher education/a different job/starting something new. I think this idea that ruining one's life == not following the exact k-12 -> college -> big corporation route is short sighted.
    - tossandthrow 1y ago
      Do a risk based calculation of compensation and learning. Your will see that you are putting you self at risk - especially if you had the opportunity to work at an renowned business. Eg. Having 2 no name defunct businesses on your resume you claim as startups over 3 years will likely not benefit you so much.

tossandthrow 1y ago

I bought into the idea of startups after college. And did It despite having an offer from a good large Corp. I regret that decision. Truth is that it is incredibly difficult to build startup without any good industry knowledge.

podgorniy 1y ago

Young, fool and hungry. The best VC material.

asimpleusecase 1y ago

There is so much online to help jumpstart a young entrepreneur- they can have some small sense of what they are in for. As far as start a company vs get a job, just being told that is an option can be super empowering. I agree that burning up a few years in a failed company as a young entrepreneur does not have a good monetary outcome, but it does help them gain a ton of real world experience that can serve them well their whole life.

FinnLobsien 1y ago

I think everyone criticizing this is comparing it to the wrong thing. Many ambitious students: -graduate and work 100 hour+ weeks as investment banking associates. -join other people's startups where they work crazy hours -work hellish hours in PhDs/med school/law school Yes, being a founder is hard and can be absolute hell at times. But so are some of the "normal" things ambitious students already do post-graduation. It's not like YC is saying you either do an internship with free lunches, corporate yoga classes and kombucha on tap or you dive into the trenches of being a YC founder.

doctorpangloss 1y ago
speaking only for recent graduates I know personally well: ambitious students also want to be writers, for example. If only it were so easy as writing more makes you a better writer! So if you have to sit around and get life experiences that are interesting to write about (a good way to be a good writer), do you want to do that while working for Stripe, drinking kombucha and getting free lunches and being able to live in New York? Yes. You don’t want to do that while being an investment banker or a doctor or a YC founder. The thing is those kids still have massive cognitive gifts - I’m not going to use a loaded word like talented or whatever - and have worked very hard in the past. It’s just that the journey to the thing they want to do no longer rewards hours. Paul Graham is like the Mr. Beast of seed investing. He wants to make the best SEED STAGE INVESTMENTS in the world, to mock a Mr. Beast PowerPoint. He doesn’t want to get the kids with the highest potential, or the kids who work the hardest. They are very sincere and supportive - I mean, who the hell in your life is willing to risk $525,000 on an idea with no traction?? - but they are not out to anoint a category of kids as the “ambitious” ones versus the unambitious ones. You can be ambitious about being a writer and find success and wind up writing very little!
- FinnLobsien 1y ago
  > speaking only for recent graduates I know personally well: ambitious students also want to be writers, for example. If only it were so easy as writing more makes you a better writer! So if you have to sit around and get life experiences that are interesting to write about (a good way to be a good writer), do you want to do that while working for Stripe, drinking kombucha and getting free lunches and being able to live in New York? Yes. You don’t want to do that while being an investment banker or a doctor or a YC founder. But nobody's closing that option, are they? YC is simply offering another path. There are different kinds of ambitions of course. Not all of them are about money, some are about creative fulfillment or family or whatever. That's totally true. But it's not like anyone's yanking those people out of their kombucha-on-tap associate job and forcing them into YC.

throwaw12 1y ago

My advice to 20 year olds, don't go to startups, go to big tech while it still pays good salary, build up your wealth, network and how things work at such corporations. Then at mid 30s get hired as Dir/VP of engineering in smaller Series A startup. You will have higher chance to retire early and/or afford yourself to work on things you like later on.

throwaw12 1y ago
Don't forget why YC wants more young people to work for startups, they benefit from couple of successes and their metric is to increase number of companies they want to invest, which requires more number of cheap engineers/interns giving their life. Your chances of success is lower than YC's chances of success because they invest to many companies in parallel, but you can only work for 1 company
- boringg 1y ago
  Understanding people and companies incentives doesn't mean that it is inherently bad as you are implying. YC is also investing in a bunch of people and putting money towards new ideas. Lets not forget that innovation is difficult and fraught with failure. People who want to go that route and feel strongly about it should give it a shot with their eyes open.
joshdavham 1y ago
Relevant blog post: https://www.gayle.com/blog/2011/10/29/why-coders-shouldnt-join-a-start-up-when-they-graduate https://www.gayle.com/blog/2011/10/29/why-coders-shouldnt-jo... Something ironic I found when I was on my last job search (and applying to some YC startups) was that, despite startups often being critical of big tech, when describing their past experience, the founders (and their teams) never failed to ‘name drop’ the brand-name companies they’ve worked for. Additionally, I think the reason a lot of founders threw my resume in the trash was because they couldn’t recognize the no-name startups I’ve worked at… Luckily I’m at a household name company now and even non-tech people recognize the company I work at.
boringg 1y ago

guywithahat 1y ago

I've interviewed at a few YC companies, and the issue with really young companies is that they don't know anything about running a company. Experienced people don't want to work for a 27 year old, and so it's a bunch of people who don't know what they're doing, making promises out of ignorance and not delivering. I'm tempted to think that YC knows better than I do here, but my experience suggests this is a bad idea. The worst managers I've had were inexperienced, and someone who's 22 won't know when they need someone experienced, or how to talk to customers. Many of them may be too nervous to act, and since they can apply under the safety of also applying for jobs they may not be as motivated. I suspect this is just a ploy to get more Stanford grads to apply but I'm not sure it's the best way to go about it.

umutisik 1y ago

It does make me uneasy that founding companies is becoming another tracked thing that people feel they can apply high-IQ pattern-matching to. Especially when startups are where first-principles thinking is the most valuable. That being said, I can see this being useful to a lot of kids. Certainly beats going to grad school for someone who wants to start a company. Keep in mind that a 500K SAFE doesn't force a founder to go big or zero-out.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

laidoffamazon 1y ago

This pattern of extending the peripheral aspects of elite undergrad into high school and after actual undergrad seems…wrong. I disliked the Google cultural tendency of trying to mirror grad school but this seems worse.

cdelsolar 1y ago

lol come on guys let kids live a little

omosubi 1y ago

I don't know why there's so much negativity. I see this as a big win for students interested in it. 1. it's a short commitment - only 3 months. more time-bound opportunities should be available to kids coming out of school. too many people go straight to big finance/law/tech/etc and get stuck because they don't want to give up the salary or safety. 2. get access to a network that is very difficult to get access to otherwis 3. better status boost than most other things you could be doing. There are likely better status signals about someone's abilities/intellect than YC, but i'm guessing they are few for people in the valley. 4. Get to work on something you are interested in 5. learn a lot very quickly. 6. gives you a lot of optionality yes, YC is trying to make money but they do seem intent on developing talent and this is a good avenue for that.

snowmaker 1y ago
This is a good way of thinking about it!

evilfred 1y ago

Gotta catch em while they're young, naive, and malleable.