5 ms·

Thanks for your advice; I just submitted 20 applications. :) On a serious note, can one apply as a single hacker who doesn't care about which project he takes

by vlad 19y ago

Thanks for your advice; I just submitted 20 applications. :) On a serious note, can one apply as a single hacker who doesn't care about which project he takes on?

deleted 19y ago
[deleted]
SwellJoe 19y ago
I'm certain that's a bad idea. They were overwhelmed by the 400+ apps they got last time...I don't think they'd take kindly to someone gaming the system and forcing them to read an extra 20 apps (I'm pretty sure the round file would be the only one seeing all of your applications).
- vlad 19y ago
  I went back and made it more obvious I was kidding. But is there any hacker serious about being an entrepreneur and working on a project during the Winter session and beyond?
  - ph0rque 19y ago
    Contact me.
  - pbnaidu 19y ago
    I am interested, please contact me at pbnaidu@gmail.com
  - augy 19y ago
    dbosson@gmail.com
portLAN 19y ago
> Can we apply as single hackers who don't care about which project we take on? Not to be YC specific, but just in general, who would want to invest in someone who doesn't care?
- vlad 19y ago
  Great question. I'm a hacker, so I'd be useful from day one. Secondly, I've stuck with one idea for about four years, selling the product for 3 and a half years, so I have no problem adding features or maintaining code. Here is what matters to me more than a specific idea: 1) I'd like to have lawyers and accountants from the beginning, versus doing it myself. 2) I'd like to start with an investment from the beginning, versus doing it with nothing, therefore being undercapitalized the entire time. 3) On a daily basis, I'd like to work with smart people, versus working with nobody else. It'd be great to have an even ownership split, and to start with each other from day one. 4) I want to afford to live (by live, I mean sustain, nothing special) in a place with other technology folks, so I never feel bored or get an ego, versus living in the middle-of-nowhere. The reason I'm asking here is because I've considered visiting big universities or even furthering my college career just to meet people for a future project, but it would be logically crazy to do so. The problem is that a lot of CS majors aren't entrepreneurial, and sometimes even immature. News.YC is the best place to find other hackers who want to do a startup. Period. Even better than attending a great computer science school. I originally followed pg's correct advice to leave school and release "early." The problem is that after I released "early", I had a small userbase that I gradually grew, and while they helped me find bugs, I got stuck to a small income stream and could never find the time to expand to bigger sources of revenue considering I was fixing bugs, adding features, doing market research, and tech support. Releasing early is good if you have the means (money, people, contacts, knowledge) to not get distracted, so it's nice that YCombinators and TechStars exist now to take advantage of your highs and give you advice. However, creating a product while being undercapitalized is futile. From not having health insurance and getting injured for a while, to having to progressively go from a $2/mo host, to a $20/m host, getting tons of visitors to my site from my specific, paying audience--except my site used up the 15GB of bandwidth in half a day. I've also had to make a lot of 'transitional' ideas to keep it all working, all so I could have this experience on a low budget for many years. Another problem was that I was tied to an income stream and keeping up with it for the $500 or $600/mo just to keep the business expenses, keeping me away from doing 2 important things that I planned my first year, because otherwise, I'd have to fold. It's definitely been worth it for everything except money, of course. For example, I got dozens of great reviews from different paying customers all over the world, and that was the #1 most important thing to me all those years. So I spent this summer making it run on auto-pilot, this time with my own custom software, and a better self-service (another problem is that before, I preferred to have a simple interface and have users e-mail me with questions to avoid being too public, but now, I will add tons of Q&A's so I don't have to answer questions about what the program can do and what I'm planning on adding to it.) So, I proved to myself that I can make people happy with no investment. Now I want to do it the right way. In fact, maybe I should do something for people my age while I can still relate--another reason I don't care about the idea is because mine currently targets adults, and having been Student Body President, founding a newspaper club, a chess club, and being in many different unrelated after-school activities when I was in high school, I found I enjoyed it all. But, there is no reason that while you're spending all your time on a project, that you have to do it underfunded, since even for a realistic web service you'd have to be able to support servers costing hundreds of dollars and not annoy users with ads until you can figure out the best way to make it work, and more importantly, start with good resources (teammates, investors, advisors, money).
rokhayakebe 19y ago
Does anyone know if you get some feedback when you apply early?
- nostrademons 19y ago
  In the last round, we got an e-mail from PG back within hours. It said, basically, "Too many uncommitted founders. Ditch some and hire them back as employees when you have money." We had submitted one day before the deadline (I'd thought it was half an hour actually...I misunderstood the deadline), and he encouraged us to resubmit if we could deal with the founder issue. We ended up getting rejected anyway, but he turned out to be right. Basically, if there's an obvious problem with the application, he'll point it out to you. Don't expect him to write volumes or fix something that's so far out in left field that it's hopeless, though. Maybe a paragraph or so. I also got back a long response from Trevor when I applied to SFP05. In retrospect it had a lot of good points, though I wasn't ready to hear them at the time. I doubt they have time to do that sort of detailed fixes/clarifications now, though.
  - vlad 19y ago
    Wow, I remember when this was brought up before in other threads, everybody who answered said they just received a standard rejection notice.
- rms 19y ago
  I got an email from Paul and a call from Jessica, both asking why we were doing this now as undergraduates. I think it's a very good sign if you get some interaction with them before the deadline, but it's not a bad sign if you don't get any feedback.
thingsilearned 19y ago
http://news.ycombinator.com/jobs http://news.ycombinator.com/jobs

by vlad 19y ago

Thanks for your advice; I just submitted 20 applications. :) On a serious note, can one apply as a single hacker who doesn't care about which project he takes on?

deleted 19y ago

[deleted]

SwellJoe 19y ago

I'm certain that's a bad idea. They were overwhelmed by the 400+ apps they got last time...I don't think they'd take kindly to someone gaming the system and forcing them to read an extra 20 apps (I'm pretty sure the round file would be the only one seeing all of your applications).

vlad 19y ago
I went back and made it more obvious I was kidding. But is there any hacker serious about being an entrepreneur and working on a project during the Winter session and beyond?
- ph0rque 19y ago
  Contact me.
- pbnaidu 19y ago
  I am interested, please contact me at pbnaidu@gmail.com
- augy 19y ago
  dbosson@gmail.com

portLAN 19y ago

> Can we apply as single hackers who don't care about which project we take on? Not to be YC specific, but just in general, who would want to invest in someone who doesn't care?

vlad 19y ago
Great question. I'm a hacker, so I'd be useful from day one. Secondly, I've stuck with one idea for about four years, selling the product for 3 and a half years, so I have no problem adding features or maintaining code. Here is what matters to me more than a specific idea: 1) I'd like to have lawyers and accountants from the beginning, versus doing it myself. 2) I'd like to start with an investment from the beginning, versus doing it with nothing, therefore being undercapitalized the entire time. 3) On a daily basis, I'd like to work with smart people, versus working with nobody else. It'd be great to have an even ownership split, and to start with each other from day one. 4) I want to afford to live (by live, I mean sustain, nothing special) in a place with other technology folks, so I never feel bored or get an ego, versus living in the middle-of-nowhere. The reason I'm asking here is because I've considered visiting big universities or even furthering my college career just to meet people for a future project, but it would be logically crazy to do so. The problem is that a lot of CS majors aren't entrepreneurial, and sometimes even immature. News.YC is the best place to find other hackers who want to do a startup. Period. Even better than attending a great computer science school. I originally followed pg's correct advice to leave school and release "early." The problem is that after I released "early", I had a small userbase that I gradually grew, and while they helped me find bugs, I got stuck to a small income stream and could never find the time to expand to bigger sources of revenue considering I was fixing bugs, adding features, doing market research, and tech support. Releasing early is good if you have the means (money, people, contacts, knowledge) to not get distracted, so it's nice that YCombinators and TechStars exist now to take advantage of your highs and give you advice. However, creating a product while being undercapitalized is futile. From not having health insurance and getting injured for a while, to having to progressively go from a $2/mo host, to a $20/m host, getting tons of visitors to my site from my specific, paying audience--except my site used up the 15GB of bandwidth in half a day. I've also had to make a lot of 'transitional' ideas to keep it all working, all so I could have this experience on a low budget for many years. Another problem was that I was tied to an income stream and keeping up with it for the $500 or $600/mo just to keep the business expenses, keeping me away from doing 2 important things that I planned my first year, because otherwise, I'd have to fold. It's definitely been worth it for everything except money, of course. For example, I got dozens of great reviews from different paying customers all over the world, and that was the #1 most important thing to me all those years. So I spent this summer making it run on auto-pilot, this time with my own custom software, and a better self-service (another problem is that before, I preferred to have a simple interface and have users e-mail me with questions to avoid being too public, but now, I will add tons of Q&A's so I don't have to answer questions about what the program can do and what I'm planning on adding to it.) So, I proved to myself that I can make people happy with no investment. Now I want to do it the right way. In fact, maybe I should do something for people my age while I can still relate--another reason I don't care about the idea is because mine currently targets adults, and having been Student Body President, founding a newspaper club, a chess club, and being in many different unrelated after-school activities when I was in high school, I found I enjoyed it all. But, there is no reason that while you're spending all your time on a project, that you have to do it underfunded, since even for a realistic web service you'd have to be able to support servers costing hundreds of dollars and not annoy users with ads until you can figure out the best way to make it work, and more importantly, start with good resources (teammates, investors, advisors, money).

rokhayakebe 19y ago

Does anyone know if you get some feedback when you apply early?

nostrademons 19y ago
In the last round, we got an e-mail from PG back within hours. It said, basically, "Too many uncommitted founders. Ditch some and hire them back as employees when you have money." We had submitted one day before the deadline (I'd thought it was half an hour actually...I misunderstood the deadline), and he encouraged us to resubmit if we could deal with the founder issue. We ended up getting rejected anyway, but he turned out to be right. Basically, if there's an obvious problem with the application, he'll point it out to you. Don't expect him to write volumes or fix something that's so far out in left field that it's hopeless, though. Maybe a paragraph or so. I also got back a long response from Trevor when I applied to SFP05. In retrospect it had a lot of good points, though I wasn't ready to hear them at the time. I doubt they have time to do that sort of detailed fixes/clarifications now, though.
- vlad 19y ago
  Wow, I remember when this was brought up before in other threads, everybody who answered said they just received a standard rejection notice.
rms 19y ago
I got an email from Paul and a call from Jessica, both asking why we were doing this now as undergraduates. I think it's a very good sign if you get some interaction with them before the deadline, but it's not a bad sign if you don't get any feedback.

thingsilearned 19y ago

http://news.ycombinator.com/jobs http://news.ycombinator.com/jobs