15 ms·

Rejected from YC? Here is what you're missing out on

72 points by andymoe 13y ago

adamzerner 13y ago
So do you think that YC was even worth it?
- lowglow 13y ago
  I think YC would be great for several reasons. 1. First time entrepreneurs will learn a lot. 2. The network of friends you'll have access to after you graduate is great. 3. It seems to be easier to get meetings with investors when you've already been vetted by YC.
  - jackreacher 13y ago
    Which also means that tech entrepreneurship is supposedly under sabotage, though some would call it a spell. It's the MITM thing that I don't like. It's like the age of shovel sellers to gold diggers for the Internet? Something that is both good and bad depending on which side of application process you are.
- martinshen 13y ago
  Do you believe YC will increase the value of your company by 5-8%? Yes. Their brand brings better investors, more qualified employees, press and more qualified employees.
  - adamzerner 13y ago
    I'm not implying that YC isn't worth it, just asking. For the record, I think it probably is worth it, but I'm wavery on that thought. 5-8% is a lot.
    - petervandijck 13y ago
      Depends on 5-8% of what :)
praxeologist 13y ago
"In addition to office hours, there are dinners. Dinners are typically catered now, but in the early days, PG would make some goulash for the handful of YC companies." What sort of stuff did PG cook?
- lowglow 13y ago
  From what I remember previous batches saying, it was some noodle dish. Maybe he can chime in with a recipe. :)
- immad 13y ago
  Mostly rice and chilli con carne. Its been a while, so I can't remember exactly. It was made in massive batches and wasn't that tasty (sorry pg). It was fun though.
  - selmnoo 13y ago
    But it's pretty sweet though, that pg went to the lengths of himself cooking stuff up. I'd love it if pg cooked something for me.
- zt 13y ago
  Having been in the most recent batch, this is one of those comments on the author's part that makes it clear that he doesn't quite know what he's talking about. There is a single person who cooks meals but they're hardly catered. They feed ~130 people out of slow-cookers and rice-cookers. Every meal is some slow-cooked...stuff..and then rice or noodles or something to put on the bottom of your bowl. It's no one's dream of a catered affair.
  - lowglow 13y ago
    I guess I should have been clearer that it's just not PG serving it anymore. :)
johnrob 13y ago
Any ideas for a Demo Day substitute? The deadline is probably just as important as the investor connections (i.e. something that only produces the former would still be valuable).
- andymoe 13y ago
  I agree having deadlines can be motivating but there is nothing like going out there and getting some customers to put a fire under your butt.
- lowglow 13y ago
  I think that's on you and your group. Being realistic and setting goals, then going to your support group and being accountable for hitting those is really important. You feel guilty when you show up empty handed, meanwhile everyone else is showing progress. It keeps you motivated.
- namenotrequired 13y ago
  Reminds me of this: http://blog.42floors.com/100-day-goals/ http://blog.42floors.com/100-day-goals/
sillysaurus2 13y ago
Question for dpg. I heard that as a founder you get access to a mailing list read by every other YC founder. Out of curiosity, how many founders read it nowadays? Most of them? YC's funded 440 companies, so there've been around ~1k founders. I was just wondering how many of them still use it. It's quite cool to see the alumni network growing so large.
- drusenko 13y ago
  there are usually a couple dozen emails per week, but easy to skim through. i read most of them, as i'm sure many do.
  - rdl 13y ago
    It isn't really a discussion list so much as people sending important announcements or sometimes sending posts asking a question, soliciting private answers, then compiling and potentially anonymizing the results before posting a consolidated response a few days later -- super efficient. Per batch email, group discussion (FB mostly, for us), group chat, etc usually involves a subset, or direct asks of other groups. I personally know nothing about consumer stuff, so no one ever asks me for CSS advice, but plenty of times hosting, security, etc questions come up. Plus the purely social stuff is usually with a self selected subset; YC is diverse in interests. There is even basically a YC gun club, and a bunch of YC anti-gun activists, coexisting peacefully :)
    - kumarski 13y ago
      Wait, where's the YC gun club?
- ericabiz 13y ago
  To add another data point, I'm not on the YC list but I am part of the Techstars and 500 Startups lists, which are similar (I have several friends who went through YC and we've compared notes.) Surprisingly, the lists have similar threads--lots of threads like "Who should I use for health insurance in NYC" or "Do you have an experience with X company/VC/investor" or "Looking for an intro to an X person at [huge company]." Both 500 and Techstars have brought on in-house devs to change from a standard email list to a dashboard where you can subscribe to topics you're interested in to cut down on noise. Both are pretty active and the founders and leaders participate. Techstars in particular gets some great responses--Brad Feld often responds to emails asking for a VC perspective on an issue, for instance.
morgante 13y ago
Anyone know about, or interested in starting, something like this in NYC?
- lowglow 13y ago
  The format for http://tribes.techendo.co/ http://tribes.techendo.co/ has been meeting at my house and from 2-3pm we go around the circle, announcing our progress and problems, then as a group we offer our resources and help. After that we sit around and hack on stuff together and just socially chat.
  - lem72 13y ago
    We just started one of these within the company I work at. We are all working on a project on the side aside from our day jobs and I have to say it has been really helpful so far. We only have 4 people so we take turns each week, 1 person brings a problem to the table and then we get 3 other peoples thoughts on it. That week is dedicated to the one startup... Because we work day jobs it works better this way as we won't have any astounding advances each week but each month we do.
- photorized 13y ago
  Started one in Stamford CT.
  - mekarpeles 13y ago
    Definitely need it if you're living there... Fellow connectican
  - iqster 13y ago
    Details?? - Stamford resident
- feralmoan 13y ago
  I'd be up for a regular something in Manhattan. btw there's http://eranyc.com http://eranyc.com if incubation is more your thing, approaching their winter deadline.
ar7hur 13y ago
So is YC worth it? I think that for a first-time entrepreneur, that's definitely worth it. I wish I started my first company (ten years ago) at something like YC. We did so many mistakes we could have avoided , it would have been a huge time saver. The question I'm asking myself today is: is it worth it for an experienced entrepreneur? As a so-called successful entrepreneur who has had good exits in the past, you already have a network of investors, credibility, and while any advice is always good to hear, it's not like you are just starting for the first time. But still, with YC you get the alumni network, a lot of audience for your product launch, and more competition among investors (which alone could "reimburse" the 2%~9% you'll "lose" to YC). It would be great to hear the opinion of experienced entrepreneurs.
- mrkurt 13y ago
  If you are going to raise money, it is probably worth it. There's some level of "past success" that would be a good stand in, but it's a really high bar ... which is why you see people repeat YC reasonably often. At the very least, YC is an ally if you run into issues with other investors. They are incredibly pro-founder (as is SV Angel) and not afraid to wave a bat around.
- selmnoo 13y ago
  After having thought a great deal about it, it's worth it for two reasons in my mind: 1) the recognition, the prestige, the 'YC' name that gets you really good deals, which entails VCs (the good ones) coming to you, press taking you more seriously, potential candidates being more enticed working for a 'YC' company (so the normally difficult task of finding early employees/co-founders is made considerably easier) 2) You get to be in the YC network (in some senses this is comparable to being in the Harvard Alumni association, where being a friend of some guy can mean you can become a C-level or VP of some company). Moreover: Being friends with other talented founders, getting advice from people who know their stuff and have done many things before, and a lot of times getting good deals from them and their startups (if you happen to be low on cash [1]). [1]: Speaking of which, a possible third reason is the seed money.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
presty 13y ago
now in pictures http://islandofatlas.net/2013/10/21/i-guess-this-is-how-yc-feels-like.html http://islandofatlas.net/2013/10/21/i-guess-this-is-how-yc-f...
pg 13y ago
I was curious about who this guy was, since this is full of inaccuracies and yet shows some inside knowledge. It turns out the author is not a YC founder, but a programmer who worked for one of the companies we funded, and who didn't stay with the company long. So for example it's not merely because "this has been covered so many times it’s not really worth mentioning" that he doesn't go into detail about the interview. It's because he wasn't at the interview.
- lowglow 13y ago
  Author here: What was inaccurate about this write-up? I wasn't hired part way through the batch, I joined them as they were going through the interview process, true. I didn't stay with the company until the very end, you're right. I had a different vision than they did. I still was on the YC Founders list. I still went to every YC event, meeting, and dinner as a founder. Just trying to share what I know and learned from YC so people can still find success and community. After I left the company I was taken off the founders list, that was fine by me. Does that make me any less a part of YC or the spirit of this community?
  - pg 13y ago
    The most striking inaccuracy is the superficial description of YC, both in breadth and depth. You can't accurately describe the interview, or the many interactions we've had with the company since Demo Day, since you weren't there for those, so you effectively omit them. And you can't describe the many individual conversations YC partners had with the CEO and founders of the company you worked for outside of office hours (many of which were about what to do about you), because you weren't there for those either. So the impression you give of YC is that it consists of dinners plus Demo Day plus a few office hours, because that was what you saw of it.
    - MJR 13y ago
      (many of which were about what to do about you) What does this mean? Is this as an attack on the author's credibility, character, skills or otherwise? It seems like there should be a distinction on whether he shouldn't have written this because he didn't have the full experience of a founder or because he is not a credible witness because he was an employee that was going against the grain and that the founders were struggling to deal with in some capacity.
onedev 13y ago
I've talked to bunch of people who've gone through YC and it doesn't seem like anyone is really missing out on much. It seems to be more of support group than anything else, and really while a support group is important it doesn't justify near as much hype as YC gets. The future of Silicon Valley's greatness is not within the reach of YC. The power of media and investment dollars is decentralizing fast and for the better.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
stephenhacking 13y ago
Why are so many people fretting about not getting into YC and why do crappy stories like this get upvoted? If getting into Y-Combinator was your idea of validation, your startup is doomed anyways.
- data_app 13y ago
  I simply don't understand the obsession of founders with getting into YC. If you are a founder and you are really passionate about an idea, you simply don't have time to think about "how to game the system and get into an incubator". You have more important things to think about - like product-market fit, hiring the right people etc. etc. In Aileen's Lee recent article about unicorns or billion dollar startups - 2 out of 39 were YC companies, the rest 37 were not.
- lowglow 13y ago
  The article wasn't about getting YC validation, it was about continuing and creating community locally to support startups and help them move forward.
- feralmoan 13y ago
  Being part of YC adds a whole new dimension of political clout and credibility irregardless. It's definitely a 'who you know' rather than 'what you know' notch on the belt beyond simple validation. Saying you were part of it may be worth something to the right people at the right time, one day.
  - stephenhacking 13y ago
    So, it's "bragging rights". But, temporary bragging rights considering the fact that they have at least ~100 teams per year and unless your startup goes somewhere after YC, you're just wasting your time.
- bifrost 13y ago
  I generally agree, if you need YC for personal validation you should probably reconsider. There are a lot of reasons why someone might not get into YC, and not all of them are bad ones so its best to keep that in mind.
argumentum 13y ago
[1] a fellow YCer says you should be networking with investors as opposed to working on product, contrary to what PG asks of you. I remember at the beginning of my batch there were rumors of this "insider tip". Turned out that the best companies did exactly what YC said: make something people want (build product, talk to users) and stay somewhat healthy (exercise). Anything else was a time-sink: worrying about hiring, adding co-founders, interns, getting press, "networking" etc. Focus on them too early, and risk serious injury or death. These have their place .. after you make something users want. There were some good startups who were talking to investors, but they weren't "networking" as much as closing deals because they were doing so well. Also, at least 90% of our dinners (s12) were still served Oliver Twist style, not catered, unless you can cater gruel ;) Of the dinner speakers, there was one disappointment (canned speech), but most were great with the absolute highlight of Brian and Joe from AirBnB. Before dinner, PG was giddily floating around the room, every once in a while almost whistling "the AirBnB's are here". Two hours of $40 cereal boxes, rejections, troughs of sorrow, and cockroaches later, I have a crystal clear memory of the room (of 300+) going silent as Brian stated "and then we started YC". Three hours after that, when ever question was answered, I don't think anyone walked out of that room the same. For me, that is the essence of YC: the sheer energy in the air. The money's great if you need it (we didn't and it helped kill us), the network is powerful and helpful of course, the advice is often brilliant and more importantly brilliantly obvious. But the energy changes you, for many this happens in time to make their YC startup explode (in a good way). For other founders, the realization comes late. I have an inkling that Ben Silbermann will not be the only YC alum to start a billion+ dollar startup after not doing so great during YC.

72 points by andymoe 13y ago

adamzerner 13y ago

So do you think that YC was even worth it?

lowglow 13y ago
I think YC would be great for several reasons. 1. First time entrepreneurs will learn a lot. 2. The network of friends you'll have access to after you graduate is great. 3. It seems to be easier to get meetings with investors when you've already been vetted by YC.
- jackreacher 13y ago
  Which also means that tech entrepreneurship is supposedly under sabotage, though some would call it a spell. It's the MITM thing that I don't like. It's like the age of shovel sellers to gold diggers for the Internet? Something that is both good and bad depending on which side of application process you are.
martinshen 13y ago
Do you believe YC will increase the value of your company by 5-8%? Yes. Their brand brings better investors, more qualified employees, press and more qualified employees.
- adamzerner 13y ago
  I'm not implying that YC isn't worth it, just asking. For the record, I think it probably is worth it, but I'm wavery on that thought. 5-8% is a lot.
  - petervandijck 13y ago
    Depends on 5-8% of what :)

praxeologist 13y ago

"In addition to office hours, there are dinners. Dinners are typically catered now, but in the early days, PG would make some goulash for the handful of YC companies." What sort of stuff did PG cook?

lowglow 13y ago
From what I remember previous batches saying, it was some noodle dish. Maybe he can chime in with a recipe. :)
immad 13y ago
Mostly rice and chilli con carne. Its been a while, so I can't remember exactly. It was made in massive batches and wasn't that tasty (sorry pg). It was fun though.
- selmnoo 13y ago
  But it's pretty sweet though, that pg went to the lengths of himself cooking stuff up. I'd love it if pg cooked something for me.
zt 13y ago
Having been in the most recent batch, this is one of those comments on the author's part that makes it clear that he doesn't quite know what he's talking about. There is a single person who cooks meals but they're hardly catered. They feed ~130 people out of slow-cookers and rice-cookers. Every meal is some slow-cooked...stuff..and then rice or noodles or something to put on the bottom of your bowl. It's no one's dream of a catered affair.
- lowglow 13y ago
  I guess I should have been clearer that it's just not PG serving it anymore. :)

johnrob 13y ago

Any ideas for a Demo Day substitute? The deadline is probably just as important as the investor connections (i.e. something that only produces the former would still be valuable).

andymoe 13y ago
I agree having deadlines can be motivating but there is nothing like going out there and getting some customers to put a fire under your butt.
lowglow 13y ago
I think that's on you and your group. Being realistic and setting goals, then going to your support group and being accountable for hitting those is really important. You feel guilty when you show up empty handed, meanwhile everyone else is showing progress. It keeps you motivated.
namenotrequired 13y ago
Reminds me of this: http://blog.42floors.com/100-day-goals/ http://blog.42floors.com/100-day-goals/

sillysaurus2 13y ago

Question for dpg. I heard that as a founder you get access to a mailing list read by every other YC founder. Out of curiosity, how many founders read it nowadays? Most of them? YC's funded 440 companies, so there've been around ~1k founders. I was just wondering how many of them still use it. It's quite cool to see the alumni network growing so large.

drusenko 13y ago
there are usually a couple dozen emails per week, but easy to skim through. i read most of them, as i'm sure many do.
- rdl 13y ago
  It isn't really a discussion list so much as people sending important announcements or sometimes sending posts asking a question, soliciting private answers, then compiling and potentially anonymizing the results before posting a consolidated response a few days later -- super efficient. Per batch email, group discussion (FB mostly, for us), group chat, etc usually involves a subset, or direct asks of other groups. I personally know nothing about consumer stuff, so no one ever asks me for CSS advice, but plenty of times hosting, security, etc questions come up. Plus the purely social stuff is usually with a self selected subset; YC is diverse in interests. There is even basically a YC gun club, and a bunch of YC anti-gun activists, coexisting peacefully :)
  - kumarski 13y ago
    Wait, where's the YC gun club?
ericabiz 13y ago
To add another data point, I'm not on the YC list but I am part of the Techstars and 500 Startups lists, which are similar (I have several friends who went through YC and we've compared notes.) Surprisingly, the lists have similar threads--lots of threads like "Who should I use for health insurance in NYC" or "Do you have an experience with X company/VC/investor" or "Looking for an intro to an X person at [huge company]." Both 500 and Techstars have brought on in-house devs to change from a standard email list to a dashboard where you can subscribe to topics you're interested in to cut down on noise. Both are pretty active and the founders and leaders participate. Techstars in particular gets some great responses--Brad Feld often responds to emails asking for a VC perspective on an issue, for instance.

morgante 13y ago

Anyone know about, or interested in starting, something like this in NYC?

lowglow 13y ago
The format for http://tribes.techendo.co/ http://tribes.techendo.co/ has been meeting at my house and from 2-3pm we go around the circle, announcing our progress and problems, then as a group we offer our resources and help. After that we sit around and hack on stuff together and just socially chat.
- lem72 13y ago
  We just started one of these within the company I work at. We are all working on a project on the side aside from our day jobs and I have to say it has been really helpful so far. We only have 4 people so we take turns each week, 1 person brings a problem to the table and then we get 3 other peoples thoughts on it. That week is dedicated to the one startup... Because we work day jobs it works better this way as we won't have any astounding advances each week but each month we do.
photorized 13y ago
Started one in Stamford CT.
- mekarpeles 13y ago
  Definitely need it if you're living there... Fellow connectican
- iqster 13y ago
  Details?? - Stamford resident
feralmoan 13y ago
I'd be up for a regular something in Manhattan. btw there's http://eranyc.com http://eranyc.com if incubation is more your thing, approaching their winter deadline.

ar7hur 13y ago

So is YC worth it? I think that for a first-time entrepreneur, that's definitely worth it. I wish I started my first company (ten years ago) at something like YC. We did so many mistakes we could have avoided , it would have been a huge time saver. The question I'm asking myself today is: is it worth it for an experienced entrepreneur? As a so-called successful entrepreneur who has had good exits in the past, you already have a network of investors, credibility, and while any advice is always good to hear, it's not like you are just starting for the first time. But still, with YC you get the alumni network, a lot of audience for your product launch, and more competition among investors (which alone could "reimburse" the 2%~9% you'll "lose" to YC). It would be great to hear the opinion of experienced entrepreneurs.

mrkurt 13y ago
If you are going to raise money, it is probably worth it. There's some level of "past success" that would be a good stand in, but it's a really high bar ... which is why you see people repeat YC reasonably often. At the very least, YC is an ally if you run into issues with other investors. They are incredibly pro-founder (as is SV Angel) and not afraid to wave a bat around.
selmnoo 13y ago
After having thought a great deal about it, it's worth it for two reasons in my mind: 1) the recognition, the prestige, the 'YC' name that gets you really good deals, which entails VCs (the good ones) coming to you, press taking you more seriously, potential candidates being more enticed working for a 'YC' company (so the normally difficult task of finding early employees/co-founders is made considerably easier) 2) You get to be in the YC network (in some senses this is comparable to being in the Harvard Alumni association, where being a friend of some guy can mean you can become a C-level or VP of some company). Moreover: Being friends with other talented founders, getting advice from people who know their stuff and have done many things before, and a lot of times getting good deals from them and their startups (if you happen to be low on cash [1]). [1]: Speaking of which, a possible third reason is the seed money.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

presty 13y ago

now in pictures http://islandofatlas.net/2013/10/21/i-guess-this-is-how-yc-feels-like.html http://islandofatlas.net/2013/10/21/i-guess-this-is-how-yc-f...

pg 13y ago

I was curious about who this guy was, since this is full of inaccuracies and yet shows some inside knowledge. It turns out the author is not a YC founder, but a programmer who worked for one of the companies we funded, and who didn't stay with the company long. So for example it's not merely because "this has been covered so many times it’s not really worth mentioning" that he doesn't go into detail about the interview. It's because he wasn't at the interview.

lowglow 13y ago
Author here: What was inaccurate about this write-up? I wasn't hired part way through the batch, I joined them as they were going through the interview process, true. I didn't stay with the company until the very end, you're right. I had a different vision than they did. I still was on the YC Founders list. I still went to every YC event, meeting, and dinner as a founder. Just trying to share what I know and learned from YC so people can still find success and community. After I left the company I was taken off the founders list, that was fine by me. Does that make me any less a part of YC or the spirit of this community?
- pg 13y ago
  The most striking inaccuracy is the superficial description of YC, both in breadth and depth. You can't accurately describe the interview, or the many interactions we've had with the company since Demo Day, since you weren't there for those, so you effectively omit them. And you can't describe the many individual conversations YC partners had with the CEO and founders of the company you worked for outside of office hours (many of which were about what to do about you), because you weren't there for those either. So the impression you give of YC is that it consists of dinners plus Demo Day plus a few office hours, because that was what you saw of it.
  - MJR 13y ago
    (many of which were about what to do about you) What does this mean? Is this as an attack on the author's credibility, character, skills or otherwise? It seems like there should be a distinction on whether he shouldn't have written this because he didn't have the full experience of a founder or because he is not a credible witness because he was an employee that was going against the grain and that the founders were struggling to deal with in some capacity.

onedev 13y ago

I've talked to bunch of people who've gone through YC and it doesn't seem like anyone is really missing out on much. It seems to be more of support group than anything else, and really while a support group is important it doesn't justify near as much hype as YC gets. The future of Silicon Valley's greatness is not within the reach of YC. The power of media and investment dollars is decentralizing fast and for the better.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

stephenhacking 13y ago

Why are so many people fretting about not getting into YC and why do crappy stories like this get upvoted? If getting into Y-Combinator was your idea of validation, your startup is doomed anyways.

data_app 13y ago
I simply don't understand the obsession of founders with getting into YC. If you are a founder and you are really passionate about an idea, you simply don't have time to think about "how to game the system and get into an incubator". You have more important things to think about - like product-market fit, hiring the right people etc. etc. In Aileen's Lee recent article about unicorns or billion dollar startups - 2 out of 39 were YC companies, the rest 37 were not.
lowglow 13y ago
The article wasn't about getting YC validation, it was about continuing and creating community locally to support startups and help them move forward.
feralmoan 13y ago
Being part of YC adds a whole new dimension of political clout and credibility irregardless. It's definitely a 'who you know' rather than 'what you know' notch on the belt beyond simple validation. Saying you were part of it may be worth something to the right people at the right time, one day.
- stephenhacking 13y ago
  So, it's "bragging rights". But, temporary bragging rights considering the fact that they have at least ~100 teams per year and unless your startup goes somewhere after YC, you're just wasting your time.
bifrost 13y ago
I generally agree, if you need YC for personal validation you should probably reconsider. There are a lot of reasons why someone might not get into YC, and not all of them are bad ones so its best to keep that in mind.

argumentum 13y ago

[1] a fellow YCer says you should be networking with investors as opposed to working on product, contrary to what PG asks of you. I remember at the beginning of my batch there were rumors of this "insider tip". Turned out that the best companies did exactly what YC said: make something people want (build product, talk to users) and stay somewhat healthy (exercise). Anything else was a time-sink: worrying about hiring, adding co-founders, interns, getting press, "networking" etc. Focus on them too early, and risk serious injury or death. These have their place .. after you make something users want. There were some good startups who were talking to investors, but they weren't "networking" as much as closing deals because they were doing so well. Also, at least 90% of our dinners (s12) were still served Oliver Twist style, not catered, unless you can cater gruel ;) Of the dinner speakers, there was one disappointment (canned speech), but most were great with the absolute highlight of Brian and Joe from AirBnB. Before dinner, PG was giddily floating around the room, every once in a while almost whistling "the AirBnB's are here". Two hours of $40 cereal boxes, rejections, troughs of sorrow, and cockroaches later, I have a crystal clear memory of the room (of 300+) going silent as Brian stated "and then we started YC". Three hours after that, when ever question was answered, I don't think anyone walked out of that room the same. For me, that is the essence of YC: the sheer energy in the air. The money's great if you need it (we didn't and it helped kill us), the network is powerful and helpful of course, the advice is often brilliant and more importantly brilliantly obvious. But the energy changes you, for many this happens in time to make their YC startup explode (in a good way). For other founders, the realization comes late. I have an inkling that Ben Silbermann will not be the only YC alum to start a billion+ dollar startup after not doing so great during YC.