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Applications open for winter 2010 YC funding
- vegashacker 17y ago4 founders should get $23k, right?
- cperciva 17y agoNo: "we're going to invest $11k + $3k per founder, for up to 3 founders"
- vegashacker 17y agoWhoops! Thanks. I think I was distracted because at first I thought "k" was the variable representing # of founders, and then when I figured that out... ah, forget it. I'm an idiot.
- palsecam 17y ago"Starting in winter 2010, we're going to invest $11k + $3k per founder, for up to 3 founders. So now 1 founder will get $14k, 2 $17k, 3 $20k, and 4 $20k."
- csomar 17y agoIf I understood well, 4 = 3 because the costs of 4 persons are near to the costs of 3 (in YC point of view)
- cperciva 17y agowe may ask some YC alumni to help us review applications Why limit this to YC alumni? Obviously you don't want to fully "crowdsource" the process (both for reasons of quality and for reasons of confidentiality); and YC alumni presumably have an advantage of knowing what being in YC is like -- but conversely, using YC alumni has the disadvantages that (a) they're liable to be busy running startups, and (b) there's a good chance that they would fall into the people-like-us trap. Can't you think of any smart and trustworthy non-YC-alumni?
- catch23 17y agoShouldn't big name VCs like Sequoia do the same? I think confidentiality is probably the biggest reason. Who else would YC trust better than their previously funded startups?
- csomar 17y agonot 1 alumni review 5 applications, but 5 alumni review 1 application. There gonna be much opinions, which is better.
- dbul 17y agoWe haven't decided for sure, but we have to change something, because reading all the applications is becoming overwhelming. Why not have someone create a simple, private site which makes salient application information: a screenshot which may lead to the site's demo, video of founders, answers to questions. Then certain trusted people, partners or alumni, can rate the applicants over time. Instead of going days without shaving and being exhausted, you could spend a few minutes each day flipping through applications. Surely over time those you are interested in for an interview will be apparent. I'm pretty sure there was a reason not to use this approach, but it may be worth it to bring it up again.
- msg 17y agoMaybe the site could run news.yc. YC alumni get accounts and vote up good applications. The cream rises to the top.
- cperciva 17y agoI don't think voting would be a good way to do this. Now, YC applications are different from scholarship applications or honourary degree nominations (which are the areas where I have the most experience judging); but if they're not too different, there are going to be some very good applications which most people don't immediately recognize as good. I often find that out of a large committee, some of the best applications are only noticed by one person -- but when he/she says "seriously, I think this one is really worth looking at", everybody else will look closely enough to recognize the application's merits. Simply having everybody vote yea/nay will result in obscure applications being lost when people default to nay.
- kirubakaran 17y agoThe amount is more solo-founder friendly than before. Has YC become more solo-founder friendly than before?
- dannyr 17y agoI wonder how many solo founders are there in YC. Anybody know any of them?
- cperciva 17y agoI don't know any examples, people have asked on several occasions how many single-founder companies YC funds, and IIRC pg said it was roughly 5% of the companies.
- abossy 17y agoI think PG's advice against solo-founder companies would remain true, hence not rendering YC any more solo-friendly. I'm surprised that number is even 5%, considering the number of high-quality YC applicants that could potentially be paired together.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- listic 17y agoI think they just don't want to financially incentivize bringing on unnecessary people as founders.
- pg 17y agoNothing has changed in that respect. We rarely accept single founders and when we do we usually encourage them to get a cofounder before YC starts. So the $14k for a single founder is more of theoretical possibility.
- kwamenum86 17y agoIs it me or is this application coming out much sooner than it has in the past? Not complaining though- this is always a welcome YC submission.
- pg 17y agoWe've been getting lots of people asking about it. Maybe it was the Inc article.
- sutro 17y agoPG, just outsource the entire selection process to Mechanical Turk. It could be an experiment similar to that proposed in the finance classic "A Random Walk Down Wall Street" in which a blindfolded monkey throwing darts at a stock page out-invests stock-picking experts. If Mechanical Turk picks a more successful crop of startups than the YCombinator average, you will have succeeded in making yourself completely redundant -- a worthy goal of any enlightened manager.
- byrneseyeview 17y agoThat only works until enough people start doing it. If you think that blind faith in quantitative factors beats a qualitative analysis of the effects of such faith, I can probably rustle up a few CDOs to sell you.
- kirubakaran 17y agoIf the applicants have a demo-ready B2C product, MTs [1] might even be consistently better at picking winners than YC, as the ultimate success depends on what MTs think, since MTs[2] approx= common people approx= customers. [1] Given enough MTs [2] Provided you restrict allowed MT demographic to match your target market
- bigbang 17y agoExcept that I believe (from YC terms) founders(and thier ability to persevere) are more important than thier ideas.
- kirubakaran 17y agoYes, which is why I said "If [they] have a demo-ready B2C product". YC is more early stage than what you can meaningfully show MT. Also: If users love your product (not just the idea) and pay, you have already demonstrated that you are a good team, and it is pretty easy to persevere when you have an increasing number of paying customers.
- vaksel 17y agowhy not just hire someone to help out? Pay them by charging a small($10) application fee to filter out the bs applications.
- wheels 17y agoBecause the sort of people that would work for $10 aren't the ones you want reviewing funding applications.
- vaksel 17y agoI'm not saying that the person would review all the apps at $10/pop. Just the extra that pg can't manage. + its not like it'd be peanuts. Let's say YC gets 1,000 applications this summer. That'd be $10-20-$100K(depending on how much they'd charge) to go towards the extra person to review the app. I dunno about you, but 10-20-100K for a month's worth of work is hardly peanuts. If you use the $100 price point, that's $200K/yr just to review funding apps for 2 months. Plenty of cash to "hire" some angel investor as a "consultant", who'd be able to do this and still have the time to do his regular "job", the other 10 months out of the year. + talk about synergy, the angel investor would be able to get in on the ground floor, to fund the program graduates at show and tell, and if pg passes on some project that the angel thinks has merit, he can fund them outside of YC.
- wheels 17y agoAngel investors are already rich, by definition. We're talking about the sort of people that can write a check for $50k and not really sweat it. They're not looking for contract work that will pull them $10k. They'd probably be more interested in becoming a YC partner, as in a sense Paul Buchheit and Ron Conway have become. The people qualified to do this sort of thing are either rich or insanely busy, which is why they'll probably do it if Paul's calling in a favor, but not to make a buck.
- mrtron 17y agoI would rather have 6 or 7 more companies funded than drop 100k having someone sort through applications.
- joez 17y agoAny tips for the application? (Other than the obligatory, don't ask on HN) We have a solid business plan, plenty of lines of code and are looking forward to applying.
- pg 17y agoI'm going to write something about how to apply. I've been meaning to for years.
- rms 17y agoMake the questions look easy.
- joez 17y agoYou made my question look easy! I had to think about it but I do get what you mean. Let me see if I can summarize. If one can make difficult questions seem trivial, then it shows potential. Thanks.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- zackattack 17y agoWill you read every application all the way through?
- pclark 17y agoare startups allowed to reapply? we didn't get in last time, but we're still making awesome progress ...
- Ardit20 17y agoI have been on this site for like a long time, but could someone explain thoroughly what is it that they are funding, how it really works, do they get any percentage of the company in return and why would anyone want to be funded by Mr. Graham?
- mshafrir 17y agohttp://ycombinator.com/about.html http://ycombinator.com/about.html
- bjnortier 17y agoThe Application Form link (http://news.ycombinator.com/apply http://news.ycombinator.com/apply) still results in: "Sorry, but applications for summer 2009 are now closed. Check back in a few months for the application form for winter 2010."
- lsb 17y agoPerhaps that how they're going to reduce the number of applications to read.