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While growth is the most important thing in a startup, it's unreasonable to expect it at the point when companies are applying to YC, so it is not the main thin

by pg 13y ago

While growth is the most important thing in a startup, it's unreasonable to expect it at the point when companies are applying to YC, so it is not the main thing the partners look for. Neither Dropbox nor Airbnb nor Stripe nor Optimizely had any growth when they applied to YC. When I was reading applications (odd yet delightful to use the past tense) the main thing I looked for was energetic founders working on an idea that grew organically out of their own experience. E.g. Optimizely consisted of the guy in charge of a/b testing for Obama's first presidential campaign, starting a company to turn the insights he'd gained into a product. That said, startups should certainly seek growth, because that's how you evaluate and refine an idea. When you try to get people to use something you've built, and especially to pay for it, you learn quickly what's wrong with it. The only misleading thing about Adrian's advice is the implication that you need growth to get funded by YC. That is definitely not true. A quick random sample of the current batch (the first 10 in alphabetical order) shows only half had any growth when they were accepted.

SandersAK 13y ago
Yeah, I didn't mean to assert that growth will guarantee YC funding, but that growth is the one of the best ways to keep you on track as you explore your idea and prototype. At least for us, it saved us a lot of discussion when we could say "is this particular feature helping us grow?" and if the answer as no, we would move on. But I do think, even at the earliest stages, it isn't hard to gauge interest by showing demand. Sign up pages are simple enough to do.
- mck- 13y ago
  Great article; maintaining focus on growth is good general startup advice. However, I think it breaks down for startups in the Enterprise realm (not talking about the B2B startups that provide commodity services). Firstly, getting traction by number of users is much harder. But every customer you sign on implies huge growth for your company in terms of revenue. Take Palantir for example; afaik, their initial massive growth came from a single, but huge, government contract. Secondly, growth will never be a smooth 10%/week type of curve -- more like an irregular staircase; but taken over the long-term (years), it might get you higher. So taking a granular snapshot of the early beginnings might show no growth at all. Thirdly, there won't be many early signups. Simply because the volume is much lower. Having said that, zooming out on the macro scale (years), your advice still holds (growth > everything) -- but it doesn't apply to the YC application process :)
not_that_noob 13y ago
I take his post to mean that demonstrated growth helps bump your rank up the list, consistent with the themes you explore in some of your essays.
pedalpete 13y ago
I notice that all the companies you mention were in earlier YC sessions, the last being Optimizely in W10. I've noticed, the companies I hear about going through YC now seem to progressed further along than companies in earlier YC sessions. I admit, this may be due to media reporting bias of covering companies that have product and traction, but I'd like to see some stats comparing YC companies by session and launch dates. I suspect we'd find that more companies being admitted into current sessions are already further down the development track than earlier in YC history. Of course, this should be expected. YC has grown significantly, and has a ton of media attraction. It has become a signal of success, so YC has more applications from companies which are already seeing success and YC gets to limit their risk by taking on companies further down the track.
- pg 13y ago
  I mentioned those because they have the highest valuations. It usually takes several years to reach that sort of valuation, so the most highly valued companies are never the recent ones.
apa-sl 13y ago
In our case we will wait till next batch to reapply (we applied for the 1st time when we were "naked and stupid" ;-) ) Some months have passed, we've learned our lessons, gathered great team, got feedback from around the world and finally seeing that we're onto something. Nice thing is that on the day-to-day basis it seems that we are doing exactly the same thing as few months ago. But when looking from the time perspective we've discovered that there are changes - details really matters! Now preparing to hit the local market so we'll make mistakes and adjust our stuff on local scale before hitting US & YC (and it;ll be also nice to show some real numbers from the market in our application). Good luck to all S14 applicants!
paul9290 13y ago
I was wondering if YCombinator is looking to partner up with industries like TechStars has with Disney and Sprint? It would be awesome to see Y and or TechStars or another incubator team up with the Recording Industry! I'm surprised that industry hasn't already established an accelerator.
- pg 13y ago
  Seems unlikely. YC doesn't need the money, so it would just be a distraction.
  - paul9290 13y ago
    Yeah wasn't thinking about the money more so YC being an impetus in getting the industry to loosen it's copyright belt. At least for incubated companies. YC is all about changing the game. Their game needs to be changed and it would be a win for them! On a different note last year we applied and got denied, but a week later we we're invited to demo our novel tech to a company out in the valley. Not sure how that happened, but it was a good start to our story & journey! cheers
jdrobins2000 13y ago
Thank you for the clarification Paul (and Adrian for your perspective). May I ask if there is a bias against applicants who have spent a significant amount of time on the product (say, a year or more) but haven't built a user base? For example, if the choice was made to put in more effort up front on iterating and validating the product design rather than trying to implement a MVP and try to start building the user base early? Is it easy for you conceive of situations where this is the best, or at least sufficiently logical, choice? Or is that likely a deal breaker?
- pg 13y ago
  It depends on what the company is building. Some things take a long time to launch. With others it's a bad sign if the company takes more than a month or two to launch.
  - jdrobins2000 13y ago
    Thank you Paul, I appreciate you taking the time to respond. Your answer is helpful in that now I understand your general perspective, which addresses my question. My problem is that I purposefully tried to ask a general question with broad applicability, because I think that is respectful of your time and the community. However, what remains unclear are the specifics of how my product and company would be assessed. The devil is always in the details. I don't think it is fair to ask for such personal advice from you, but perhaps you have some advice as to the best way to go about getting good feedback on my company and product? Short of getting into YC, I mean. Should I take Adrian up on his offer if he is still willing (for my own edification, not for this round of applications)? Are there other good ways you know of? And yes, at some point I will just launch on my own if necessary, but I continue to believe the cost/benefit trade off of getting counsel from experienced mentors is very favorable. So, I want to make sure I am doing everything I can to be successful and in the meantime to be able to demonstrate evidence that I am worth the time/effort/capital of those who are looking for those with potential.

by pg 13y ago

SandersAK 13y ago

Yeah, I didn't mean to assert that growth will guarantee YC funding, but that growth is the one of the best ways to keep you on track as you explore your idea and prototype. At least for us, it saved us a lot of discussion when we could say "is this particular feature helping us grow?" and if the answer as no, we would move on. But I do think, even at the earliest stages, it isn't hard to gauge interest by showing demand. Sign up pages are simple enough to do.

mck- 13y ago
Great article; maintaining focus on growth is good general startup advice. However, I think it breaks down for startups in the Enterprise realm (not talking about the B2B startups that provide commodity services). Firstly, getting traction by number of users is much harder. But every customer you sign on implies huge growth for your company in terms of revenue. Take Palantir for example; afaik, their initial massive growth came from a single, but huge, government contract. Secondly, growth will never be a smooth 10%/week type of curve -- more like an irregular staircase; but taken over the long-term (years), it might get you higher. So taking a granular snapshot of the early beginnings might show no growth at all. Thirdly, there won't be many early signups. Simply because the volume is much lower. Having said that, zooming out on the macro scale (years), your advice still holds (growth > everything) -- but it doesn't apply to the YC application process :)

not_that_noob 13y ago

I take his post to mean that demonstrated growth helps bump your rank up the list, consistent with the themes you explore in some of your essays.

pedalpete 13y ago

I notice that all the companies you mention were in earlier YC sessions, the last being Optimizely in W10. I've noticed, the companies I hear about going through YC now seem to progressed further along than companies in earlier YC sessions. I admit, this may be due to media reporting bias of covering companies that have product and traction, but I'd like to see some stats comparing YC companies by session and launch dates. I suspect we'd find that more companies being admitted into current sessions are already further down the development track than earlier in YC history. Of course, this should be expected. YC has grown significantly, and has a ton of media attraction. It has become a signal of success, so YC has more applications from companies which are already seeing success and YC gets to limit their risk by taking on companies further down the track.

pg 13y ago
I mentioned those because they have the highest valuations. It usually takes several years to reach that sort of valuation, so the most highly valued companies are never the recent ones.

apa-sl 13y ago

In our case we will wait till next batch to reapply (we applied for the 1st time when we were "naked and stupid" ;-) ) Some months have passed, we've learned our lessons, gathered great team, got feedback from around the world and finally seeing that we're onto something. Nice thing is that on the day-to-day basis it seems that we are doing exactly the same thing as few months ago. But when looking from the time perspective we've discovered that there are changes - details really matters! Now preparing to hit the local market so we'll make mistakes and adjust our stuff on local scale before hitting US & YC (and it;ll be also nice to show some real numbers from the market in our application). Good luck to all S14 applicants!

paul9290 13y ago

I was wondering if YCombinator is looking to partner up with industries like TechStars has with Disney and Sprint? It would be awesome to see Y and or TechStars or another incubator team up with the Recording Industry! I'm surprised that industry hasn't already established an accelerator.

pg 13y ago
Seems unlikely. YC doesn't need the money, so it would just be a distraction.
- paul9290 13y ago
  Yeah wasn't thinking about the money more so YC being an impetus in getting the industry to loosen it's copyright belt. At least for incubated companies. YC is all about changing the game. Their game needs to be changed and it would be a win for them! On a different note last year we applied and got denied, but a week later we we're invited to demo our novel tech to a company out in the valley. Not sure how that happened, but it was a good start to our story & journey! cheers

jdrobins2000 13y ago

Thank you for the clarification Paul (and Adrian for your perspective). May I ask if there is a bias against applicants who have spent a significant amount of time on the product (say, a year or more) but haven't built a user base? For example, if the choice was made to put in more effort up front on iterating and validating the product design rather than trying to implement a MVP and try to start building the user base early? Is it easy for you conceive of situations where this is the best, or at least sufficiently logical, choice? Or is that likely a deal breaker?

pg 13y ago
It depends on what the company is building. Some things take a long time to launch. With others it's a bad sign if the company takes more than a month or two to launch.
- jdrobins2000 13y ago
  Thank you Paul, I appreciate you taking the time to respond. Your answer is helpful in that now I understand your general perspective, which addresses my question. My problem is that I purposefully tried to ask a general question with broad applicability, because I think that is respectful of your time and the community. However, what remains unclear are the specifics of how my product and company would be assessed. The devil is always in the details. I don't think it is fair to ask for such personal advice from you, but perhaps you have some advice as to the best way to go about getting good feedback on my company and product? Short of getting into YC, I mean. Should I take Adrian up on his offer if he is still willing (for my own edification, not for this round of applications)? Are there other good ways you know of? And yes, at some point I will just launch on my own if necessary, but I continue to believe the cost/benefit trade off of getting counsel from experienced mentors is very favorable. So, I want to make sure I am doing everything I can to be successful and in the meantime to be able to demonstrate evidence that I am worth the time/effort/capital of those who are looking for those with potential.