11 ms·

We Just Thought, 'This Is How You Start a Company in America'

223 points by staunch 12y ago

teach 12y ago
I wish more university students had this kind of attitude. Instead of "Let's take out the maximum amount of loans so I can get a new iPhone!" Well done.
- tarof 12y ago
  Thank you!
  - S4M 12y ago
    Taro, two questions: 1. What was your thought process when pivoting from a dating site to AnyPerk? They seem to me like two unrelated things. 2. You say that your burnout was very low, but living three guys in a motel room, surely it has to be hard from a mental perspective, how did you guys cope with that?
    - tarof 12y ago
      Thanks for the questions. 1. We pivoted a several times during YC days. Initially we were trying to pivot into similar ideas. (standard "pivots") but after discussing really hard internally, we decided to think what we really are excited about regardless of what we had been working on, and we felt AnyPerk is the idea that we wanted to work for the next 10~ years. 2. I have to admit that it was not easy, but when you are working on your best idea with best people you know is so exciting that you can feel so positive about everything.
- GaryVaynerchuk 12y ago
  he's a great kid, i am a very proud investor
- jimmaswell 12y ago
  Do people really use loans for iPhones?
  - vineetch 12y ago
    I've known people who've subsidized their phones and unnecessary possessions with college loans, yes.
  - amalcon 12y ago
    Yes, in two ways: - By buying on a subsidized contract, you've effectively used a loan for an iPhone. It's not different just because the phone company issued the loan. - By using a loan for something else (e.g. tuition, automotive, housing), and then buying an iPhone instead of paying down the loan
    - jn1234 12y ago
      I wouldn't consider buying an iPhone on a subsidized contract a loan because you are just commiting to have service for a set period of time. You would be paying the same amount for service regardless if you were under contract or not.
      - ceejayoz 12y ago
        > You would be paying the same amount for service regardless if you were under contract or not. No, it's lower if you bring your own device with most carriers. http://www.att.com/shop/wireless/byop.html http://www.att.com/shop/wireless/byop.html
staunch 12y ago
I had to resubmit this because the first post got missed. This is one of the best startup stories I've heard. Good luck with AnyPerk, guys!
- tarof 12y ago
  Thanks for submitting!
downandout 12y ago
You do not necessarily need to start in the Valley to become successful, especially if your situation there imposes additional hurdles to success. Living out of a car or tenement is generally detrimental to one's ability to focus on the business. It's always amazing to me that as tech entrepreneurs we largely sell to others the idea that technology enables us to do anything from anywhere, but simultaneously believe that there is exactly one place on earth where we must phyiscally be to get anything done. The ideal place to start a startup is anywhere that your day-to-day life issues can take a backseat to working on your startup.
- gone35 12y ago
  It's always amazing to me that as tech entrepreneurs we largely sell to others the idea that technology enables us to do anything from anywhere, but simultaneously believe that there is exactly one place on earth where we must physically be to get anything done. A hundred times, this. Granted, with current technology remote is much less efficient than face-to-face collaboration. But then there is also the all-to-important courtiering side to it, which might be rather awkward to do with a telepresence robot (I guess).
- rokhayakebe 12y ago
  From random readings, it appears that great musicians, scientists, artists live not only during the same era, but usually very close to one another. I guess today you could call the Internet the city/town. There is also something to be said about what seems to be serendipity. When there is a high concentration of people doing the same thing, you are more likely to bump into people who can help you turn your vision into a reality. This is why you hear the joke "Go to jail with a bachelor in theft, come out with a PHD in insert_high_level_crime_here."
  - _reality_check_ 12y ago
    > From random readings, it appears that great musicians, scientists, artists live not only during the same era, but usually very close to one another. I'm highly skeptical of this claim. Can you back it up?
driverdan 12y ago
Living in a Mission dump trying to sleep three people to a bed is not how you should be starting a business. Why do people think this is how you optimize for success?
- dasil003 12y ago
  It just makes a good story feeding into the mythology of SV. Not to take anything away from these guys for their actual achievements, but the article itself is nothing more than color-by-numbers startup porn clickbait.
  - kevin 12y ago
    You're right that most people's experiences don't turn out this way, but that's why it's worth reading. I also think it's unfair to say that this is nothing more than clickbait. It's easy to see a lesson about grit here and I think founders need to hear these stories as much as possible...regardless of where they are located. Also, it seems odd to me that you would say that you don't want to take anything away from their achievement, because this seems to be the only reason you're commenting. I think it's very obvious that Taro has no agenda to perpetuate the mythology of SV. It just happened to be in SV that these series of events happen to him.
- tatterdemalion 12y ago
  Right. Nothing against this company and all the best to them, but what is the larger narrative this story is building? Its really exploitative to tell young people that they should come to one of the most expensive places in the world and sleep in their cars so they can have the privilege of giving equity to Y Combinator. It's something really dark in California's culture (I have lived my entire life here). From '49 to Hollywood to now Silicon Valley, its a reverberating call for people to come here and get rich quick. And in any gold rush, its always better to be the ones selling the pics and shovels than the ones buying them.
  - birken 12y ago
    This is what the press does. The median or average case isn't interesting, so they find interesting stories that are outliers and write about them. Is it illustrative of what normal people can and should expect? No. Is it useful in any way for somebody who wants to start a business? No. Is it interesting? Yes. The press' job doesn't involve building a useful narrative for people, it is just to write interesting stories. Changing the press is not going to happen, but if you disagree with this story, I highly recommend flagging it and if enough people agree that will drop it off the HN homepage.
kevin 12y ago
"We started in January 2012, and may still be the only Asian YC founders ever." So that is not true. 9gag is from Hong Kong. Semantics3 is from Singapore. Strikingly is from China. Memebox is from Korea. Cleartax is from India. Those are just off the top of my head, I'm sure there are more. That being said, I actually would love to see more Asian startups applying to Y Combinator. We should be funding one from each country EVERY batch, not just averaging one per batch. I've made several trips to Asia now talking with startups to try and better understand how YC can do a better job and what is it about their ecosystem that makes the Asian startup scene so different. For example, I did office hours with over 60 Japanese startups trying to understand why it feels different over there. What surprised me the most was how much we take for granted here in the US about our startup ecosystem and values. My plan is to write this all down in depth soon and figure out what actionable things can be done by YC to help. Stories from companies like AnyPerk help, but so much more needs to be done by us to reach out to founders out there.
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- kamikazi 12y ago
  Disclosure: Indian W'15 applicant here. Very pleasing to my ears. Few days back @sama also mentioned in one of the interviews to local print about wanting to make inroads into India and I welcomed it. Done properly YC can get nice response here. Some of the challenges or differences about Indian start ups which you might have to address are: a) Visa related issues: This is taken for granted by applicants from EU and other visa-on-arrival countries but it's a huge Qn mark for Asians. eg: I still don't know if we're selected for interview will I have to arrange for a B1 or B2? Will we be able to get it within a month? (There's an elaborate application process with long waiting periods - US embassy is notorious for rejecting on flimsiest of reasons). If we get selected, I'm still bit unsure what visa will be applicable for the 3-4 months of incubation period. To what extent YC will be involved in visa process. What happens after that? Some of these things are not laid out upfront in YC FAQ as of now. b) Incorporation: The more you branch out into Asian territories the more likelihood that for many startups it won't make sense to incorporate in USA. Or maybe have a dual structure with HQ + subsidiary in USA/$home country (Ours might be dual). On the other hand there are some SaaS cos who have a Delaware co just for ease of seting up merchant a/cs and ease in collecting recurring payments (We still don't have Stripe here). I know this comes later in the picture but I think some of the uncertainty around these Qns would keep many an Asian startup from applying. For someone in Boston, if he doesn't make the cut, he can always go back to his home and figure our whatever he wants to do after 3 months. He loses just 3 months of his time. For many of us it's not easy to decide to upend your roots/family everything for that one chance of making it big only to realise all the wind is out of your sails after 6 months due to some stupid visa/IRS issues or for that matter even FDI/tax guys back in our home countries (eg even huge cos like Amazon India with billions of dollars investment in their Indian arm, are still caught in Indian tax/FDI redtape - they're facing an ongoing struggle against authorities as well as entrenched local retail community. They are forced to operate as marketplace and still have to dance as music changes). There's a reason why we're #134 in ease of doing business and #179 in Starting a business (out of 189). So I think a clearly thought out YC roadmap on visa/incorp in itself would be a huge bump to smart founders. b) The type or quality of startups in India is slightly different than the typical SV co. The typical SV startup goes: Stanform/MIT grads, batchmates, started building a SaaS/app2.0 product in final-year from dorm -- where you first figure out how to get millions of users and then sometimes after SeriesA maybe think about monetisation. Many of them get acquihired, defensive acquisition before making a cent in revenue. The good startups here in India that I like are mostly revenue generating from day one. Enough to have founders earning 3x+ of his erstwhile salaried job. They might not have hockey-stick growth in millions within months. A hockey-stick chart of nonpaying users is as good as 1/3rd of same chart of solid profitable paying users I reckon. c) The way you do due diligence has to be slightly different. Yes there are lot of smart founders but just due to our sheer numbers you'll also find more shady characters (which in absolute nos would be a huge jump from what you might encounter in SV, even if %wise same - so a perception problem), so you'll have to gradually build up your sniffing skills in other vectors and also set your internal founder-meter accordingly. Plus there's a lot more diversity here in social/living conditions hence the founder diversity that goes with it. Which also means the good founders might be disproportionately outliers on the map which YC or SV references. eg: IIT gets a huge mindshare in SV but I see more startups from non-IITians here. There are lot of similar subtle things from an Indian founder's perspective. I know coz I've grappled with some of these until I studied and organically warmed up to an idea so strong that made me jump through all the hoops and decide to go for it. Would be glad to discuss any further - my email is in profile. (or in person alongside YC interview :-)
reduce 12y ago
Nice story. I'm so tired of hearing all the "get rich without stressing yourself - by using this one simple trick" folks. Not that I encourage going to extremes for no purpose, I just don't see these as extreme at all. Just determined. Sharing a room with a few people for a little while to save the last bit of money? I just call that camping and adventure, which some people actually seem to like. Have the commenters here never been camping? Travelled on a small boat? Been in competitive sports? Hiked a mountain? And they cry about sharing a room for a little while? What a bunch of wimps!
- jarek 12y ago
  When most people go camping it's not because they can't afford a flat
  - deleted 12y ago
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  - reduce 12y ago
    Yup, pure ego. Competing to be the guy who can show off that he got away with doing the least. It's the adult version of trying to be the too cool for school guy.
xnull2guest 12y ago
How you start a (tech) company in America: * Move to the valley. * Come up with a really good idea. Or at least a gimmick that will be a fad for a time. * Find a generous person from the upper echelons of the wealth distribution (or a club of them) who have enough money to fund your idea or gimmick. * Make a deal with them so that your business becomes part of their diversified portfolio. The risk to them is hedged by being broadly invested. The risk to you is a real ultimatum of your time. * Work tirelessly and thanklessly. If you do succeed you will give a large part of your company, and many times control, to your patrons. * Furthermore, because you've waited as long as possible to IPO all of the initial growth to launch your business into 9 or even ten digit figures has been captured by the upper class - the common man never had a real chance to invest in your idea. * That's okay though, the common man probably isn't paying you with dollars anyhow. You're probably collecting his data for sale and for advertisement (or rather partnering with a company that does for you).
- wyager 12y ago
  >the common man never had a real chance to invest in your idea. This part of your very pessimistic comment is certainly true, and I would like to point out that this is the government's fault, not Silicon Valley's. People who aren't rich are legally not allowed to invest in startups. [1] But the unstated major premise of your comment, which is wrong, is that investment in startups is some kind of magic bullet for making tons of money. This is demonstrably not the case. One of the common justifications for the law in [1] is the fact that high-risk investments like startups are not necessarily any better than traditional low-risk investments (like stocks in big companies), and (by some metrics) are worse. 1. http://www.sec.gov/answers/accred.htm http://www.sec.gov/answers/accred.htm
  - xnull2guest 12y ago
    I completely agree that VC is not a magic money making bullet, but I don't think it matters for the post. Certainly there are patrons who will lose money. Having a portfolio full of lemons isn't going to make any financial elite any money. Most will hire accountants and financial and technological advisors. Some will provide extra services (advice, contacts, demo day audiences, etc) to bolster the prospects of their portfolios. Some will fail anyway. The ones who stick around are the ones who are good at it. The real unstated major premise of my comment is that it is essentially impossible to be a self-starter unless you are already rich, which (along with the other stated bits) implies that growth in the tech industry concentrates wealth and that there is a mobility problem that runs counter to our nice cultural myth about geniuses in garages.
willbonz 12y ago
This valley conceit is just astounding. Do some of you people who are obviously so smart at what you code and create really think that this is the only way to go about being a success? You look like trapped otters.
- walshemj 12y ago
  sorry 99.99% of hn commenters are not as cute as otters :-)
jcavin 12y ago
Sometimes it just takes talking to the right person to get your start. It may take a few thousand no's, but one yes can change your life. This story is inspirational and reminds me that you have to put yourself out and communicate with others not just build a great product.
craneca0 12y ago
"Three days into joining YC, we decided to pivot. We’d been working on the dating site for six months at that point, and we knew it wasn’t working... Also, I’d read a study that said happy employees are twice as productive as unhappy employees. That was the beginning of AnyPerk." After all the flak the word 'pivot' has gotten I'm surprised to see it used this way here. This does not seem like a pivot, but rather you just deciding to work on a completely new business. Were the two ideas related in any way? Did anything in the original dating business inform this new idea?
- wbillingsley 12y ago
  Presumably "the team" and "being in YC". Which is reasonable -- you're in a program with a time-limit, together in a foreign land, and you realise the idea you had isn't going anywhere. So they took their advantages (time in YC remaining) and applied them to a different problem/application.
akanet 12y ago
The amount of cynicism in the comments for this story is astounding. The list of complaints is long. By my accounting, people don't like that the founders were: * naive * exploitative of the funding climate * deluded into irrational personal sacrifice by dreams of riches * whiners for thinking their hardship was hard * bad decision-makers overall by coming to SF What happened to being charitable? Taro and co have built a real company out of nothing, and they took a particular path to get there. No one was harmed and it looks like they had a great time. Startups are HARD and you should expect successful (for some value of success) companies to have odd beginnings.
tmuir 12y ago
Can someone explain AnyPerk to me? Is it just a middleman for employee perks? What is the added value? Why couldn't a company look at their landing page and say "thats a good idea, I should buy my employees movie passes", but not sign up for AnyPerk?
- iancarroll 12y ago
  I believe you get a fairly significant discount buying through them.
- patio11 12y ago
  I worked in a Japanese megacorp which used the local systems available for doing this. From the corporation's perspective, it costs rat spit to buy a very wide selection of perks for their entire employee base and they don't have to spend any time managing it. I never once took advantage of anything in the booklet, as I was a salaryman and all of my waking hours were spoken for, which is one reason why prevailing rates for this are so low in Japan. Still, had I wanted to take advantage of the movie pass perk (50% off a ticket at a local chain), the process would have been "Call a toll-free number or log onto the website, speak with a rep for a minute, give her my membership number and the address of a local convenience store, and then consummate the transaction there." Note that at no point have I inconvenienced my HR department. (Your offer as a perk broker to vendors is "Will you cut us a deal on N units of your service if we bring you happy, well-behaved, middle class paying customers with lots of disposable income?" The conversation goes like this: "Hello hotel chain corporate sales department. Can we buy 100 nights in your off season?" "OH YES YOU CAN." "Great! Make it worth our while." "WE CAN DO THAT." "And we'd prefer 30 day net payment terms, counting after use." "Umm could you maybe pre-pay for the whole block?" "100 nights." "30 day net it is!")
  - S4M 12y ago
    From the description you gave it sounds the business model of AnyPerk is based on the fact that HR departments are too lazy to do their job.
    - 12y ago
sparkzilla 12y ago
The part that interested me was that they were able to get meetings with 100 investors with just an idea. We have an in-production startup with traction in Florida and we are lucky to see an investor every few months. Trying to get email contact to VCs is next to impossible. If it's really that easy to get meetings in SV, then we are going to move too.
andrewliebchen 12y ago
No one should have to consider living in their car when starting a business. I guess that's how it goes in America.
bsaul 12y ago
Is it just me or do other people also find the idea of pivoting after three months really troubling ? I've seen two kinds of people creating start ups so far : business school guys and "real job" guys. The first type are really focused to one thing : making money. The second type have a passion for their skills and had an idea on how to improve something in their field. The first type can pivot to about anything, because ultimately the product is just a mean of getting rich. The second type feels the need for their product in their every day life. So profitable or not, they really want that thing done. Somehow i've always found the "real job" type the most interesting to work with. Edit : business school guys doesn't mean you went to a business school. It's just a mind set. Same for "real job", i mostly mean passionate about one specific personnal need.
- jusssi 12y ago
  From what I gather from the last paragraph of the story, they found out they were doing something they didn't really care about. If that was the case, then pivoting is the only right choice IMO. Sometimes you just have to try something in order to find out whether it's working for you or not.
- paulhauggis 12y ago
  money is the life blood of any startup. Many pivot because they weren't thinking enough about their profit model and realize it's not going to work. I'm a mix of the two. I only work on products that I know fills a void, but are also profitable.
SSH007 12y ago
The problem I had with this article was that there was no substance on what they actually did to create the product and start a company. How did they arrive at the idea of AnyPerk, what did they do? Did sleeping in the TacoBell parking lot or sharing a bed in a $10/night hotel do something for their startup other than low burnrate. How did this help them? Seems they had a (wrong) idea in their mind on what you have to do to start a business in America and in the end they contributed more to that idea by only telling a story of sharing a bed/sleeping in a car. Someone naive may come along and think if I sleep in a car in a parking lot, and sacrifice my privacy I'll have a successful business. There was more to this story and this was their opportunity to state that. I wanted to hear about how the idea came about, how they created a site, then they spoke to and contracted with x number of vendors to provide these perks that they are essentially reselling. Pretty weak article. I would have said that its not worth being on front page of HN, but comments are interesting.

223 points by staunch 12y ago

teach 12y ago

I wish more university students had this kind of attitude. Instead of "Let's take out the maximum amount of loans so I can get a new iPhone!" Well done.

tarof 12y ago
Thank you!
- S4M 12y ago
  Taro, two questions: 1. What was your thought process when pivoting from a dating site to AnyPerk? They seem to me like two unrelated things. 2. You say that your burnout was very low, but living three guys in a motel room, surely it has to be hard from a mental perspective, how did you guys cope with that?
  - tarof 12y ago
    Thanks for the questions. 1. We pivoted a several times during YC days. Initially we were trying to pivot into similar ideas. (standard "pivots") but after discussing really hard internally, we decided to think what we really are excited about regardless of what we had been working on, and we felt AnyPerk is the idea that we wanted to work for the next 10~ years. 2. I have to admit that it was not easy, but when you are working on your best idea with best people you know is so exciting that you can feel so positive about everything.
GaryVaynerchuk 12y ago
he's a great kid, i am a very proud investor
jimmaswell 12y ago
Do people really use loans for iPhones?
- vineetch 12y ago
  I've known people who've subsidized their phones and unnecessary possessions with college loans, yes.
- amalcon 12y ago
  Yes, in two ways: - By buying on a subsidized contract, you've effectively used a loan for an iPhone. It's not different just because the phone company issued the loan. - By using a loan for something else (e.g. tuition, automotive, housing), and then buying an iPhone instead of paying down the loan
  - jn1234 12y ago
    I wouldn't consider buying an iPhone on a subsidized contract a loan because you are just commiting to have service for a set period of time. You would be paying the same amount for service regardless if you were under contract or not.
    - ceejayoz 12y ago
      > You would be paying the same amount for service regardless if you were under contract or not. No, it's lower if you bring your own device with most carriers. http://www.att.com/shop/wireless/byop.html http://www.att.com/shop/wireless/byop.html

staunch 12y ago

I had to resubmit this because the first post got missed. This is one of the best startup stories I've heard. Good luck with AnyPerk, guys!

tarof 12y ago
Thanks for submitting!

downandout 12y ago

You do not necessarily need to start in the Valley to become successful, especially if your situation there imposes additional hurdles to success. Living out of a car or tenement is generally detrimental to one's ability to focus on the business. It's always amazing to me that as tech entrepreneurs we largely sell to others the idea that technology enables us to do anything from anywhere, but simultaneously believe that there is exactly one place on earth where we must phyiscally be to get anything done. The ideal place to start a startup is anywhere that your day-to-day life issues can take a backseat to working on your startup.

gone35 12y ago
It's always amazing to me that as tech entrepreneurs we largely sell to others the idea that technology enables us to do anything from anywhere, but simultaneously believe that there is exactly one place on earth where we must physically be to get anything done. A hundred times, this. Granted, with current technology remote is much less efficient than face-to-face collaboration. But then there is also the all-to-important courtiering side to it, which might be rather awkward to do with a telepresence robot (I guess).
rokhayakebe 12y ago
From random readings, it appears that great musicians, scientists, artists live not only during the same era, but usually very close to one another. I guess today you could call the Internet the city/town. There is also something to be said about what seems to be serendipity. When there is a high concentration of people doing the same thing, you are more likely to bump into people who can help you turn your vision into a reality. This is why you hear the joke "Go to jail with a bachelor in theft, come out with a PHD in insert_high_level_crime_here."
- _reality_check_ 12y ago
  > From random readings, it appears that great musicians, scientists, artists live not only during the same era, but usually very close to one another. I'm highly skeptical of this claim. Can you back it up?

driverdan 12y ago

Living in a Mission dump trying to sleep three people to a bed is not how you should be starting a business. Why do people think this is how you optimize for success?

dasil003 12y ago
It just makes a good story feeding into the mythology of SV. Not to take anything away from these guys for their actual achievements, but the article itself is nothing more than color-by-numbers startup porn clickbait.
- kevin 12y ago
  You're right that most people's experiences don't turn out this way, but that's why it's worth reading. I also think it's unfair to say that this is nothing more than clickbait. It's easy to see a lesson about grit here and I think founders need to hear these stories as much as possible...regardless of where they are located. Also, it seems odd to me that you would say that you don't want to take anything away from their achievement, because this seems to be the only reason you're commenting. I think it's very obvious that Taro has no agenda to perpetuate the mythology of SV. It just happened to be in SV that these series of events happen to him.
tatterdemalion 12y ago
Right. Nothing against this company and all the best to them, but what is the larger narrative this story is building? Its really exploitative to tell young people that they should come to one of the most expensive places in the world and sleep in their cars so they can have the privilege of giving equity to Y Combinator. It's something really dark in California's culture (I have lived my entire life here). From '49 to Hollywood to now Silicon Valley, its a reverberating call for people to come here and get rich quick. And in any gold rush, its always better to be the ones selling the pics and shovels than the ones buying them.
- birken 12y ago
  This is what the press does. The median or average case isn't interesting, so they find interesting stories that are outliers and write about them. Is it illustrative of what normal people can and should expect? No. Is it useful in any way for somebody who wants to start a business? No. Is it interesting? Yes. The press' job doesn't involve building a useful narrative for people, it is just to write interesting stories. Changing the press is not going to happen, but if you disagree with this story, I highly recommend flagging it and if enough people agree that will drop it off the HN homepage.

kevin 12y ago

"We started in January 2012, and may still be the only Asian YC founders ever." So that is not true. 9gag is from Hong Kong. Semantics3 is from Singapore. Strikingly is from China. Memebox is from Korea. Cleartax is from India. Those are just off the top of my head, I'm sure there are more. That being said, I actually would love to see more Asian startups applying to Y Combinator. We should be funding one from each country EVERY batch, not just averaging one per batch. I've made several trips to Asia now talking with startups to try and better understand how YC can do a better job and what is it about their ecosystem that makes the Asian startup scene so different. For example, I did office hours with over 60 Japanese startups trying to understand why it feels different over there. What surprised me the most was how much we take for granted here in the US about our startup ecosystem and values. My plan is to write this all down in depth soon and figure out what actionable things can be done by YC to help. Stories from companies like AnyPerk help, but so much more needs to be done by us to reach out to founders out there.

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kamikazi 12y ago
Disclosure: Indian W'15 applicant here. Very pleasing to my ears. Few days back @sama also mentioned in one of the interviews to local print about wanting to make inroads into India and I welcomed it. Done properly YC can get nice response here. Some of the challenges or differences about Indian start ups which you might have to address are: a) Visa related issues: This is taken for granted by applicants from EU and other visa-on-arrival countries but it's a huge Qn mark for Asians. eg: I still don't know if we're selected for interview will I have to arrange for a B1 or B2? Will we be able to get it within a month? (There's an elaborate application process with long waiting periods - US embassy is notorious for rejecting on flimsiest of reasons). If we get selected, I'm still bit unsure what visa will be applicable for the 3-4 months of incubation period. To what extent YC will be involved in visa process. What happens after that? Some of these things are not laid out upfront in YC FAQ as of now. b) Incorporation: The more you branch out into Asian territories the more likelihood that for many startups it won't make sense to incorporate in USA. Or maybe have a dual structure with HQ + subsidiary in USA/$home country (Ours might be dual). On the other hand there are some SaaS cos who have a Delaware co just for ease of seting up merchant a/cs and ease in collecting recurring payments (We still don't have Stripe here). I know this comes later in the picture but I think some of the uncertainty around these Qns would keep many an Asian startup from applying. For someone in Boston, if he doesn't make the cut, he can always go back to his home and figure our whatever he wants to do after 3 months. He loses just 3 months of his time. For many of us it's not easy to decide to upend your roots/family everything for that one chance of making it big only to realise all the wind is out of your sails after 6 months due to some stupid visa/IRS issues or for that matter even FDI/tax guys back in our home countries (eg even huge cos like Amazon India with billions of dollars investment in their Indian arm, are still caught in Indian tax/FDI redtape - they're facing an ongoing struggle against authorities as well as entrenched local retail community. They are forced to operate as marketplace and still have to dance as music changes). There's a reason why we're #134 in ease of doing business and #179 in Starting a business (out of 189). So I think a clearly thought out YC roadmap on visa/incorp in itself would be a huge bump to smart founders. b) The type or quality of startups in India is slightly different than the typical SV co. The typical SV startup goes: Stanform/MIT grads, batchmates, started building a SaaS/app2.0 product in final-year from dorm -- where you first figure out how to get millions of users and then sometimes after SeriesA maybe think about monetisation. Many of them get acquihired, defensive acquisition before making a cent in revenue. The good startups here in India that I like are mostly revenue generating from day one. Enough to have founders earning 3x+ of his erstwhile salaried job. They might not have hockey-stick growth in millions within months. A hockey-stick chart of nonpaying users is as good as 1/3rd of same chart of solid profitable paying users I reckon. c) The way you do due diligence has to be slightly different. Yes there are lot of smart founders but just due to our sheer numbers you'll also find more shady characters (which in absolute nos would be a huge jump from what you might encounter in SV, even if %wise same - so a perception problem), so you'll have to gradually build up your sniffing skills in other vectors and also set your internal founder-meter accordingly. Plus there's a lot more diversity here in social/living conditions hence the founder diversity that goes with it. Which also means the good founders might be disproportionately outliers on the map which YC or SV references. eg: IIT gets a huge mindshare in SV but I see more startups from non-IITians here. There are lot of similar subtle things from an Indian founder's perspective. I know coz I've grappled with some of these until I studied and organically warmed up to an idea so strong that made me jump through all the hoops and decide to go for it. Would be glad to discuss any further - my email is in profile. (or in person alongside YC interview :-)

reduce 12y ago

Nice story. I'm so tired of hearing all the "get rich without stressing yourself - by using this one simple trick" folks. Not that I encourage going to extremes for no purpose, I just don't see these as extreme at all. Just determined. Sharing a room with a few people for a little while to save the last bit of money? I just call that camping and adventure, which some people actually seem to like. Have the commenters here never been camping? Travelled on a small boat? Been in competitive sports? Hiked a mountain? And they cry about sharing a room for a little while? What a bunch of wimps!

jarek 12y ago
When most people go camping it's not because they can't afford a flat
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- reduce 12y ago
  Yup, pure ego. Competing to be the guy who can show off that he got away with doing the least. It's the adult version of trying to be the too cool for school guy.

xnull2guest 12y ago

How you start a (tech) company in America: * Move to the valley. * Come up with a really good idea. Or at least a gimmick that will be a fad for a time. * Find a generous person from the upper echelons of the wealth distribution (or a club of them) who have enough money to fund your idea or gimmick. * Make a deal with them so that your business becomes part of their diversified portfolio. The risk to them is hedged by being broadly invested. The risk to you is a real ultimatum of your time. * Work tirelessly and thanklessly. If you do succeed you will give a large part of your company, and many times control, to your patrons. * Furthermore, because you've waited as long as possible to IPO all of the initial growth to launch your business into 9 or even ten digit figures has been captured by the upper class - the common man never had a real chance to invest in your idea. * That's okay though, the common man probably isn't paying you with dollars anyhow. You're probably collecting his data for sale and for advertisement (or rather partnering with a company that does for you).

wyager 12y ago
>the common man never had a real chance to invest in your idea. This part of your very pessimistic comment is certainly true, and I would like to point out that this is the government's fault, not Silicon Valley's. People who aren't rich are legally not allowed to invest in startups. [1] But the unstated major premise of your comment, which is wrong, is that investment in startups is some kind of magic bullet for making tons of money. This is demonstrably not the case. One of the common justifications for the law in [1] is the fact that high-risk investments like startups are not necessarily any better than traditional low-risk investments (like stocks in big companies), and (by some metrics) are worse. 1. http://www.sec.gov/answers/accred.htm http://www.sec.gov/answers/accred.htm
- xnull2guest 12y ago
  I completely agree that VC is not a magic money making bullet, but I don't think it matters for the post. Certainly there are patrons who will lose money. Having a portfolio full of lemons isn't going to make any financial elite any money. Most will hire accountants and financial and technological advisors. Some will provide extra services (advice, contacts, demo day audiences, etc) to bolster the prospects of their portfolios. Some will fail anyway. The ones who stick around are the ones who are good at it. The real unstated major premise of my comment is that it is essentially impossible to be a self-starter unless you are already rich, which (along with the other stated bits) implies that growth in the tech industry concentrates wealth and that there is a mobility problem that runs counter to our nice cultural myth about geniuses in garages.

willbonz 12y ago

This valley conceit is just astounding. Do some of you people who are obviously so smart at what you code and create really think that this is the only way to go about being a success? You look like trapped otters.

walshemj 12y ago
sorry 99.99% of hn commenters are not as cute as otters :-)

jcavin 12y ago

Sometimes it just takes talking to the right person to get your start. It may take a few thousand no's, but one yes can change your life. This story is inspirational and reminds me that you have to put yourself out and communicate with others not just build a great product.

craneca0 12y ago

"Three days into joining YC, we decided to pivot. We’d been working on the dating site for six months at that point, and we knew it wasn’t working... Also, I’d read a study that said happy employees are twice as productive as unhappy employees. That was the beginning of AnyPerk." After all the flak the word 'pivot' has gotten I'm surprised to see it used this way here. This does not seem like a pivot, but rather you just deciding to work on a completely new business. Were the two ideas related in any way? Did anything in the original dating business inform this new idea?

wbillingsley 12y ago
Presumably "the team" and "being in YC". Which is reasonable -- you're in a program with a time-limit, together in a foreign land, and you realise the idea you had isn't going anywhere. So they took their advantages (time in YC remaining) and applied them to a different problem/application.

akanet 12y ago

The amount of cynicism in the comments for this story is astounding. The list of complaints is long. By my accounting, people don't like that the founders were: * naive * exploitative of the funding climate * deluded into irrational personal sacrifice by dreams of riches * whiners for thinking their hardship was hard * bad decision-makers overall by coming to SF What happened to being charitable? Taro and co have built a real company out of nothing, and they took a particular path to get there. No one was harmed and it looks like they had a great time. Startups are HARD and you should expect successful (for some value of success) companies to have odd beginnings.

tmuir 12y ago

Can someone explain AnyPerk to me? Is it just a middleman for employee perks? What is the added value? Why couldn't a company look at their landing page and say "thats a good idea, I should buy my employees movie passes", but not sign up for AnyPerk?

iancarroll 12y ago
I believe you get a fairly significant discount buying through them.
patio11 12y ago
I worked in a Japanese megacorp which used the local systems available for doing this. From the corporation's perspective, it costs rat spit to buy a very wide selection of perks for their entire employee base and they don't have to spend any time managing it. I never once took advantage of anything in the booklet, as I was a salaryman and all of my waking hours were spoken for, which is one reason why prevailing rates for this are so low in Japan. Still, had I wanted to take advantage of the movie pass perk (50% off a ticket at a local chain), the process would have been "Call a toll-free number or log onto the website, speak with a rep for a minute, give her my membership number and the address of a local convenience store, and then consummate the transaction there." Note that at no point have I inconvenienced my HR department. (Your offer as a perk broker to vendors is "Will you cut us a deal on N units of your service if we bring you happy, well-behaved, middle class paying customers with lots of disposable income?" The conversation goes like this: "Hello hotel chain corporate sales department. Can we buy 100 nights in your off season?" "OH YES YOU CAN." "Great! Make it worth our while." "WE CAN DO THAT." "And we'd prefer 30 day net payment terms, counting after use." "Umm could you maybe pre-pay for the whole block?" "100 nights." "30 day net it is!")
- S4M 12y ago
  From the description you gave it sounds the business model of AnyPerk is based on the fact that HR departments are too lazy to do their job.
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sparkzilla 12y ago

The part that interested me was that they were able to get meetings with 100 investors with just an idea. We have an in-production startup with traction in Florida and we are lucky to see an investor every few months. Trying to get email contact to VCs is next to impossible. If it's really that easy to get meetings in SV, then we are going to move too.

andrewliebchen 12y ago

No one should have to consider living in their car when starting a business. I guess that's how it goes in America.

bsaul 12y ago

Is it just me or do other people also find the idea of pivoting after three months really troubling ? I've seen two kinds of people creating start ups so far : business school guys and "real job" guys. The first type are really focused to one thing : making money. The second type have a passion for their skills and had an idea on how to improve something in their field. The first type can pivot to about anything, because ultimately the product is just a mean of getting rich. The second type feels the need for their product in their every day life. So profitable or not, they really want that thing done. Somehow i've always found the "real job" type the most interesting to work with. Edit : business school guys doesn't mean you went to a business school. It's just a mind set. Same for "real job", i mostly mean passionate about one specific personnal need.

jusssi 12y ago
From what I gather from the last paragraph of the story, they found out they were doing something they didn't really care about. If that was the case, then pivoting is the only right choice IMO. Sometimes you just have to try something in order to find out whether it's working for you or not.
paulhauggis 12y ago
money is the life blood of any startup. Many pivot because they weren't thinking enough about their profit model and realize it's not going to work. I'm a mix of the two. I only work on products that I know fills a void, but are also profitable.

SSH007 12y ago

The problem I had with this article was that there was no substance on what they actually did to create the product and start a company. How did they arrive at the idea of AnyPerk, what did they do? Did sleeping in the TacoBell parking lot or sharing a bed in a $10/night hotel do something for their startup other than low burnrate. How did this help them? Seems they had a (wrong) idea in their mind on what you have to do to start a business in America and in the end they contributed more to that idea by only telling a story of sharing a bed/sleeping in a car. Someone naive may come along and think if I sleep in a car in a parking lot, and sacrifice my privacy I'll have a successful business. There was more to this story and this was their opportunity to state that. I wanted to hear about how the idea came about, how they created a site, then they spoke to and contracted with x number of vendors to provide these perks that they are essentially reselling. Pretty weak article. I would have said that its not worth being on front page of HN, but comments are interesting.