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What Changed at Y Combinator After 7 Years
- ivankirigin 12y agoThis post is really long, but if there is something I've left out, feel free to ask in the comments here. I didn't say it explicitly: you should do YC if you get the chance.
- ivankirigin 12y agoI should have mentioned Sam Altman more. It is pretty incredibly how he has taken over the helm with so few problems and actually so much acceleration. BAMF
- walterbell 12y ago>Paul Graham is a kind of stateless incisive advice machine. Could you expand on this assessment?
- rgbrgb 12y agoWe met with him for 15 minutes, he didn't know anything about our company going into it (the stateless part), but gave us amazing advice about how to position ourselves and present our ideas to investors. I heard the same thing from everyone else in the batch I talked to (the machine part).
- kurttheviking 12y agoThis. The pearls are in the essays too. While some may not appreciate the tenor, the underlying wisdom is applicable in any setting. Despite that fact, many will find some reason to ignore the wisdom. I did. Only later did I learn, that in fact, he was right all along.
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- ivankirigin 12y agoPaul is very blunt and very honest. He talks to hundreds of companies and anyone would have trouble keeping track of it all. This is related to the honesty: keeping track of lies or bending the honest truth is hard. Being blunt is easier. You can see this in videos from startup school when he does an interview and jumps right into good advice. That is what I mean by stateless, he just replies to what he sent.
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- jacobolus 12y agoPresumably it’s like when a master chess player simultaneously handles games against 100 amateurs. It’s not possible to remember the full history of each game in detail, but a very experienced player can still usually make a reasonable move after a short time inspecting the board.
- codingdave 12y agoThe real question on my mind is why you would do YC twice? If you already have the connections to get advice/mentoring, and the actual investment is pretty minimal... what exactly is the driver to do this twice?
- ivankirigin 12y agoThere is a whole section at the bottom about this. - batchmates are our customers - demo day is awesome - the advice is great - lots of experience with developer facing services
- rgbrgb 12y agoAt the very least, as Ivan says, Demo Day is an amazing forcing function for getting your shit presentable and pushing it out to investors. You know how everyone says the best way to pitch an investor is by getting a warm intro from someone who already invested? YC gives you 500+ of those intros on the same day. That's not to say that YC is only good for fundraising, but that specific piece has about the same utility regardless of how many times you've done YC before.
- tptacek 12y agoIt's probably important to understand how DD is a forcing function for investors. There are lots of ways to create forcing functions for operators, but not so many ways to deterministically create them for investors.
- rgbrgb 12y agoYep, forgot that in my comment... 500+ warm intros means that if your pitch is compelling (not a given) then there will be a lot of competition to invest. This is naturally good for founders both in terms of pricing the round and getting it done as quickly as possible.
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- solve 12y agoLots of interesting info. I'm also interested in how the switch from 4 founding partners, to 20 partners has affected what kind of companies they accept. Seems to be far more B2B and marketplaces, whereas before there was more B2C. Also seems to have been a strong shift toward later stage investing, now that the funding amount has increased beyond 20k.
- ivankirigin 12y agoI think the interview process is really similar. They just have multiple tracks. There are 3 to 5 partners in the room. They've refined it, but in spirit it is really similar. I think companies are getting later stage because YC's reputation is better.
- solve 12y agoI edited my comment. What I meant to say was the application acceptance step, not the interviews.
- ivankirigin 12y agoThere do seem to be a lot of B2B companies. There are certainly a broader range of companies. I should have written about this more. The number of biotech companies is staggering. I don't know anything about that tech, so they all look the same to me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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- tptacek 12y agoWould you have done it again if you had no plans to raise funds?
- ivankirigin 12y agoIf you've never raised anything, then it doesn't shift your company to be on a startup growth-is-life go-big-or-go-home track. Any fundraising does that. If you're asking whether removing the value of demo day changes things, yes I think it does. It diminishes the value. By how much is tough to say. I think you should do it, if that is what you're wondering. I think your audience fits really well with their network and experience. From what I understand about what you're doing. So if you want to have a bigger impact and make it more likely to win, then do it. Related from yesterday: http://blog.yesgraph.com/is-yc-worth-it/ http://blog.yesgraph.com/is-yc-worth-it/ (read to the end)
- tptacek 12y agoNot asking about Starfighter, but have friends who have and/or might in the future consider applying, and while I have a very crisp answer for the ones that expect to raise, have less of one for the ones who don't. For our part, we have our hands full just shipping. :)
- ivankirigin 12y agoWhat is a typical reason people don't want to raise money? My general advice is to apply if you want your startup to succeed.
- tptacek 12y agoControl over destiny (ie not wanting a board to report to), already have easy path to revenue, growth options other than "all in on best hockey stick bet we can find within 6 months", work/life balance, long term outlook (being for instance in a business you want to spend 20 years in, rather than 4), obvs. huge distraction of fundraising, elimination of a whole class of success outcomes for the company, not having a backstory that will secure good terms and/or good investors. Different of these things for different companies, of course. Re: your second sentence: -.- I like YC! But come on.
- JMiao 12y agoThanks for sharing. I attended a miniconf recently and was blown away by the scale YC's grown to. For what it's worth, I liked the slop, too.