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Comment by boobs1 | Hacker News Reader

hey guys: I have news for you: Zuckerberg would not have done ycombinator. I think ycombinator is great and all. But to make it in this cruel world as a startup founder, you need to be arrogant enough to be able to say $25,000 is not worth 5% of my company. To be honest, if you are not disciplined enough to moonlight and work on your startup and give away zero equity and actually earn the $6,000 it takes to live on for a few months to then quit your job and build your idea full time, you probably shouldn't start a startup in the first place. no, I have not made it yet; but I'm damn sure I'm right about the above. Thanks for reading. Don't give up.

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If your argument for why YC isn't worth it is the whole cash/equity/valuation bit, then you definitely haven't talked to enough YC alumni to get a feel for the real value of the program.

OTOH, if you're saying that those who think they _need_ YC for their startups to be successful should strap on some plums, then 100% agreed. ;)

I think/hope he's talking about the latter, in which case I completely agree. It's especially annoying to hear those people who get rejected say that they'll apply again in the winter. They're basically saying that they intend to make no meaningful progress on their start up in the next six months. YC is a very early stage investor. It should be a one-shot deal for any serious start-up. By the time the next cycle comes around, your start-up should be beyond the stage where doing YC makes sense. If your start-up folds, OK, apply again with something new, but these people actually planning on applying again.

You speak truth python. YC is a good idea when you have your idea, and need some cash/guidance to get started. But once you have customers, even if your not "ramen profitable", you are beyond YC.

Thats hard to say. No startup is ever "beyond" the opportunity of demoing in front of a room of well connected, experienced silicon valley VCs which is one of the perks of YC. Some of us don't live in places where there are VCs who get it.

YC has connections, but in the end its up to you to make your startup successful. With your experience, you should be able to bootstrap yourself into a profitable software business. But this "Italian restaurant" style of a software company doesnt interest many VCs. Most VCs are looking for the next big thing.

ycombinator makes sense for 2 kinds of people: 1) people who did not go to stanford/mit/etc. (if you went to those schools and you can't get a meeting with Sequoia, or anyone you want, you don't know what you are doing and should not be an entrepreneur.) 2) first time entrepreneurs who are age 24 and under and thus, do not know what they are doing as entrepreneurs. And thus need guidance.

for both of those subgroups of people, it makes a lot of sense.

ironically, you can only get into ycombinator if you went to stanford or other top university. hahaha... this will get refuted big time by the one or two cases where it is not true; but I'm sure it is largely true.

What are your chances if you went to an Ivy but were a biologist there? ^-^

good. in general with startups its not about what you studied its about where you went.

wow. im very cynical this evening. I shall spare you all my wrath and go to sleep now. I better go to sleep soon or I will have more enemies than Jason C pretty soon...

zzz...

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