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Comment by leroy_masochist | Hacker News Reader

Do you plan to allow future YC teams to attend the program remotely, or with a greatly reduced expectation of spending time in Mountain View?

I get that SV is a great place to start a startup, all things being equal. But there are a lot of great opportunities that are 8-12 time zones away. And leaving your customers alone for 3 months -- especially if you are trying to grow rapidly during those 3 months -- sounds very risky. Additionally, the money spent living in SV for three months could otherwise be spent on working capital; this is extra true in developing markets where costs are lower.

In the absence of a formal policy change re: moving to SV for 3 months, would you be willing to extend a bit more leeway for founders who really want to get their companies into YC but don't want to spend too much time away from the customers they're trying to please?

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We have discussed trying a remote group through the YC batch. Although we're all varying degrees of skeptical, I think it's worth a try.

As you point out, there are (some) good reasons that MV doesn't make sense, like your customers being very far away. That said, it's only three months.

No particular point to this comment other than I noticed at the time of this comment,the AMA started 6 hours ago, the question was asked an hour ago and you replied 9 minutes ago.

Good on you for checking back and updating things, not doing an hour long hit and run like so many do on reddit. It reinforces that you care about keeping people informed and not just getting some visibility to your business.

Thanks!

I think it can be tough to move to SV for someone who is married with kids. That is what has stopped me from applying, and I have definitely thought about creative ways I could make it work logistically. :)

I honestly believe that YC is looking for a particular sort of founder: someone who will put their company 1st, 2nd, and 3rd in their life in order to create explosive growth and maybe change the world.

Just running a profitable business is not enough for them. They only want startups that have a chance to be grand-slam home runs. Paul Graham has written about this before.

The requirement to live there for 3 months is a useful filter for finding that type of founder. It eliminates people who might want to have something else (like their kids) in the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd slot.

I don't expect YC to ever say that out loud though.

People with families can certainly be successful entrepreneurs and create companies with "explosive growth that maybe change the world". (It kinda came across like you were implying that founders with families were mostly only interested in "lifestyle businesses".)

There are so many factors that contribute to success, and they are never all equal, so any sort of up-front filtering based on some factor you think is correlated with success is going to miss out on people. And besides, I would strongly dispute any arguments that having a family is like some sort of handicap that must be overcome. In a lot of ways, I think having a family is a BETTER situation for starting a company!

My impression from reading YC's stuff is more that folks feel the value of the program comes to a large degree from the in-person interactions people have, so it makes sense to require people to be there in person.

Related, there's this scene from Moneyball, [1] that I love. They're all sitting around, discussing all this stuff that is at best tangentially related to _the actual things that matter_ for success of the team. It's very tempting and natural bias to latch on to this or that factor which you've become convinced makes a difference "all else being equal". But all else is never equal, and the question that is actually important is more the one Billy Beane keeps asking: "Yeah, but can he hit?"

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWgyy_rlmag

I don't think it's families specifically, it's just commitment in general.

It's certainly possible that a parent could find a way to be away from their kids for 3 months, if they are sufficiently committed. Happens in the military all the time.

My guess is that if a person is not willing or able to figure that out, YC is not interested in them. It's not like it is hard for them to find applicants, and they don't need to be fair or accommodating.

To be clear, this is just my speculation, and I don't think it's the sole reason.

A related question: have you considered re-trying the "branch office" concept?

I know Boston was tried, but that was 6 years ago? Considering your increased scope + larger overall size of YC now, it seems doable to have a retry on that front.

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