Startup School 2017 First Lecture | Hacker News Reader

Startup School 2017 First Lecture

startupschool.org

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I was wondering what the acceptance rates were for this MOOC. I understand it's difficult to deal with large numbers of applicants and that it's just not feasible to give every single applicant personalized feedback.

From the other side, I've been working on my goal for much of the past year and a half if I include collaboration attempts with offline businesses in my market that ended with job offers but no collab. I understand the long time span looks bad. I understand that it's minus that I'm a solo founder. It's just that I've gone a long time without a real salary or even insurance, I deeply believe in the value of what I'm working on and am beginning to have an idea of how much longer and harder the path is without mentorship from people who have done it before.

I see a tremendous value in YC and have already benefited from its free content. That said, estimating the EV of applying, has to include an assessment of likelihood and the costs of time and distraction as well as the tremendous upside.

Knowing the acceptance rate would be helpful in calibrating how to approach future applications, both for me and others who weren't selected.

Totally agree and I personally am interested in this too. I understand it is difficult to mentor everybody but an official 'Mattermost' room or better a discourse community will be very helpful too.

We've applied along with 50k applicants (http://blog.ycombinator.com/startup-school-online-registrati...) and we are in this batch along with 3000 other startups coming from all corners of the world (startup founder track).

In our case, we've built MyAppConverter about three years ago, starting from native iOS to native Android code conversion and now building an online mobile application porting platform. We've applied and we feel so privileged to have been selected because it costs us nothing except our time we have to put in (watching lectures, online group sessions, tutor/advisor sessions and assignments). We do not have to move to SV (as yet) and yet benefit from shared valuable experiences amongst YC fellows as well as from other entrepreneurs.

That is a 6% acceptance rate, I had no idea so many people apply!

https://twitter.com/sama/status/850010326733012992

to the founders track only around 13,000 companies applied so that's around 23% acceptance rate.

Hey man, we're in the same group (62), can't wait to learn more about your business!

At first I thought everybody got in, but now I see I was pretty damn lucky with my product Median (www.median.tech), since I'm solo.

This MOOC is just the best, I didn't expect there would be so much community around it. As a solo founder, I'm very grateful be in a group with other founders from all around the world.

That's really cool. We've built the first online mobile application porting platform.

We currently offer two options: Self-Service Option (99$ USD) (recommended if you have in-house Android experts): You use our UI porting platform to port your entire iOS UI elements (storyboard and xib) to native Android UI (xml). Before you purchase this, you get to view it online (we use appetize.io to let our customer to view online the Android UI output before purchasing the Android source code). We offer this at 99$ USD per porting session. The output you pay for is a full Android UI source which you can start from (to edit in Android Studio) to complete manually the app and get the final Android application. That means you can hire any expert Android developer to do this manual work, yet still saving you some time, effort and money. If you are looking at this option, it is a self-service. Just login to myappconverter.com and upload your iOS storyboard project and follow the instructions. We do offer 15 days free support on our UI output products. Fully Managed Porting Service Option (Starting from 3000$ USD) (recommended if you don't have any Android experts): You really want to use our accredited experts engineering team at MyAppConverter to take the UI Android and complete the work to deliver you a full working Android application. In this case, once your upload your entire iOS project, you ask us for a free/no-obligation quote. For that quoted price, you will get a full working native Android app and its Android source code. The way we work is that you will be receiving a series of apks for you to test and you report all issues/bugs through our bug tracking portal; you will typically get the first UI based apk, then the next one will be including some logics and more functionalities, until the final apk represents the fully working & tested app on Android. On average, the porting timeline is around 3 to 5 weeks. We tend not to take porting projects in excess of 5 weeks work to minimise customer delivery risks. This is the full turnkey option and yet fast, efficient & price competitive. We have both our in house resources also a handful carefully selected and accredited freelancers. Let me know if you need further information.

The UI porting is around storyboard and xib . We port this instantly with our porting tool to native android.

We are three co-founders based out of London and Casablanca.

Median looks really cool.

On a side note, Median looks fantastic. Hope you guys (just you?) go far!

I can relate to your situation a lot. I've done some thinking and realized, YC is great but they are not the decider of my fate. There are other options and at the end of the day, great ideas executed by great people can succeed no matter how many rejections they get. I think there is a lot of hubris in HN and in YC, in SV in general. All I can say is, be so good they can't ignore you.

Whether I get into YC or not, I'm willing to bet my life on the fact that they will know my name soon and realize they made a mistake.

I don't care how crazy or delusional this sounds because this isn't a project or a startup, this is my reason for existing. Finding a way is all I have in this life.

Interesting how Moskovitz just glosses over a "lifestyle" business. I started a business 2 years ago, am the sole employee, and it'll make $400-500k in revenue in 2017 with 20-40% net profits.

I don't think I recreated the wheel here. I'm making a software product that businesses want to buy.

If you don't mind me asking. What's your business?

Farm accounting software. Boring to most, exciting to me! Just maybe that's a key

I enjoy developing new stuff, especially if it involves new learning, but I find I am also happy working with the mundane with incremental changes. Toggling between the two is kinda perfect for me. I just have not found a mundane niche that I could monetize - any tips on how to look for what others would consider boring?

Try to simply keep your eye open for problems people are having. Ideally, one that is in a B2B space. Wish I had more insight for you.

How were you able to identify that there is/was a need for farm accounting software?

My family farms in W ND. I worked in private equity for a few years in Minneapolis.

Saw my friends and family turn down crazy good risk-free profit opportunities during the AG commodity bull market of 2008. "It's going higher!"

So I quit private equity and started consulting for family farms in the Upper Midwest. That led me to build a software package that I wanted my clients to use and started selling it to others.

Now if you could expand that to John Deere hacking software...

I think you are right. Everyone wants to build the next Facebook/IG/Uber. A software company that appeals to the masses and will be front page news. There's likely a lot of opportunity in the fringe area's that aren't mainstream.

I am a big fan of "lifestyle" businesses. Why are your margins so low, if you are the only employee?

I've had a consultancy do all the development so far. They are good, but not cheap.

Hoping to bring that in-house later this year.

Want to build an outsource agency?

That's what I am working on this very minute!

I think he glossed over that type of business because it's not a startup. It is a perfectly reasonable style for many who wish to start a new business, but the course is focused on startups.

I don't think a startup is defined as a company aiming to be a unicorn. I simply consider it a new, for-profit business

There isn't really a standard definition of the word "startup". But many in Silicon Valley think of it as how PG defined it:

http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html

> A startup is a company designed to grow fast. Being newly founded does not in itself make a company a startup. Nor is it necessary for a startup to work on technology, or take venture funding, or have some sort of "exit." The only essential thing is growth. Everything else we associate with startups follows from growth.

Fair enough. Forgot about that essay.

I'm more of a linear growth type of person but that's likely a product of my end market.

startup = high/exponential growth

Sure, it's not a well defined term with a universally agreed upon definition, but now we're just arguing semantics.

You like to define it as a new, for-profit business. Seems reasonable. However, I found that many others use the term to specifically refer to the kind of high risk, high growth company that meet the investment profile of typical venture capitalists.

It seems obvious that the good people of startup school are using the word startup in the latter sense. And honestly that sense of the word seems more common. Most people refer to what you do as bootstrapping, not a startup.

But is it really that interesting to have an argument over the definition of startup?

I don't think anyone at startup school is against bootstrapping. They're probably not against enterprises either. The event just has a focus.

Good points and true.

I really enjoy a lot of what YC puts out, especially the philosophy that growth is the ultimate no-BS filter. That was eye opening for my when u heard Jessica Livingston talk about it.

All-in-all, my initial comment is likely misplaced given the nature of startup school.

But I do believe that most businesses should aim for, and be happy, with linear growth.

> Sure, it's not a well defined term with a universally agreed upon definition, but now we're just arguing semantics.

The definition is pretty well agreed on. The version I like best is that a startup is a new business that's designed to arbitrage a temporary disequilibrium to produce extraordinary returns.

Other people phrase it differently, but claiming that, for example, your typical restaurant is a startup is unequivocally wrong.

Just FYI I listen to a lot of popular startup podcasts and oftentimes the guests are asked if they recieved VC or if they are bootstrapping.

As an aside, what are your recommendations for the best startup podcasts to listen to?

Have you considered sharing with Indie Hackers (https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses)?

You should read startup=growth.

I am not saying you are wrong to be proud of your achievement, but as a practical matter, YC doesn't think of startups as new companies. It thinks of startups as a specific kind of new company that is trying to grow very large, very quickly.

Edit: Just realized someone else brought up this point and linked to the essay downstream. I guess I'm leaving this point here because it is closer to the question.

Something else that's just out is the list of future speakers: https://blog.ycombinator.com/startup-school-online-first-lec...

(via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14045559)

The startup school's About page says there are office hours every week

> Class Office Hours will also be held each week to give live advice and feedback to the class.

but that schedule only has office hours planned for weeks 2, 5 and 9. Is one an update of the other? Are there any office hours the first week?

I don't know but I'll ping sandslash for you.

Sorry about that. Initially we were going to have on-stage office hours every week, but we have since changed the format for the course. Those office hours in the most recent blog post are current; we'll update the site now.

Apologies for the confusion!

This is an interesting talk, but it is substantially similar to the previous one that was already out there.

Which makes me think: it would be interesting to have a diff tool for videos, but it diffs a representation of the content not specific video frames.

Customers might include all the students of Udacity, Coursera, EdX and Startupschool.

Could you link the other one, thanks!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBYhVcO4WgI

transcript: https://genius.com/Sam-altman-lecture-1-how-to-start-a-start...

Can't help with the diff tool concept, but I built a search engine for talks, which semi-randomizes the results to force a variety in the search results.

For business talks, you can see it here: http://findlectures.com/?p=1&type1=Conference&talk_type_l2_C...

This includes the older startup school talks, plus a few good software business conferences. For the next phase, I want to highlight talks that are most unique to the category (using word lists in the transcript/captions, not video diff)

" it would be interesting to have a diff tool for videos"

    videoA -> transcriptionA
                |
                V
    videoB -> transcriptionB
                |
                V
               diff

That seems too granular, as an additional 'uh' or 'and' would cause a sentence to be seen as different.

It might work well if you can first pair up the similar sentences from A and B, using word-level edit distance, or mapping to a lower-dimensional space using sentence embedding?

"seems too granular,"

Probably right. I used the term diff as a concept not implementation.

A couple of the slides are titled: Getting your first 100 users. I think that's probably a strong attraction/benefit for YC. Its alumni seem almost to be a keiretsu from the outside, offering connections and first sales to their newly hatched brethren.

True. But when I was reading the Techcrunch reports on these last Demo Days, every time I read one of the batch had some dozen or two customers I couldn't stop thinking "How many of those are just other YC companies?"

In other words, there's a bit of a discounting in effect now too.

My impression is that basically all VCs try to generate network effects from incestuous cross-pollination among their fundees.

This is half true, but yc network companies are a _lot_ more discerning about what they'll try these days. There are 5-10x more yc startups than there used to be, and no one has time to use them all.

It's actually more valuable for early user feedback than showing traction for investors. yc network companies are usually willing to spend more time poking through stuff than some company you don't know, help with pitches, etc.

Great resource - looking forward to future videos. It does feel like there's an assumption that everyone who wants to build a startup is trying to build the same kind of startup. Lifestyle businesses and social entrepreneurship ventures are kind of glossed over, but are legitimate - they require passion and hardwork without the hope or promise of big payoffs. I'm wondering if this series will be appropriate for people who are interested in those types of startups - I guess we will see.

This lecture series is definitely aimed at the "startup = growth" type of startup, so much more relevant to companies that want to get huge.

As a former founder I do think there's truth to Altman's advice to tackle big/hard problems rather than small/easy.

Rationale:

- you develop unique expertise and skills that are more valuable (ie more acquihire rationale) if things go south

- easier to fundraise and recruit

- optionality: downshifting to solving a smaller problem is easier than leveling up to solving a bigger one

But not all huge problems have to = huge financial gain

Teams actively pursuing a startup and who have been chosen for founders track get split into groups, with a group advisor and a Mattermost room.

It will be of great help for the folks who applied and did not get selected to have access to an official 'Mattermost' room to build a community of like minded individuals keen on entrepreneurship to share information and motivate ourselves.

I see there's now an update form in the MOOC now. It has four fields—metric, value, growth and notes. Are there any pages on the site offering guidance on how to get the most out of the MOOC?

In what cases should the primary metric be "other"?

(Advisor for #group87 here!)

You should talk to your advisor (possibly one-on-one) about selecting the right metrics. Many groups are not focused on the right things at the moment, and that's OK but something we should talk about and fix!

If you have revenue>0, you probably want it to be revenue. Similarly, if you have revenue==0 && users>0, you probably want it to be active users. (Not cumulative registered users, but daily or weekly actives, for example.) You should probably only be using "other" if those two don't apply.

Think of it this way: at the end of the 10 weeks, what metric will you really care about showing 10 weeks of growth in? For example, having 10X-ed your revenue is much more impressive than 10X daily active users, which itself is much more impressive than 10X people manually seeing a demo of your prototype!

Unfortunately I wasn't selected, which is why I've asked here. I know I had some poor focuses in the past (e.g. trying to do a collaboration with an offline business in my industry to bootstrap an online one) and I'm trying to get some advice here on HN.

I have a free product launched (and then pulled because my API provider dramatically increased prices). I'm about 3/4 of the way to building a paid content-based product to ideally fund development of the free one.

So basically my most promising avenues I see are to

    1) focus 100% on the paid product
    2) eliminate the API provider as a dependency and go all out on the primary free product (risking running out of cash in a couple of months)
    3) try to raise 12k in funding so the runway extends to the end of the year.

My current choice is to focus 100% on the paid product. It's not clear how to put that into a growth goal though.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14048063

Does anyone know if they will be doing this again? We found out about it too late to do try and apply. I looked through the FAQ on the website, but did not see anything about whether this was a one-off or if they would do it again.

Try searching HN history. They did some Q/A type sessions about it. I believe they wanted to see how this went and were hoping to make this a regular thing.

Thanks for the rejection. I realized I didn't need this after all.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com