Ten Weeks with Y Combinator’s Startup School

We went through Startup School program too [^1]. From what I read in your post, it seems every mentor had its own way of conducting the Office Hours. For example, we didn't have the feedback loop on how the office hours went you mention.

Ian, our mentor, went through every project and asked questions that made us make great progress. In our company's case, we went from Idea to MVP, then to Product and Launch in 10 weeks (thanks Ian!).

Also, Office Hours are great because it gives you the accountability needed to push forward every week.

One thing I noticed is how sharp in timing the Office Hours were. They were 1 hour length mostly all of the times. Same with Startup School lecture videos which consistently were around 50min long.

Is this sharp control over timing something in American culture? As an European I find surprising how you guys make things last the exact amount of time you want even when you don't control the input (like in office hours where 10 startups have to show their progress)

[^1] http://www.TechLeaks.org -> A Glassdoor tailored to Software Engineers.

Glad you got a lot out of it, I was in group 19 (guided by Brad Flora - who was awesome BTW). I similarly did not meet 50% of the teams. Of course, my team had morning and evening office hours and I only ever attending evening office hours, so that's not too surprising.

This is article is pretty much the same experience I had. Albeit we launched June 12th (pretty much, the last day of Startup School).

We built a super rough MVP during throughout the duration of Startup School. Here's our product if anyone's interested:

http://projectpiglet.com/

It's basically a search engine meets your news feed. We're specifically targeting financial advising, while keeping an eye on enterprise search.

Launching it so late, had it's draw backs, but also IMO was the right for us. We got to see everyone else's progress, but we also did follow much of the advise: interviewing customers, launching pre-registration, how to structure a company / team, etc. We also got to see other teams mistakes, and successes.

I think that's what I found super valuable, not so much where people were from, but the various stages of their startups! We had people come in with only ideas, and watched them bring them to launch. Some people grew their company 10x. It was fun and interesting to watch the process.

We also had several people interview for the Summer YC class, while in startup school. I've previously interviewed, so I knew what it was like - but others (and I to some extent) found it valuable to ask questions and understand what they look for. Some companies in our group, I'm sure, will be looking for funding.

Highly recommend.

When does the application for the next cohort open?

Thank you for sharing. Always wondered what's going on there.

Is Medium forcing sign-in to view blog posts a new thing, or have I just never noticed it before? https://i.imgur.com/VreES7R.png