The YC Experience Part I: The Importance of the Class

Getting 70 or so high caliber founders and pooling their respective strengths is a huge advantage. Usually the press talks about the valuable advice and connections offered by the YC partners - this is just as big though. Everyone gets advice from the best sys admins, designers, etc, from across the batch.

The biggest successes online always seem to have some sort of marketplace for a business model - Google, Ebay, Paypal, etc. Not surprisingly, as YC seems on track to becoming a big hit, they have managed to find such a model. They are becoming a market place for top founders to network and exchange ideas. This would be very hard to recreate in an unstructured environment (like a co-op), because trust is essential.

What you say about single founders rings true indeed. I'm one myself and, though things are going well, am somewhat jealous of founders who have access to such excellent peer networks. Like johnrob said, it sure looks like the networking you get from being a YC-backed founder is even more valuable than the money investment itself. Thanks for sharing! Very much looking forward to the next post.

The ongoing camaraderie and commiseration with batchmates is definitely one of the most underrated benefits of YC. Nice post, Daniel.