Early Decision
blog.ycombinator.com
blog.ycombinator.com
I’d never received that type of email from YC in the past, and immediately thought their application numbers must be dropping. After all YC historically seemed to market and advertise the fact that statistically it’s more difficult to get in than Harvard.
This announcement the very next day seems to support YC is looking for more applications. Then again maybe the total application numbers and acceptance rate are public info and I’m way off.
The reason we started sending out emails to remind people of the deadlines is the sheer # of founders we talk to in person and over email that complain that they missed the application deadline and they didnt know when the date would be.
Questions about when the app deadline is, if you can submit late, when the deadline is for the following batch, etc is the #1 most common type of question in our support queue, and sending out reminders seemed like the best solution.
This program should really be called Early Action, which is non-binding!
If you don't show with a "bad" reason then what they do varies, but I've never heard of someone being sued. Instead it seems to be things like, "we will tell your high school and it may be mentioned if you try to apply to another university."
> School
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> That's what I'd advise college students to do, rather than trying to learn about "entrepreneurship." "Entrepreneurship" is something you learn best by doing it. The examples of the most successful founders make that clear. What you should be spending your time on in college is ratcheting yourself into the future. College is an incomparable opportunity to do that. What a waste to sacrifice an opportunity to solve the hard part of starting a startup — becoming the sort of person who can have organic startup ideas — by spending time learning about the easy part. Especially since you won't even really learn about it, any more than you'd learn about sex in a class. All you'll learn is the words for things.
I see it encouraging students to come up with ideas for YC companies inorganically. Obviously that is not the intent, but I see it as a very likely side effect.
If the student organically has a great idea, then sure this has nothing to do with it. For the ones that didn't and wasted time in college? I guess they should have read some of PG's essays. ;)
In particular, this struck a cord with me:
> So if you want to find startup ideas, don't merely turn on the filter "What's missing?" Also turn off every other filter, particularly "Could this be a big company?" There's plenty of time to apply that test later. But if you're thinking about that initially, it may not only filter out lots of good ideas, but also cause you to focus on bad ones.
I have a follow-up question to the text I quoted though.
I’ve recently been thinking about a software product that I wish existed but which doesn’t quite exist.
The product I have in mind does seem to fit the criteria laid out in the essay quite well. Even down to the question of “if someone else built it, would you use it?” Yes, I absolutely would.
But what I am wondering is not so much “how big could my company become”, but rather: Is this product idea sufficient to build a startup around at all? Is it even necessary to try and build a startup around it?
Details about the product don’t matter but in short it would be a particular kind of music creation and performance software for the iOS platform.
Actually I can motivate why it should be a startup. Because implementing it will require more people than just myself. I am confident that I can build an MVP on my own, but I am also certain that more man power is needed in order to develop the product into a useful state. Great!
1. Build a tool and start trying to sell it
2. Survey the market and figure out what's missing, then GOTO 1
When starting with 1 you run the risk of making something no one else wants and will likely need to substantially correct to market values. But if you want the tool to exist and are willing to build it purely for yourself, then you might as well build it. You'll be in a much better position for fundraising if you do, and if nothing else you can add it to your portfolio for your next job search.
Also keep in mind that markets do not need to be large to be profitable. Large markets can make reaching customers much easier but also starts you off as a blip in a sea of noise. If you can build something a few customers love, warts and all, then you're well on your way to viability.
There's also restricted early action, which restricts what schools you can apply to along side the REA school, but is non-binding
Its not as though the college will sue you or anything like that for backing out of an early-decision agreement, but, the student will have a difficult time applying to other schools for the upcoming academic year.
(If the student isn't accepted into the early-decision school, the high school will supply transcripts to whatever other regular-decision institutions the student applied for... but the idea is that if a student wants to apply early-decision, they either attend the early-decision school for the upcoming year or none of its competitors. If you want to take multiple offers from multiple competing schools and compare them, you need to apply regular-decision or early-action)
How are you supposed to focus on learning and school work if you already known that you are getting in YC to do a startup? Which more often than not is going to fail instead of focusing on your studies which you are paying big dollars for (potentially at least).
Also to a smaller degree you are giving up info to YC which in theory would also allow them to identify a trend to fund someone else ahead of you. (Relevant if they turn you down).
YC seems to be walking that same path - seeking a commitment before the student knows all the choices that may be available post-graduation. Is there an intent to also give some incentive to compensate for that? Or is YC not asking for a commitment, and instead just making it an invitation that can be taken or not?
In a lot of ways, you could think about this as giving students more optionality as they will have the opportunity to consider YC alongside other extremely compelling opportunities. It's smart for YC to try and get in front of students when they're in a better mindset to evaluate that tradeoff.
I'm sure there are a lot of students who would have be great YC candidates but end up signing a Google offer in the fall and just stay there for years because the pay is so good it doesn't make sense to leave...
Having the plan nailed down that early may allow you to think and develop the idea differently than if you're not sure whether you're doing YC or working a job, what city you'll live in, etc.
Since it's optional for the applicant, I don't see any significant downside that would require an extraordinary amount of additional incentive.
If you’re accepted, you will be early accepted into the Summer 2019 batch which begins in June. If you’re not accepted, you can apply again during the regular Summer 2019 application cycle which begins in March.
Early Rejection will make it even easier for students to abandon the idea of building their startup after graduation.
Then It’ll be perfectly balanced, as all thing should be.
It's even more surprising given research correlating founder age and industry experience to the likelihood of big exits. https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/younger-vs-...
This solidifies the view that YC is modeled as a "founder college" for the young and cash-starved, weened as they are on ready-made social support systems, institutional authority, and formal rewards.