Hey everyone, thanks for the comments. I'll be around to answer questions as best I can.
Any advice for a founder six years in with a company of ~40 people is always appreciated :) https://errantscience.com/blog/2017/07/31/reflecting-on-the-...
I'm a bit confused if Michael Seibel is still CEO?
* Michael Seibel will be the new CEO of YC Core, which we are now just going to call “YC”.
* I’m going to be the President of YC Group, which includes YC, YC Continuity, YC Research, and our new online class. We’ll add more organizational units over time.
Y Combinator has one president, Geoff Ralston, who is the president of YC Group, the parent organization.
It has two CEO's: Michael Seibel, who is the CEO of YC Core, the twice-a-year program YC started with, and Ali Rowghani, who is the CEO of YC Continuity, the fund that makes large investments in YC companies when they are at a growth stage.
There are 18 full-time partners, who primarily select and then work with the companies we fund.
Staffing good advisors is hard, especially for the # of applicants, so I definitely understand. It would be really awesome to see YC be able to scale to more participates though. I wasn't looking for money, more advice about gauging viability and scaling, and doing A/B testing.
I've started a business before, one where I could pay my bills, but it was one on one with clients doing web development...it wasn't a business that could scale effectively. The idea I've been toying with for a year or two would need to scale, and mostly be automated in order to succeed, and the scaling part is what you all are good at and I have a lot of questions about.
So, if an opportunity ever comes up when one of your advisors wants to reach out to me, I'd enjoy talking with them for 30 min and then get out of y'all's hair. I'm AtHeartEngineer pretty much everywhere on the internet.
Thanks, appreciate all your work and good luck to you!
I would not expect a YC partner to reach out to you just to chat, unless you are one of a handful of startups likely to blow up and they want to invest early. I think you should reach out to them directly instead of hoping they will find you.
Never expect anyone to reach out to you. You have to reach out to them over and over if you are interested.
If they see the value in what you are doing, they will reply or reach out to you, but never expect them to do so.
This applies to everyone, mentors, investors, customers.
You have to be proactive all the time.
Being proactive and contacting people over and over is fine for a while if you're "hustling" but eventually it just becomes spam, you sound desperate, and you'll be hurting rather than helping your chances.
Also, if you feel your proposition is good enough and you don't get the response you were after, then move on and focus on getting your pitch to the right people.
1-2 weeks later - Second cold email - No response
Monthly update/touch up - No response
Move on.
Some people would consider the second or third email as spam, that is fine. If they block you, that means that was a dead end anyway.
My experience is that people are busy and we forget to reply sometimes. 3 emails in a row, in a matter of days, would be spam for me too.
Are you reachable by email? If we have a private question.