YC S20 Remote Batch
blog.ycombinator.com
blog.ycombinator.com
There are a lot of great startups that will be born in these times. Many of them will be "remote native" -- operated remotely, remote YC, and potentially tackling problems that have arisen due to the remote world we're living in.
After this crisis is over, some things will go back to normal, but a lot of the changes will endure to varying degrees.
I think people are used to the power of in-person connection and physical reality, and most of us are craving it. But an incredible amount can happen in digital reality, and we are only just beginning to scratch that surface.
At minimum it is an interesting and necessary experiment.
I'm trying to start a company, and I wouldn't dream of doing it any other way than remote. There's advantages and disadvantages, but I don't want to be paying SF office rent, SF salaries, SF benefits, and competing with the unicorns and tech giants in the area. I'd rather draw from a global talent pool and focus on how to minimize the drawbacks and maximize the advantages of doing so.
Plus neither my wife or I want to live in SF. We much prefer Vancouver. I'd move if it were really necessary for the business, but I'm glad that doesn't seem to be true.
Interestingly zapier are a remote company.
Obviously, being good in-person and being able to convince a VC of your competence is a skill that likely correlates well to success with a startup, but I doubt that it is one to one.
Just like there are a lot of excellent engineers that get passed over frequently because they aren't good at white boarding, or interviews in general.
One example: The UK is a reasonably wealthy country. Median household income in the UK is 29,400 GBP (36,000 USD). The poorest state in the US (Mississippi) has a median household income around 43,000 USD
This applies doubly for high-paying jobs (devs in wealthy parts of the US make 2-4x+ what they would in wealthy parts of Europe).
I switched to working remotely for a US company a couple years ago, and while I used to have a "sure why not chat" policy with local headhunters I don't even bother anymore because the offers they can come up with are astonishingly low compared to my already-below-market-for-the-US wage.
That being said, at the low end of the job market (minimum wage or close to it) people can make more here than in the US, and with paid vacation and healthcare to boot, and there's less inequality as a whole, but the fact remains if you're trying to sell something there's less money to chase.
Sure, healthcare is no-cost, you get a month or more of vacation a year even if you're in low-paid work (if it's full time), and quality of life is better in many respects, but once you get away from the nordics, really, there's just a lot less money about.
Also, lack of a common language is still an issue (How many versions of komplett.no needed to be translated?), and not just for sites, but for support, logistics, etc.
If you send physical products Europe is expensive to ship in. I can send stuff to the US cheaper than some of Europe (though customs applies, of course)
I'm in Europe, and would like to start a company, and even I would be using my local market primarily for testing and then focus on the US. On the bright side, devs are a hell of a lot cheaper here.
The country is one of the biggest cereal producer of EU, a major car industry player and has big reserves of oil and gas.
Anecdotally, since turism/horeca services is really a minor part of the GDP, the COVID-19 will not affect it too much. Whereas in West going out is a major activity and has much influence.
That's a fair difference in available disposable income!
(Having said that, I've worked with some Romania developers and they were great. I'd hire there, but there are better markets to sell into)
But, yes point taken, there is of course a difference. Corruption is a main point. Also due to the gray or black economy I suspect that the above $8100 are likely double.
The main problem is that you need to appear personally, otherwise it's not such a big deal I find.
With Germany being in the EU, you can also incorporate in whatever EU country you want. The UK is obviously out for now, but take Estonia for example. Makes taxes a lot more complex for the company, but much less so when compared to YCs way of transforming into a US Inc. with a German / EU local entity. Especially when there are now US based operations.
That being said, there is nothing wrong with sticking to one market. Not the last reason being to avoid the above mentioned entanglements.
The incorporation of my company in germany, including documentation, notary fees and registration, cost me less than 1.000 € and took 7 days from notary to registration. VAT registration took almost 5 weeks, so. But that was independent from the legal entity.
Germany doesn’t kind of require a layer. You actually need a lawyer. In the Anglosphere you would be wise to procure the services of a lawyer if you’re doing anything remotely out of the ordinary and dealing with lots of money but if not you can set up an LLC or Ltd. or some other standard corporate structure using off the shelf documentation and b filling in the appropriate blanks yourself.
https://twitter.com/aaron_epstein/status/1252267533555470338...
https://www.ycombinator.com/apply/
Do it!
"Can we do it without moving to where you are?"
Sorry, no. We tried this once, and by Demo Day that startup was way behind the rest. What we do, we have to do in person. We would not be doing a startup a favor by not making them come to YC events in person.
However, you don't have to be in silicon valley 24x7. If you have a business that requires that you be somewhere else, we will work something out so you can participate in YC events while also being attentive to your business. Usually the founders will rotate between locations, or fly back and forth.
Of course, after the 3 month program, you can go wherever you want.
Of course statements like this are just rationalizations - not arguments employed to arrive at objective conclusions.
For other experiments, YC has discussed publically (fellowship, accepting people with no idea, early decision) there were what seemed externally at least to be well-run experiments with multiple accepted and some longer-term tracking to see how that worked. No remote seems to finally be getting that proper experimentation and treatment, I guess we'll see how that goes.
There are a lot of benefits to in person, I personally prefer working on things in-person to remote (in biotech, in-person really matters), but it'll be an interesting experiment this batch to see how much room there is for fully remote startup development across all the sectors they invest, both in terms of the batch itself and the companies individually.
Not that long compared to others here, but long enough to have seen things that work and seen things that don't work, and with sufficiently varied approaches. I think there's reasons why this will work, but I also wonder if they would have screened the startups slightly differently if they knew they were going to do the whole batch remotely. Working in an all remote environment require different communication skills than working in an office.
I also wonder how easy it'll be for founders to put in 16+ hour days while working from home. It's easy to 'stay late at the office', but I think it is harder to contain myself in my office while doing that. Maybe that's just a me thing, but I think it can be a real issue... I wonder if founders will simply hole up in the same living space somehow during quarantine; I could see that working, that's basically I've seen friends who've been in YC do anyway. It just might be harder to do in this environment.
Yeah, I think that's just a personal preference thing. I've always found offices to be much more distracting, and actually I tend to put less time in overall when there's an office involved. Mostly that's because commuting (even if it's a relatively easy commute, like a 15 minute walk) takes extra time, effort, and planning - and because there are more auditory and visual distractions to tune out in an office, which makes me fatigue more quickly.
I also felt just emotionally on edge from going to the office every day. For example, I would feel very resentful when I was phoned outside of work hours, because I felt that my limited time to enjoy myself and re-coup my energy with my family was being threatened. Now that I've been working primarily remotely now for about 3 years, I don't feel bothered when I need to step up and do extra work outside of normal hours. I'm less grouchy in general because I control the environment I work in and don't have the overhead of a commute looming over me.
I think most of the YC Founders will be able to do fine, since learning to work effectively remotely is a skill like any other. From my experience too, remote working is 10x better when every person involved is remote. The worst-case scenario is to have a split group of people (part remote, part in-office), because it leads to the in-person group having side convos that leave out the remote people, which harms the remote people's ability to bond with the in-person group and generates resentment when the remote workers inevitably get left out of a conversation that matters.
This crisis is a test of a company's flexibility, since the lockdown started we had to do a hard pivot from onsite to remote services and we're just getting traction.
Remote work is here to stay and so is remote services. It's a new frontier/market to explore.
I've witnessed that multiple times when I sneaked into some "exclusive" events in silicon valley.
If they know the application is sure to be rejected, why don't they reject it fast? I really don't understand why can't people reject things fast enough! University takes 5 months to reject the application, interviews take 2-3 weeks to reject. If they just happen to know, reject immediately. This whole process is too slow.
Edit: Also because we made a lot of progress between February and March, and while I was able update the application with some of the biggest stuff, I recognize that the initial impression was still the important one. If and when I apply to the next batch, I might start he application early again - but I don't think I will submit it more than a week before the deadline.