YC Startup School for future founders who aren't quite ready to start yet | Hacker News Reader

YC Startup School for future founders who aren't quite ready to start yet

blog.ycombinator.com

330 pointskcorbitt87 comments

YC is always doing a good job in educating people on startup things, and they truly inspire a whole generation of founders, including myself.

But still, most advices we could find online are too high level, too abstract, too philosophical. Yeah there’s a need for this type of things. But as a person who is thinking to quit his/her job to start a company, they may need more actionable advices and data points, e.g., how to buy healthy insurance, what corporate credit card to use, where to find design/engineering help, what specific tools to use for specific things & the cost... I wish there were such “trivia” advices when I started out 4 years ago. Of course, we can’t expect someone like pg or sam Altman to tell us what specific saas or api or health insurance to buy :) this kind of things can only come from people who fight in the frontline , while the memory / experience is still fresh.

Maybe I should write an ebook for these unglamorous advices , especially for people who don’t want to go the venture scale route :)

- [edit 1] I had an old blog post on the tools / tech I used for my company: https://www.listennotes.com/blog/the-boring-technology-behin... it’s of course not the most optimal set of tools & tech; but they get things done :)

- [edit 2] when people make it and become successful entrepreneurs/VCs, they are teaching in startup graduate schools with their deep knowledge. But Where is the startup kindergarten/primary school to teach those things that college/graduate schools assume you already know?

I recommend a famous book about creating companies and running / growing successful businesses called "The Hard Thing About Hard Things". The gist of it is, there is no recipe for success, no roadmap or checklist to follow. Due diligence and research / prep are one thing, but anyone requiring a "color by numbers" or "connect the dots" guide is, by definition, ill-suited for entrepreneurship.

One of the best books I have ever read. It taught me what it meant to be a product manager and how to be a professional at the workplace no matter what. I now refer to it almost every day while running my own start up which is three months old.

Congrats!

Ultimately a lot of the trivia doesn't really matter for your success or failure.

High level thinking combined with effort and luck are what helps you "make it" in my eyes.

If your tech startup should succeeds or fails in spite of the particular corporate credit you choose.

This is the same problem with youtubers who have 0 subscribers obsessing over what particular camera they need to buy, all while people are growing massive audiences with little more than a cell phone camera and a message that resonates.

Part of me agree the attitude of "you should be able to figure out things on your own".

My point is that since some tools & trivia things really don't matter, we just need good defaults and move on to do things that matter. Where to find good defaults? You can ask around in your network, or figure out these things on your own. Or just pick whatever have good social proof.

Pretty sure GP is saying that making those decisions for which healthcare to get, which credit card to get, etc. take a lot of time away from high level thinking, and I’d have to agree.

If I understand, your argument seems to be “just pick any and don’t worry” or “only care about success, not the risks of having bad/no healthcare, bad credit cards, etc when your startup fails”

A youtuber debating what camera to get usually doesn’t impact their livelihood in the long run, healthcare, finances, and other aspects of running a business definitely can.

Trivia decisions aside, there are also seemingly trivia things that you just didn't even know you had to know or make a decision on. You don't know what you don't know, so having someone who had done it to guide a future entrepreneur on things beyond just high level guidance would be immensely helpful.

> If your tech startup should succeeds or fails in spite of the particular corporate credit you choose.

I'd have to agree.

Instead of "company", think "domain name."

Instead of "health insurance", think "I'm in my 20's and don't need it."

Instead of "company credit card", think "don't spend anything."

Instead of "design/eng. help", think "no budget, DIY", "co-founder" or at most Craigslist gigs.

Or just keep working the day job until the above is obvious.

being young, broke, and healthy helped me get my first company going without being distracted by decision fatigue because often times the decision was made for me.

having a handful of mentors who can tell you "you're asking the wrong questions, ask yourself X instead" saved me a lot of time early on.

Yes, "focus is the new IQ."

A couple of founders have said, "Almost any choice works out fine." meaning don't waste a lot of time doing analysis.

Telling someone they don’t need health insurance is irresponsible, there’s plenty of things that can go wrong in your 20s, like a car accident. If they decided not to have that while running a startup not only would they potentially lose their first mover advantage, they’d be saddled in crippling medical debt. One’s health should always come first, you don’t appreciate it until you don’t have it.

I'm surprised private healthcare isn't more of a drain on the American economy. I often wonder how many businesses aren't started because of that cost.

It’s not a requirement to offer health insurance in the US. If you make someone an offer and it doesn’t Include health insurance, and they accept, and the individual mandate isn’t enforced anymore, then theres no additional burden on the company.

I’ve been offered jobs without health insurance and didn’t accept them. I’ve contracted for those companies as I’m my own company and have had a group health plan for myself and others/partners. Figure the premium can be $1000-1200/per.

Getting it is easy. You call a broker (usually for group plans you need to go through a broker), fill out a couple of forms, produce a few paystubs, apply, and enroll.

$1000 - $1200 per person per month? I know some consultants who can’t find health insurance that cheap. Are those high deductible plans?

PPO with moderate deductibles.

Are they doing individual or group plans?

And sorry, this wasn’t SF proper, though when I managed a plan for 30+ employees in SF it was about $1500/per. That was high deductible with a roll-over HSA match. The broker was helpful in giving us a decent menu to choose from.

Thanks for the clarification, they’re on individual plans outside of CA, so probably not an apples to apples comparison.

$1,500 for an individual HDHP is way on the high end, even for SF. Was the group full of 60 year olds? If it’s young people, it should be in the $500 range at most.

This was the quickest data I could find:

https://www.valuepenguin.com/best-cheap-health-insurance-cal...

Also, what is a rollover HSA match? Any HSA contributions don’t come from the insurance company so I don’t see why that would affect the premium.

The pre-ACA rate was $250/month for one working person. ACA plus inflation doubled that to $500/month, which is out of the reach of flyover country blue-collar wages.

For planning purposes, use $500-$1,200/month for a young single person now.

Historically it goes up around 20% per year, so I'm sure HN readers can do the Rule of 72 in their heads and realize where this is going.

This is false.

Health insurance premiums for HDHP should be around $500 at most for a young person in the highest cost of living areas of the US.

As a reference, these are the monthly premiums in NJ:

https://www.state.nj.us/dobi/division_insurance/ihcseh/ihcra...

$1k is way too high for an insurance premium for a young individual, even in SF.

Here’s a list of NJ insurance premiums available at healthcare.gov, and you can multiply by the age factor shown at the bottom:

https://www.state.nj.us/dobi/division_insurance/ihcseh/ihcra...

SF is more expensive than NJ, but not 2x to 3x more expensive for healthcare.

I often wonder about the impact of a private healthcare system on economic activity too. The truth is, we’ll never really know until there’s some sort of public option.

You can look at Europe for example

Personally I didn't start a company in one country (but moved to another) just because of the high bureaucracy cost and high taxes.

I know plenty of Europeans that are entrepreneurs who do well for themselves. The American attitude of the European system being incapable of producing anything meaningful because it doesn’t capitulate completely to corporate interests is overplayed. Just look at Arm and the U.K. for example.

> Just look at Arm and the U.K. for example.

Wow, one whole example. And it's owned by the US now.

Most UK "technology companies" are box-shifters retailing American products. Pathetic.

> Telling someone they don’t need health insurance is irresponsible

Unless you're offering to pay it, I don't see how your opinion can be taken seriously. Most startups take about 7 years of runway, and at $500-$1,200/month for a single person, those startups won't happen.

I agree with you on all but health insurance. Catastrophic life events are uncommon, but they do happen. Any founder owes it to themselves and their company to be insured so they don't become bankrupt from medical bills or die because they're unable to get proper treatment.

Start-up advice in one line: don't quit your day job.

Having a salary gives you the time to find customers, figure out market fit, and lay the foundation for a successful business. More than anything else it allows you to be patient, which is a virtue when starting a new business.

I've thought about writing the same type of book with a broader scope. HR processes, what is a PEO, types of insurance and how to shop for them, accounting/bookkeeping practices, importance of contracts, how to collect AR, how construction contractors bill and how to ask them to quote, overview of electronic signatures, retaining communications from the start, what is a payroll audit, etc.)

I'm sure there can be some other great advice in there about not spending too much on design upfront, using graphic design templates as much as possible, etc.

The reality is a lot of the stuff that can really bite you in the ass (PAGA lawsuits in CA) you only learn about when you're about to get reamed.

Advice is on a spectrum from being so generic as to be common sense, all the way to understanding your precise situation and choices.

Things like health insurance and credit cards are far too specific for YC to put out as a generic guide. The size of your team, budget, where you're located, etc. all make a big difference.

Part of being an entrepreneur is figuring these things out, and I'll admit that choosing the "default" options was actually a negative for my last startup because it didn't provide what we needed. Doing the research is a good test for how well you'll be able to handle the rest of the details of running a business.

If you don't know where to look for this info, I recommend reading how similar companies (same sector, size, region) started and using what they use. Plenty of startup profiles out there on HN, techcrunch, angelist, producthunt, indiehacker and more. That's usually a good compromise to provide choices without too much research.

This is one of the problems we try to solve at Satchel (https://satchel.com/). We write long-form guides to help startups figure out the best tool for them to use.

If you fail based on any of the "would be nice to know" items, you were never going to succeed.

Find another few founders, ask them what they use. Find another few who use the same, ask what they think. Repeat.

If you can't figure out how to hire, you're not fit for this.

There's really nothing to any of this that should be at all difficult relative to product/market fit, and the answers to all those other things change too often to be worth enshrining. "Ask other cofounders" is the trivial and 99% correct answer, so why complain that someone hasn't done that for you given that the data will be stale every 6 months?

What? That’s a weird, shitty thing to say. Why am I not allowed to ask someone how to get health insurance?

The psychological term for this is the "curse of knowledge" [1]. This is why you can find the best information from "indie founders", people who are 5-6 steps (not 1000 like Altman) ahead of you and outline their experiences. I've been collecting/summarizing their experiences in a project I currently do on acquisition channels [2] and most of it is WAY more concrete than your-average-TechCrunch-article.

For example, for a company that had success with Google Ads (and they started with it 10 years ago), the founder probably forgot how it's like to be a beginner. When interviewed, they're likely to say more abstract things like "Make sure you have a good user experience". It makes sense, because these things work OVER A LONG PERIOD OF TIME. But your-average-founder simply wants to know what WORKS NOW, what keywords can he bid on, etc. This is where experiences from founders who got started months (rather than years) ago comes useful.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge

[2] https://firstpayingusers.com

Always enjoy your perspective from the trenches!

Hey HN! We launched Startup School as an online program in 2017, but it was only for founders who were already actively working on building their companies. Since then we've heard from many folks considering in starting a company in the future, and we realized that a modified version of Startup School could be helpful for them as well. This requires some curriculum tweaks like a much stronger focus on finding and vetting ideas as well as thinking about co-founders.

We decided to work on that, and just announced that you can register for the new course today. It'll provide curriculum tailored for early founders as well as exercises to think through the decision to start a company or not.

FYI I just tried signing in via my HN account, but there's an issue where it tries to collect my name and email, but fails because there's no input box for them

OT the title as written by the submitter (“YC Startup School for future founders who aren’t quite ready to start yet”) reminds me a bit of Zoolander

Anyway, the program sounds very interesting and it’s nice to see that YC is caring about people who want to start something but don’t yet know what they want to start.

> reminds me a bit of Zoolander

Thanks for the laugh. :)

Taking that theme further, here's an an extension to that title I came up with:

"YC Startup School for future founders who aren’t quite ready to start yet and who want to start in the future too"

My first thought was that this sounds like a joke, but thinking about it further I realized there are definitely some target cases for this kind of program.

I'm lucky to be able to work on my stuff full time, but it wasn't too long ago when I worked a full time job and couldn't find the time to balance things out to go 100% in my business.

I think this is great. I would think of it as "progressive onboarding" for future founders.

I'd like to register for the course, but it asks me to complete information about my company. Surely, if I was only thinking of starting a startup and had not already started one I wouldn't have that information to provide. So, I'm not entirely sure how to complete the registration other than just making stuff up.

After submitting your basic user information, it should ask whether you're joining as an active founder or a future founder. If you select "Future Founder", you won't be asked to complete a company profile. If you accidentally selected the wrong track, you can update your selection at https://www.startupschool.org/track . Hope that makes sense!

EDIT: to those still running into issues here, the workarounds others have posted (fill out dummy company data, then go to "Choose a Track" and switch to "Future Founders" track) seem to work. Still trying to find the root cause here.

EDIT2: This should be resolved now for everyone.

Ah, thank you. Interestingly I didn't see that step. It went straight to the information about your business step. I've switched the selection now.

Every time I try to sign up it just takes me to step 4/4, with no way to go back. I’m on mobile.

Same as you here.

Just Invent some non sense there, and when you are inside, you can go to "My profile" > Choose Track, and choose "Future Founder"

IMO, there needs to be a bootstrapping track. Perhaps the bootstrapping track should even be the primary one. Of course YC won't do this, but IMHO, bootstrapping leads to the best chance for young people to quickly become millionaires.

We've talked about this, and may build a track that officially targets this in the future. That said, with the exception of two pieces of content that talk about applying to YC, one piece about understanding SAFE financing, and perhaps part of our video about pitching your startup, really everything else we talk about is the right advice whether you're planning on bootstrapping or raising VC.

Learning to build something people want, which is the core of the Startup School curriculum, really doesn't depend on where your funding comes from!

Definitely finding the right thing to make and then finding product-market fit are the same, but bootstrapping necessarily limits your choices to products/services that are profitable early on rather than after burning millions to capture market share. Bootstrapping also, in my opinion and experience, requires a lot more appreciation of accounting and finance on the part of founders, and a lot more questioning ("do I really need to hire another person for this or can I find a way to keep costs down?"). I can definitely see a different curriculum and skillset building that is separate from the VC track.

The problem is that YC-type opportunities are limited to those living in maybe 3 cities. Most places in the world do not have the funding opportunities. Shaping the narrative such that YC-style incubation is the "default" only benefits YC so they will have an increasingly large pool of applicants where they can pick the cream of the crop. This does not serve founders well as they would be wasting their time networking to nowhere when instead they should be building and selling.

I think this isn't as true as it used to be. Sure, SF and whatever the two others you were thinking of are massive, but there are smaller scenes in other places that also have funds available for incubation-type environments.

At the very least, understanding what the process is supposed to look like will help folks in those nascent scenes identify when something is amiss.

Half the value is in funding, the other half the network. You have an exponential decrease in opportunities elsewhere versus San Fran (and Seattle and NYC). Forcing, or at least strongly encouraging founders to seek out incubators as the One True Way will restrict, not increase opportunities for founders. What YC is doing is dressing up VC ideology as something that is universally founder-friendly. What's good for the capital owner isn't good for the founder when the founders do not have many options to choose from in the first place. In those situations it is better for the founder to keep more of their pie to themselves versus selling out to the only player in their very local, very small pond.

So if we're bootstrapping side projects instead of looking for angel funding, should we sign up for this future founder track or the original one?

- Indie Hackers

- Rob Walling podcast/blogs

- MicroConf

Are some useful resources to start with

Long-time MicroConf attendee (and one time sponsor). Still, YC has an outsized influence on young people and I'd like to see the bootstrap model expressed as a more obtainable path to one's first million.

- patio11 aka Patrick McKenzie (https://twitter.com/patio11, https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=patio11, and https://www.kalzumeus.com)

I did startup school's first cohort, and I would say it's equally useful for bootstrappers and VC-minded founders. What it is NOT useful for is side projects.

I think nurturing a side project into a full-time business is a whole different skill that's actually quite difficult and requires even more luck than bootstrapping or VC-startuping.

What makes you say that they're different skills? Or, why do you view them differently? I'd love to read more about this distinction.

I feel side projects is something you do for fun or on a whim. You just start building immediately on your off-time with not much expectations. Maybe to try out a new technology. It's more of a solo engineering activity. You build it first, and maybe down the line, something comes of it and you do a Show HN in six months.

A business is more broad and deliberate. From the get-go, you need to constantly be talking to many people, have a process for validating the problem, track metrics, plan your time, think about opportunity costs of pursuing different paths, have sales funnels, marketing, scope things out, etc.

A side hustle is just fundamentally different than a full-time job. On the one hand, something else is paying the bills, so you can be patient. But on the other hand, you can't take meetings 9-5, or push nearly as hard on the work as you could if it was full time, so you have to be patient.

It's quite difficult to work on something enough on the side to build momentum and get it rolling, and it's extra hard to maintain that momentum for long enough for it to reach "escape velocity," that is, to become profitable to where you can quit your day job.

So the challenge of managing the two jobs, and specifically transitioning from day job + hobby (at the beginning), to two jobs but one doesn't really pay well, to finally quitting the first job so you can focus on the bootstrapped project...

That's just a whole different beast from somebody who quits their job and starts a business (with or without raising money).

The momentum part is key. I have several side hustles and sometimes lose steam so I work on something else.

On the plus side, time away from projects allows me to view them with fresh eyes and identify what could be better and/or pivot.

I'm currently bootstrapping as a YC alumni, and I'm going through YC Startup School. The curriculum is just as valuable for bootstrappers! It's all about validating a problem, getting users, planning your time, etc.

The core curriculum doesn't have anything about trying to get investors. There's one video about what YC looks for in a startup application, but even that's still useful for a bootstrapper (clarity of thought).

When I click on Register and login with my YC account, it takes me to "SIGN UP | COMPANY DETAILS (STEP 4/4)" step.

I think I left halfway while signing up in Startup School long time ago for the first time. Is there a way to not fill the company details and sign up for future founders course?

Ah yes, you're not the only one but your comment here helped me diagnose the issue!

I've fixed this issue now and you should be able to select a track and complete registration.

Thanks for the quick fix!

The post fails to specify this, so I hesitated to even bother to click through to the registration page, but this is a free course.

Startup School for Future Founders

A free, 6-week online course for aspiring startup founders.

https://www.startupschool.org/future-founders

I wish I had a clearer idea of what kind of schedule and time commitment is involved. I'm tempted to sign up, but I still have a lot of trouble keeping a schedule, though I'm less impaired than I used to be. I can be productive, but on my own terms, which is why I work from home and yadda.

You know what's funny? I've read the promo material, signed up, and there's little mention of how this program works, whether it's synchronous, async, or what? I'm assuming it's all async, since otherwise, it would be titled "Startup School for future founders who are comfortable with open-ended commitments, because they're young, single and unemployed."

I'm here for the Zoolander meme. Even if it was an accident.

Looks cool! Hoping to learn a lot.

By the way, @dang, the link https://www.startupschool.org/posts/35214 on the page https://www.startupschool.org/dashboard (under "Welcome to the forum") is 404ing for me. Has it not been published yet?

Good catch -- this should be fixed for you now. I'll push a general fix that'll avoid this problem for everyone in the next 20 minutes.

It feels like YC is the mainstream thing nowadays, the traditional school of startupery. But startup founders and hackers like the naughty [0] things, not the established.

[0]: https://youtu.be/4WO5kJChg3w?t=404

That's a bit over-generalized. If someone's idea of doing a naughty thing is not making something people want, not talking to users, not validating a problem, not explaining what you do clearly, I don't think they'll do well at all.

The big value of YC is getting a club of people together doing similar things. I did startup school but the videos got boring. I wish I could interact with other people also doing YC and building their own startups.

Half the value of school is other kids also in the same environment. Easy to forget that when making things online.

This is really great! As a high school student I'm not very experienced with the startup ecosystem but it'll be really interesting to learn more.

I'm getting this response when I try to log in:

    {"status":422,"error":"Unprocessable Entity"}

Hey, please email us a screenshot of the page right before you get that error to startupschool@ycombinator.com and I'll take a look ASAP.

Sent -- appreciated!

A CENTER FOR ANTS???

Serious thank you for doing this!

Really excited for this!

I'm not sure what the ideal % of people should actually start a company is. It certainly isn't for everyone. Perhaps a helpful topic would be "Should I actually be a founder?" or "Should I start a venture scale company or a lifestyle business?". I think many more people would be happy with the consistency and regularity of a small lifestyle business than pursing an opportunity that's billion or bust.

Totally agreed -- starting a company probably isn't the right choice for the majority of people. Our Future Founder curriculum actually includes a couple of Paul Graham's old essays that explore that topic (http://www.paulgraham.com/notnot.html and http://www.paulgraham.com/before.html).

Hopefully, this course will help potential founders make a more informed decision about whether starting a company is the right decision for them or not.

That is certainly a valid point and there should be something on it. Though at the same time a lot of the stages and efforts you need to go through in the beginning (validation, sales, marketing, etc) are very similar.

I never have aspiration that whatever I create will make enough money for me to leave my day job. Give that, I still need to go through all the steps though to get there.

Given how many people are unemployed, I would say a problem in the USA (and probably all developed nations with few exceptions) today is that not enough people start companies. Too many employees, not enough employers.

That said, most people are better suited to starting a small business than a venture financed business. And the former employ vastly more people.

I agree but find it's more a capital and cultural problem to solve. Too many people don't have the financial tolerance for the risk, and too many people with it are too afraid to put it into new ventures.

I think it's school. It teaches you to be a good and compliant little worker drone from a young age. It does not encourage an entrepreneurial mindset.

By the time people are adults the mindset is entrenched.

Solving unemployment isn't that simple:Startups, especially recent startups often increase productivity, and that reduces the amount of jobs or wages.

from what I understand, the first video lecture addresses this.

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