YC got a record number of applications this cycle | Hacker News Reader

YC got a record number of applications this cycle

79 pointspg60 comments

One bit of good news about the economy: would-be startup founders don't seem to have been deterred by it, yet at least. YC got more applications this time than ever, and by a large margin: 10%. The number usually goes up, but rarely so sharply.

It wasn't due to the essay I just wrote about starting a startup in a bad economy. We were already on track for a record before that.

We don't quote actual numbers, lest it tempt competitors into a competition on that account (which could easily be won by encouraging instead of discouraging single founders and undergrads). But we have a long week ahead of us.

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Wouldn't the next cycle be a better indicator? I am guessing it took a while for folks to get co-founders, work on idea towards a prototype, etc. -- all of which took longer than the past few weeks.

Probably. But you'd be surprised how many people decide to apply in the last week, or even on the last day.

Could be a lot of people who applied to fbfund and were not one of the 25 chosen. The winners were announced this past Tuesday.

I doubt that's a factor. Few are doing Facebook apps.

This is purely anecdotal evidence but many of the elevator pitches I saw were from companies and individuals that were adapting their ideas to the fb app paradigm. Facebook is a great distribution channel for any company really, especially when they are giving you a 25,000 dollar grant to build on their platform.

I discovered YCombinator several weeks ago in a blog post about the fbfund/YCombinator meetup written by a July 2008 fbfund recipient. A link was posted prominently on the fbfund Facebook page for at least 4 weeks. This was the only centralized place for fbfund discussion and updates so a lot of applicants checked it regularly and may have found their way to the YC website.

Maybe the demographic data destroys that theory though.

Interesting. I don't want to make assumptions, what percentage of people applied in the last week (80%? 65%? 50%?) and the last day (40%? 25%)?

Thanks, PG!

We spent a few weeks before the deadline editing and re-editing our application. We only submitted it a day before it was due.

Perhaps there were many groups like us who had thought about applying a while and spent time editing their application before sending in the last few days.

I didn't just mean that people submit the application on the last day. That is certainly common. But from talking to founders I've learned that a lot only decide to apply on the last day.

When you already run a startup like we do, you do not have much time to submit, you code, so the deadline sneaks up on you. I would say you can not read much into the submission date.

I don't think you understand his point. He's not just looking at the submission time of the application. He talks to the applicants, and some of them say they didn't decide to apply until the last day. This is different from deciding to apply weeks before the deadline, but not doing it until the last day.

We did something similar. We've been coding furiously throughout the past few weeks, to flesh out in a demo what we thought would be the key differiantiators of our idea. Then we reserved a few days before the deadline to work and re-work the application. We submitted it a day before it was due as well.

Pressing that button was in itself quite satisfying.

Could be that YC is being treated like Grad School. Something you do when it's not a great time to get a job.

I doubt it. I think by the time you're about 21, 3 months and ten or fifteen grand no longer seems like a long time or a lot of money to play with.

Are you saying that YC is not attractive to anyone over 21? Then the numbers seem to be against you. I assume they get a good number of over 21 applicants.

Either way that does not have much to do with it being treated similar to Grad School. There was a thread on here a few days ago on how people got to grad school when jobs get hard to get. It is an alternative to going out & getting a job that becomes more attractive as going out & looking for a job becomes less attractive.

No, not at all. I'm saying that no one over that would think of it as a "kill time before I get a real job" solution.

Do they take people over 30?

At this point, I wonder if it wouldn't make sense to require a demo along with the application? As I recall, virtually all of the summer interviewees had demos, which gave them a significant advantage over other applicants. If YC only continues to get more competitive, I assume there will be no practical downside to requiring a demo, as the few applicants without a demo that are competitive with the top applicants with a demo are presumably not worth wading through all of the other no-demo apps.

Or there might be some other way of capturing them.

(Disclosure: I'm a no-demo applicant.)

As an attempt to defend my no-demo application, i think requiring a demo is a poor route to take. I just found out about YCombinator ten days before the deadline. i can see merit to reducing the number of applicants to sift through, but i think erecting such a significant barrier-to-entry isn't the way to accomplish it.

Fwiw, I'm also a no-demo applicant. But odds are odds, and if last summer's less competitive round tilted almost exclusively in favor of applicants with demos, in virtue of the fact that they had demos, then we're de facto excluded from the process anyway.

it's okay though. i have faith that really great ideas backed by great people <cough> will persevere despite the tilted odds.

i'm sure you feel the same way, if we weren't dreamers we wouldn't be here. may fortune smile upon the applicants who aren't selected, i hope you don't ever give up.

Prototype is something that can help to express your idea better. But, it really contradicts with what everyone always said - the best idea is the idea that can be expressed in one sentence or fewer words.

It also demonstrates a minimum level of competence.

I have a demo because my startup is allready in operation for months. But what is a demo? The technology I demo is very special, but will Ycombinator spot that in a minute? I doubt it, it needs a person presenting the demo. If it is very obvious how good the technology is (it is!), we would not need to apply anymore.

you may get an interview without a demo but a demo is basically required at the interview.

Right, except my point is that, last summer, you basically needed a demo just to get the interview.

I suspect that says more about the applicant pool than the choice of fields in the application.

Will YC fund a reconrd number as well this year?:-)

Could the bump be due to the large number of recent graduates who (presumably) can't get jobs right now?

Doesn't look like it. The age distribution is about what it always is.

What about people that got laid off due to the state of the economy?

I don't know. Are most of the people that gets laid off prime material for startups? I don't think so, but I might be wrong.

I think you should look at a more technical factor. Right now, it is looking better for startups than ever. You have programmable mobile phones, clouds at Amazon and Google, fast Javascript in browsers, computers so fast that interpreted languages can compete and so on. Combine this with the webs ability to reach a massive userbase in a short amount of time. In short: The toolset for startups has never looked better than this. The idea-space on which startup ideas thrives is just getting wider and wider.

Also note that most companies do not get it. The work they want people to do is horribly boring. People have, via the buzz, realized that taking the chance with a startup might be more interesting. Even if they don't succeed they have tried. And here is the killer: they might have failed, but they have learned more compared to a "common" job.

I don't know if they're prime material, but that wouldn't stop the supply of people who are willing to apply. It's just a hypothesis, anyways -- if there are more people than jobs, the number of people looking for work will go up. being a YCombinator startup is still some sort of job.

You sound very, very excited. Congrats on reaching so many people, and I hope the quality of the applications is as strong or better than ever.

It feels weird not applying to YC since I have applied for all the cycles in the last 2 years. Good luck to everyone I know how nervous I would get waiting after applying.

I guess the good news is that I am not applying because we are doing well with out startup and moving forward with customers.

Congratulations on moving forward. Are you bootstrapping your operations?

We got some small funding, and have been working to raise a larger round.

We also are hoping we ca start making break even revenue pretty soon.

Best of luck to all the applicants and to you PG on reading them! =)

Indeed -- having applied I've got to say there is benefit in even just applying. So well done even if you got that far.

This is even aside from the individual questions on the application (which are good questions to ask none-the-less). Going through the process lets you look at your idea and your proposition in a bit more of a structured way. Our ideas didn't change, but certainly our focus and outlook did.

Also, one thing that's interesting about ycombinator's application, compared to a competitor such as alphalab.org is how much their application focuses on you, the founder, and your relationship to other founders.

The advice my friend Jeremy has given me, through his own start up venture, is that you really have to be solid on the founders. It certainly let us 'narrow our focus' in terms of who we'd want to be working with for our start up.

Obviously- YC is a perfect place to learn (and practice) efficiency + frugality, both key success factors for any company, start up or grown up.

Add to that the fact that this is an excellent time to be doing a start-up(especially if you can offer a distinct cost advantage, and complement it w/ a business model that works at an empirical level).

So we ought to see some sensible wonders coming out of YC soon enough. Cheers, and good luck to all YC applicants..!

I'd say for a young company like YC which seems to be getting plenty of attention from blogs and the overall startup community, 10% doesn't sound very impressive.

In comparison, YC news readership must have grown a lot more then 10% in the last year.

Good luck to all the entrants and may the force be with PG in looking through them all! Perhaps my group will be lucky enough to be a finalist invited to the meeting, despite not having an active demo that they have access to.

That's awesome. I thought people would be more risk averse in this economy.

Although risky in terms of the likelihood of failure of a business, I think at this point in time funded start-ups are actually significantly less risky careers than regular jobs.

It's good to know exactly where your money is coming from for the next X months, and to know for sure that no one can arbitrarily fire you so long as you do your job (your job being to ensure there's enough money to cover your salary, whether by fund-raising or, better, making sales).

I agree - and man I can't tell you how glad I am I left a finance job to do a startup - even if we end up failing.

Funny story, I almost took a job at Lehman. I had an offer, but I hesitated to take it because I knew it would seriously decrease the chances that I could launch my start-up successfully... I told this to my girlfriend, and she pointed out that starting my own business was many people's life dream, and it was within my reach, and might be a once in a lifetime opportunity.

On the other hand, the Lehman job would still be there in a year if my business failed.

Well, she was wrong in one of those statements!

Sounds like a keeper :).

Oh yes :-)

Best of luck to all applicants! I think the financial situation in the world only helps separate the wheat from the chaff, i.e. those true entrepreneurs wishing to work hard through the bad (now a bit longer) and good times to build a real business from those with a "strike-it-rich-fast" attitude, typical of economic bubbles. I also believe YC is expected to see an improvement in the quality of the applications.

You are growing as a company, so one would think that with extra press and more success stories, your applications will continue to go up regardless of the economy, because your audience is larger.

It's more likely that you've reached the "tipping point" than any other macro variable out there.

Regardless, your message is getting through to more and more people. Given that I like your message, congrats!

All the best to all the applicants ....

I wanted to apply but this model suit me ... as I am a single founder ... and I am not a hacker...

I would suspect that the number would continue to increase as the reader base here, and the YC effect continues to propagate. However, what I'd be interested in knowing is if the type of start up ideas has changed due to the economic climate; possibly fewer that are CPM based (and I don't mean the one with PIP).

I wonder if, during the next application cycle, you'll receive a bonus uptick in applications due to people having been made redundant, as our friends across the pond say. Being jobless can turn even the most mild mannered programmer into a super entrepreneur.

I guess the applications vary significantly by nature - but it would be interesting to see if the economic climate had caused the general flavour of the applications to change... or at the very least caused the founders to put a different lens on their idea.

Ah - I think its because of the success of companies like reddit and posterous. As they get popular, so does ycombinator...

All the best to all the applicants...and to YC for the tough week ahead! :P

Does this mean YC is "recession proof?"

best of luck to everyone!

competitors at last

Best of luck to the other teams, we'll see you in January

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