Applications Open for Winter 2013 YC Funding | Hacker News Reader

Applications Open for Winter 2013 YC Funding

ycombinator.com

246 pointspg140 comments

Are you looking for a co-founder?

I've created this Google survey so that you can put in a little information about yourself, and what you're looking for:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dDAtOWh...

When you fill it out, you can see the other responses.

Perhaps you won't find a co-founder, but at least you might meet other people to talk to.

[edit: This is my first survey on google docs, so if I need to change any of the sharing permissions let me know.]

[edit 2: Here is the spreadsheet of results. Please respect the contributors, and don't use the spreadsheet unless you actually filled out the survey yourself. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AnaOC0UphlFtdDA... ]

I wanted to jump in here and to caution that finding a cofounder with the specific intent of applying for this round of YC would be a bad idea. Keep in mind that a co-founding relationship is very much a relationship, and you have to "date" a bit before you get married — having a startup is like having a child, you want to know a potential cofounder is the right person to found a startup with first.

That said, be inspired to try finding a cofounder now, work with them for a few months and keep S13 in mind — it might all fall into place by the time the next round comes around. And if you can't find a cofounder, don't be afraid of being persistant and just learning the skills necessary to build and launch startup solo, since a great cofounder is likely to come along if you already have an intriguing product launched.

Agree. Take the wrong co-founder and you will regret for a long time.

I agree completely. Founder dating should take longer than one funding cycle.

I posted this mainly because it was an appropriate parent story, not because I think winter cofounders should do accelerated dating.

Just to add, if you think you can raise your child (startup) alone than don't be afraid to do that either. You'll never know, the right co-founder may be just around the corner, if at all

Exactly. I worked on my startup for a little over a year before my current awesome cofounder joined me (approached me since I had already "proven" myself, I wasn't explicitly searching). Big fan of just leaping forward and doing it yourself.

Self-promotion, two articles I wrote on the subject: "I'm a designer who learned Django and launched her first webapp in 6 weeks" http://www.limedaring.com/im-a-designer-who-learned-django-a...

"How to thrive as a solo non-technical founder" http://weddinglovely.com/blog/how-to-survive-as-a-solo-desig...

Also don't be afraid of being persistent in getting feedback on your existing ideas, even if you are a solo founder.

It's probably next to impossible to get early feedback on a YC application but there's now one more way to turn impossible to possible: http://lookapinky.com

I don't see it as a wholly bad idea -- sometimes things do click. I think it certainly depends on the people involved.

I've thought about applying as a solo-founder (knowing the caveats), but may just continue to use my spare time to flesh things out and target Spring 2013. Assuming a wet winter, that is a good time for getting some serious coding done -- less distraction to want to be outside.

I've been a long time lurker on HN and just signed up because of this survey. I appreciate you posting this and hopefully I'll run into someone with similar goals/mindset as me.

EDIT: I just noticed that after filling out the form, I never actually get a hyperlink to the google document. Can you post this?

I completed & submitted the form but there's no way to see other entries, just to create a new form or submit a new entry. Do you have a link to the completed doc? Thanks.

Good idea. I've filled in my entry. Some spam entries on there already though.

For those who prefer working offline, I've created a raw-text version of the application here: https://github.com/nickbarnwell/YC/blob/empty_app/form.txt

It was very useful for me when faux-applying to have the dark glow of vim instead of the YC page's harsh white, and I thought I might put it out there for others to use.

The previous time we applied, we pasted the text version on a google doc and created two versions (main and redacted versions), which we were then shared with the team and our app-reviewers (for the app-reviewers, disable editing and allow only for comments). We found this strategy to be really helpful in gathering feedback and more importantly it helped speed up filling up the app.

I have a whole writing workflow built around using vim and git for testing out new story ideas or structure, and this format works best for in terms of rebasing/merging at the very end. It's really about getting all the distractions out of the way and taking a long, hard look at your business - whatever gets you to that point is awesome :)

For such things I invariably use WriteRoom. I find formatting and futzing with a web app to be built in procrastination mechanisms. It's generally trivial to spend a few minutes copying and pasting once the actual text is done.

http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/writeroom

I'm partial to writer.vim - aesthetically similar to WriteRoom with none of the foreign keybindings.

WriteRoom is nice—it's also one of the first distraction-free writing app—but i prefer to use Byword. I like to combine paragraph focus with full screen for distraction free mode. Also it support markdown syntax, that for me is a must have for a writing app.

http://bywordapp.com

There is a whole spectrum of vision impairments (pun intended) involving excessive sensitivity to bright light. As you might expect, there is no single answer to all of them. A lot of people have trouble with white background and dark text normally seen in applications and on the web.

The best answer is knowing how to configure your software. There's actually a reason for the ancient phrase "User Agent" which predates the web by decades; your software should be an agent for you and handle the details for you much like a Hollywood agent takes care of the details for a star.

You can configure some web browsers to take care of the pesky details for you like fixing dark text on white background:

http://www.designtools.org/pix/news.ycombinator.com_w2013for...

For me, with my config, every website looks basically like that. The web would be nearly unusable for me otherwise.

I can hear the "artistic designer" faction gathering their torches and pitchforks due to me offending their skilled sensibilities with something so ugly, but when you have a disability, often your only choice is between something less cool and nothing at all.

This (and not div shadows) is exactly why CSS was invented. If you're looking for a web browser that lets you quickly change the look for individual web pages, try Opera.

PG: What would your advice be to someone with no co-founder? Apply anyway and see what you think, or don't even bother and wait until you've found someone to work with?

I appreciate the issues with single founder companies however am finding it hard to locate someone with the required interest and skill in my area.

As someone who applied as a single founder (and got in), just apply anyway. However, ensure that you get across that you are indeed open to finding a co-founder.

Thanks Oliver, that's reassuring. May I ask what happened after you were accepted - did you find a co-founder then?

Yep, pretty much immediately after starting YC I met my co-founder (through an intro from PG).

For what it's worth, about 15% of last batch had only one founder: http://blog.statwing.com/a-statistical-portrait-of-a-y-combi...

That I did not know. I always thought that single founder companies were quite rare. Many thanks.

Get a cofounder. If your startup succeeds, you could spend 5 years or more working on it. It's rounding error to spend 6 months making a concerted effort to find a cofounder first. And while it can be hard to find a cofounder, it's not as hard as starting a successful startup.

Thanks for the reply. Based on your response and the responses of others, I think that I will in all likelihood apply with the intention of searching for someone to work with (perhaps local to SF) if my application progresses. If it does not, it will allow me to focus my search on my local area. Thanks again :-)

For me has been extremely hard to find a cofounder. Hey there people from Dallas TX, do you want to create something awesome and needs a developer!? Please contact me.

If you're not set on being in the same location, check out my entry in the co-founder spreadsheet and see if we could match.

pg:

Do you make a distinction between "solo founder who is and intends to remain solo" and "solo founder who just hasn't happened to meet the right co-founder(s) yet?"

Just curious, as I see those as being pretty distinct cases. With Fogbeam Labs, I was a "solo founder" for a year or so, before our second founder came onboard, and then it was about 8 months after that when our 3 founder joined up. I imagine other people find themselves in that place where they are open to (even seeking) a co-founder, but just haven't met the right person yet.

In any case, my thought, FWIW, is that a founder should keep working on advancing their vision, whether or not they have located (a) co-founder(s) yet. I wouldn't "stop the world" to do nothing but look for a co-founder.

The unfortunate fact is that there is not much difference between the two cases. Most people who are looking for a cofounder when they start YC are still looking for one 6 months later. Alarmingly often that's because they recruited one in the interim who's already gone.

hehe, has gone in 6 months after going through YC? those solo founders must be really priceless then:)

Co-founder dynamics are extremely important and extremely fragile.

You are choosing someone to go on long term journey, where you will no longer only be building something cool, but you'll be building a company, be responsible for hiring and, God forbid, firing people. You will be responsible for your employee's lives, and their families, you will be responsible for your investors time and effort to make all your promises come true.

All of this becomes extremely harder after you've been traveling alone for a long time (which can often be a few months, as startups are that intense). Sharing all this responsibilities with someone who has not been there from day one is challenging for both parties: can you trust them to be with you in the long run, do you agree in fundamental things, how do you deal with different company stakes and vesting periods? And, if you ever pivot (as many successful startups have[1]), how will all of these pressures come to live?

And it gets worse after you get investment (in the form of YC money, angel money, and progressively more) as your choice of co-founder will likely reflect on you, from your investor's idea. And it always add risk to the table, no matter how you put it.

All of this while still working and growing your startup.

Don't take this lightly. It may be harder to find a proper co-founder under these circumstances than founding a successful startup. But being able to have people you trust beside you building a company can be an invaluable thing.

[1] http://www.fastcompany.com/1836238/how-eric-ries-coined-pivo...

A founder is someone who founds the company along with you, it seems you are saying people should just find a random person and call them a co-founder? Why can't there just be one founder?

Drew Houston originally applied as a single founder (and then lined up a talented and committed co-founder) and turned into one of YC's two biggest successes so far, so take heart.

He filled out the online application as a single founder but he had found Arash by interviews, a few weeks later.

Was Arash central to choosing to invest? What I mean is do you think you would have passed if he hadn't found a co-founder by the interviews?

I'm pretty sure we'd have funded him anyway. Trevor had tried his prototype and said it was good. The big advantage of Arash (and of good cofounders in general) was not that he got Dropbox through YC interviews but that he helped make the company successful.

Even if you manage to get in without a co-founder, you'll probably still want a co-founder. I've talked to several YC alums without a co-founder looking to hire an employee who can serve as a co-founder.

I absolutely do however I want to find someone as enthusiastic as I am, not somebody who is just coming along for the ride because I convinced them it's a great idea. Where I am currently (location-wise), finding the former will be harder than the latter, I suspect, and if possible I would rather work with someone locally rather than remotely.

I totally agree with you, you don't want to take finding a co-founder lightly. Just meant it as a heads-up. Apply as a single-founder anyway :)

Hey kaolinite, where are you based? Are you still in school?

I'm from Liverpool, UK. I turned down a place at university to become a programmer as I was sick of formal education, preferring instead to teach myself. It's a choice I regret in some ways but the past few years since leaving college have been fun, working as a programmer.

There's a growing startup scene in the UK. You may have to travel as far as Edinburgh or London, but go to enough events and you should run into plenty of people with the same kinds of passions. Add to that looking in places where people share your subject passion, and I'm sure you'll find someone. It's all about hustling.

There certainly is and I have become move involved with it, especially in recent months. Still finding it tricky to locate someone however and most people I have met have been quite considerably older than me. You're right though - it may be time to start looking outside of my local area, however it would be nice to find someone who I could meet regularly to hack at ideas with.

Getting a startup off the ground is not a one man job. Sooner you get another pair of hands and a brain to help you out with this task the better. Why wait until accepted or not accepted? It's irrelevant, you just need at least one more person besides yourself

PG, if my co-founder and I are currently bootstrapping a company and starting to work with a law firm to go through all the formalities of incorporation, would you recommend holding off on that for a few months in case we are accepted into YC? It's not cheap (by far) to pay for that stuff out of pocket, and I imagine YC has a lot more experience guiding young companies through the formation process, so curious about your opinion. Thanks.

in my experience, regardless of your application to YC it is a good idea to get things documented. not because you mistrust your cofounder, or anything of that sort. simply it puts everyones mind at ease for what they get out of it. not having documentation lingers in the back of your mind.

just my 2 cents.

Totally agree about getting everyone on the same page and putting things on paper. The main reason I asked, however, is cost. Some lawyers have squishy/unpredictable pricing when it comes to formation and advice, while the fixed "good" ones are not cheap (e.g. ~$5K). Others try to wave their hands around pricing and just use a "pay it later" approach, but we'd rather keep things simple. I was just wondering if it's safer to get YC help/guidance to make sure we don't get burned, in case we get in since the timing between now and the deadline is almost a rounding error.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2246544: > Don't incorporate, though, if you can avoid it. It's easier to start with our paperwork than to transfer an existing LLC or S-Corp to a C-Corp.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1778985: > It's not a deal-breaker unless it's botched. The right way to do it would be to use a convertible note written so that YC funding wouldn't trigger conversion. If you have a lawyer who can arrange that. But you'd have to incorporate, and you (and we) would then be stuck with however you did, so we'd hope you did it right.

According to those and other previous comments from him, they prefer it if you leave the incorporation process up to YC, since they specialize in setting up startups, but if you've already incorporated (or even taken funding), it's not a deal-breaker -- unless it's been done in a way that's incompatible with YC investment.

Thank you! That helps a lot.

you can also incorporate before applying (if you're serious about the idea). Use services like LegalZoom, they cost around $300-$600.

In the event that you do get into YC, or raise 5-6 figures of seed money, you can always go to a lawyer and reissue stock certs, articles of incorporation, etc.

YC will make it extremely easy to incorporate, so do that if you can.

PG, in the question asking if founders are available to move to the Bay Area, you still have June through August rather than January through March.

Fixed, thanks.

Did the "no idea" application option pan out last year? Is that being treated differently this cycle?

PG - My cofounder and I have a product already (about to launch). But we have doubts that we may not be able to get in with that idea based on the previous ideas that got selected for YC. Should we apply with our current idea, come up with a completely new idea, or apply as a no idea?

Of course, apply with your current idea. None of the accelerators have anything against existing product. The later the stage, the easier it gets to make a decision. And from your side, your product hold more truth than the application itself.

On the other hand, if you are about to launch but you are ready to give up something at this stage just to work on something else for YC, you have a different problem, think again :)

I've been interested in applying to YC for quite a while, but recently I graduated and moved to the south bay (near Mountain View) for work. It really stood out to me this time that $11,000 + $3,000n is not a lot of money. With 3 founders that's $20,000. 3 founders working in the tech industry can make $20,000 PER MONTH on typical salaries. It seems like it would be more appealing to people without good paying work, or who are interested more for the connections (which maybe applies to me, I'm thinking about it). Assuming all 3 founders cohabit (which I think is standard), this is a reasonable amount of money to live on, but it would be fairly bare bones if my quick mental math is right.

It's not about the money, it's enough to survive. The founders of Reddit after selling their company for tens of millions went through YC again for Hipmunk. It's not about the money, its about the people.

Exactly. That's the main reason I want to get accepted into YC. The contacts and people you meet are going to be way more valuable to you and your startup than the money itself. If you had a good paying job, you could probably save up and fund the $11k yourself. YC is just a good way to fast track your startup and get it moving right from the beginning.

I've always looked at the yc program not as a means to get funds but rather as a sort of exclusive community where you get very good advice for your startup. if money is crucial for starting your business then you might indeed be better of with more traditional VCs.

Don't forget that Start Fund offers every YC startup a $150k uncapped convertible note.

(1) You get $150,000 from Start Fund.

(2) As founders, you should NOT be paying yourselves real salary until you raise significant money. Even then, you should be paying yourselves on the order of $50-60K/year, modulo a few edge cases if you have a family, mortgage, etc.

50-60k in the BAY AREA? Yikes!

As a startup founder, you should NOT be paying yourself anywhere near $20k/month - that's why you have equity. If the company does well, you'll make a lot when you get bought or IPO.

I said 3 founders at their day jobs would make >= $20k/month. Not that I would pay each of them that much.

The way to think about this is:

burn rate = (runway)^(-1)

Reining in your burn rate as much as feasible is one of the easiest ways to extend your runway, and your chance of getting to awesomeness.

A typical job is a better way to maximize one's disposable income reliably next month or next year.

"It seems like it would be more appealing to people without good paying work"

Good paying work is golden handcuffs.

Many of the people who started on the net (90's) were able to do so because they had nothing else significant going on at the time. If they had a high paid corporate job, or even a "normal" paying job, were an attorney, or even ran a small business, they had neither the time nor did it make sense to take chances.

If you have nothing, as Dylan said, you have nothing to lose.

One thing I noticed while in YC was that the most successful people I met (founders, investors, etc) weren't primarily motivated by the financial rewards. Money is a result of a successful venture, not the main objective.

Point is, founding a startup doesn't actually make sense from a financial perspective. Most often you will be more profitable having been employed.

Will YC consider funding a nanotechnology company?

Sure!

Finally, robots!

I just want to ask whether a prototype and customers willing to use the product will be valuable for YC? The problem is we are an unproven team and because YC focuses more on the teams rather than ideas, should we wait for the YC S13 applications? Your take on that?

A prototype and customers willing to use the product are forms of traction that YC looks for. There is no harm in applying now and then applying again later if you get rejected, other than your time.

Is there a list somewhere of these metrics/things which look good/signs of success to have before applying?

If not, care to flesh out a few more?

I'm not a YC founder/partner but as far as my knowledge goes, I don't think YC discriminates between hardware and software startups.

We had 6 hardware startups in the most recent batch in fact.

Can a non-citizen currently on H1B visa apply?

Absolutely. Many people apply even without a H1B

I think it is fair to say that YC doesn't care about your immigration status.

YC has a great community to discuss this kind of question: do not let your immigration status prevent you from applying.

A very valid question.How about those on H4?

As some might know the H1 for this year has been used up (unlike in the past 4-5 years), will YC still be ok accepting ideas/startups that cannot be on h1?

Some clarity on this front will be very helpful for immigrants :)

Unless I'm mistaken, H1B is not the visa that YC founders would use anyway. Even if you have an H1B visa, you would still have to re-apply for the appropriate visa.

Hey, thanks for the response.

I am not very sure there is another visa that might work well, unless the founders are from Canada/Australia (maybe even Europe not sure). Rest of the founders might still have to be on H1 if my research is right.

This is interesting for me also. I'm an Italian citizen and I would like to apply and relocate to the Bay Area. But I need to figure out the entire visa thing, and how to make it work for starting company.

Please look into the B category first (both b1 & B2), for the 3 months period. After YC, if you get funding, as a founder you should look at the E visa category. I believe E2 visa is the one for founders with secured funding that can realistically create 10 american jobs in the long run.

Thanks, I will dig into it.

PG, any results from the apply without an idea experiment?

It's still too early to tell.

I took the guidelines to say the important thing about the idea submission is that it provides evidence the founders are smart. Wouldn't smart founders still want to take advantage of every opportunity to provide such evidence?

I asked PG yesterday and last week here are the links: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4507244 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4475469

Based on previous years, this means:

* Interviews will be around November 25th [EDIT: November 27th-Dec 1]

* First dinner will be around November 30th [EDIT: Early January]

* Demo day will be approximately March 25th

Interviews are November 27 through December 1. The first dinner will be the first tuesday in January.

PG the first Tuesday in January 2013 happens to be New Years Day, 1-Jan-2013

are you implying they should be on vacation instead? :)

When that happens we usually make it the second tuesday.

If you are in an immigration limbo (came to the states as a young kid, have no SS#) are you able to apply? Basically I'm in the same position as Jose Vargas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jose_Antonio_Vargas)

YC doesn't care about immigration status, and doesn't even look (they're not hiring you).

But won't this matter if you get, for example, first round funding from a VC firm?

If you build a US based company that you intend to work at, you will need valid US immigration status. But YC doesn't care, they just assume you'll sort that out.

You may want to try http://www.founder2be.com as an additional tool in your co-founder search.

Note: I co-founded this up after not finding a co-founder for an earlier idea myself. Somehow this idea of building a match.com for co-founder seems to have filled a need and now there are 10,000 or so incl. current and ex- Googlers, Apple, etc.

I love the topic of co-founder finding. Also because some people have surprisingly strong opinions about whether a service like this can be possible at all or if you need to go way back with your co-founder.

As was said earlier, the Dropbox co-founders did not know each other long before... I think anything is possible. It depends on the co-founders ;)

If there are any teams who want to do security or network/server/cloud infrastructure stuff for S13, I'd be very interested in talking with them -- I know a lot of YC founders and might be able to give you useful advice.

Hey I'm looking for a technical co-founder for summer 2013 or later. I won't be ready until then. I don't know much about the business side of things so if you could bring that to the table, awesome.

About me: I've been programming since I was 14, I'm 22, just graduated from college, and working at a big company in the valley (think Google/Microsoft/Apple). I have a few ideas and would be interested in hearing yours.

Send me an email at mapcat@outlook.com

Winter is coming, and your company should be too. Apply.

Very sneaky doing this during the Apple iPhone 5 launch event. I wonder how many ideas just got doomed and founders now have to do something new.

i doubt any startups were planning to launch the iPhone 5.

in your eyes, what exactly have they announced that would cause someone to pivot?

Various iOS 6 features: panoramic photos, photo stream, shared photo stream. Also the loyalty card market (passbook).

Also, missing stuff: there's no NFC, so NFC payments are pushed out for another year in favor of scan-screen.

iPod Nano pedometer kind of kills fitbit somewhat (or a new fitbit like product, including sleep monitors like wakemate).

Arguably the sapphire crystal vs. glass lens for camera makes the market tougher for iPhone/iPod Touch cases.

New iTunes + iTunes Match/iCloud features should hurt Pandora/Spotify type companies.

Any serious founder(s) would have either attended WWDC or known from their network what was discussed there.

Many of the things released today were not in the WWDC iOS 6 talks or iOS 6 betas, or were not extended as far.

Unfortunately Apple have adopted a philosophy of rejecting any app that loosely competes with iOS native apps - we for example had an app rejected for allowing users to share apps on Facebook/Twitter... the reason given was apparently it didn't provide any additional functionality over the native app (even though it did!)

Would sketches/rough drafts/db designs/etc. count as a demo? Not sure if it would even be worth posting if you guys don't care about that stuff.

I'm not ready to apply for YC yet, but if anyone is based in Atlanta, please touch base.

My areas of expertise include CS and biochem. I'm starting to hack around with lasing now, too. I'm very interested in edutech, bioinfo, and cheminfo. I'm also in the process of exploring two "novel" (read: absurd?) market spaces right now and I'd love to chat about it.

I'm echelon at gmail.

I'm in the bay. Background in matsci. Got interesting ideas?

Out of curiosity (since nobody every mentions this), do successful entrepreneurs every apply (and get in?). Obviously someone with a previous exit already has a network of investors, co-founder(s), etc., but could the exposure via YC (and Start Fund funding) warrant applying? Or is YC's mission geared towards new entrepreneurs?

Kul had an informative post about doing YC a second time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3520856

Few months ago, I've seen a post which gave list of Questions every start up entrepreneur must answer. It was a list of around or more than 30 questions. I've been searching for it for past one week. If any one know, what I'm looking for, kindly post it.

We are still waiting to hear back from AngelPad after 2 months. I personally prefer the smaller size of AngelPad to YC. But I'm hopeful we'll hear back and get into AngelPad before application date of YC, if not we'll be applying to YC to hedge our bets.

They are both excellent programs. I definitely wouldn't be disappointed if I got accepted in YC or AngelPad. If you get a confirmed yes from AngelPad, ONLY then re-evaluate your choice. Remember that YC graduates have a convertible note from StartFund as well.

To your point, we'll plan on applying to YC. But just so you know, AngelPad also gives about $100k of additional fund from other investors on top of the $6k/n.

However, the size of angelpad 10-12 makes me feel you get a lot more attention and focus than a class of 70-80.

BTW, are you a YC applicant or graduate yourself?

I've applied to YC before. I'm not sure If I'll apply this cycle, especially since I don't have a co-founder for my startup team.

Cool...would you mind letting me know if you did get an interview or not-thanks!

Does YC fund companies outside US ?

I am from Brazil and I would love to apply, but there is no mention about US ousiders.

Thanks

I'm a rails hacker and user acquisition/web analytics expert looking for a cofounder in the bay area to apply to the next round of YC. If anyone is interested in chatting, please email me (email address in my profile). Thanks!

For all those applying, this blog post was really helpful when we applied. We were in the W12 batch.

http://www.giftrocket.com/yc-application-checklist

Given that some people think YC is starting to see scaling problems, I wonder if they will continue the trend of growing each class size or try to keep it around the same (or maybe even try to scale it down?).

How does YC view larger start ups? For example a start up serving the enterprise with 6 people including sales and marketing? Too many people to participate in the program?

PG: are music related products still something you are avoiding? We have found a clever way around the liability and would like to apply with it.

They've accepted several music-related startups in the last batch or two. Maybe the bar is higher, but they still accept them regardless of the hesitation. There is a difference between a music startup that needs millions in upfront record label deals and one that relies on getting music in other ways (e.g. artists upload their own music with consent).

Music startups are ok so long as you don't have to license label music.

Beautiful.

Perfect, thanks. Will be applying with Kindful. Good luck everyone. Was impressed with the quality of the last couple of cycles.

in the video, is humor generally seen as a good thing or as distracting from the pure message? what about a 'fucking [adjective]' sprinkled here and there to drive the point home?

Is there a way to access/download our previous applications?

can anyone confirm the Start fund's $150K convertible debt note is still on the table for every YC startup?

Good luck everybody

Already applied.

im sure i'll get in this time ;)

If you really believe in you startup then _you_ should be handing out forms to potential investors, and you should be giving _them_ 10 min interviews. If your service/product is great then you will have potential investors lining up.

Did Facebook, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Twitter or Dell use YC or anything similar? In my opinion YC is a business to make money out of desperate entrepreneurs.

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