You Didn’t Make It to Y Combinator or TechStars, Now What?
blog.fairsoftware.net
blog.fairsoftware.net
If you couldn't sell yourself to YC, you may not sell to your customers either, or other investors, or future employees, etc etc etc
Learn how to sell. Your idea is probably fine - 95% of YC-accepted companies are building tiny incremental improvements to existing products.
A basketball team will be more likely to draft you because you've de-risked yourself, you are probably already on your way to winning the NCAA.
I wrote a little about this before on my blog about getting into YC, etc.: http://andrewlee.com/2009/03/01/startup-march-madness-2009-g...
You mention using the $15K in funding to buy a graphic design,or to pay for some PR. The idea behind the $15K in funding is (as I understand it, never having directly participated) is that it is just enough to cover reasonable living expenses. It is enough to take your mind off of "how will I pay my rent", but not enough to put your mind on "what clubs will I party at this weekend after I spend a day surfing (ocean surfing, not web surfing).
You make reference to Googleing obsessively on certain topics to learn. But how do you know that which you do not know? I've been involved in startups for years, and I still learned things in the very first Startup School ('05, I think), that I had never considered before. No amount of Google-fu would have been as efficient or effective. It is safe to assume that having 1-1 time with pg and his ilk would be massively more valuable than having direct access to Googles entire cache of startup-related data.
You also overly discount the value of what you label as "notoriety". No matter what you build, you have to get your message out there somehow. Being prefiltered as a valuable or insightful company can accelerate the growth of your product/company.
At the end of the day, YC and programs like it are not the only way to launch a company. But I think the value, especially to "entry level entrepreneurs" is pretty significant.
You've got to eat somehow. Not everyone's lucky enough to have the resources to code in isolation for months without thinking about business development. Plus when you finish coding and have to present, you've missed out on valuable practice opportunities ;)
Let's say t will take a year for your startup to take off or make it to a funding event. For 3 people, you'd be splitting $415/month. Some people can make that kind of income with one day of IT consulting, so there are workarounds to getting into YC.
Again, don't get me wrong: if you are accepted, by all means take the offer!
I wouldn't really expect a startup to operate on $15k for a year; the whole point is you use it as a springboard for further funding, surely?
I think its like spending a year on a product on your own, vs 3 months being gently advised.
"It’s great if you are the kind who learns by sitting passively on a chair listening to someone."
it's clear you don't understand what happens within YC.
We don't have classes where people sit and listen to us talk about stuff that they could, if they were sufficiently diligent, find by searching in Google. Nearly all interactions we have with startups are about their specific situation: things like what features to build first, when to launch, what to say on the frontpage, how to deal with specific investors they're talking to, etc.
I wasn't referring to YC specifically when I wrote the original paragraph, I had other incubators in mind. Sorry if it sounded too harsh.