Y Combinator: Winter 2014 Funding | Hacker News Reader

Y Combinator: Winter 2014 Funding

ycombinator.com

41 pointsdotmanish12 comments

I read this excellent answer on Quora by Harjeet Tagar on whether or not YC would fund a startup that competes with one of its portfolio companies: https://www.quora.com/Y-Combinator/Is-it-worth-applying-to-Y...

Curious if people here would still apply if they knew a competitor was accepted in a previous batch.

When and why did the funding of companies decreased significantly? Last year it was sill 80k. I assume this $10k is enough to survive for 3 months and after that if the outcome is positive, a next serious round will be introduced.

http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/08/y-combinator-opens-new-clas...

That was between S12 and W13:

http://ycombinator.com/w13smaller.html

I can't find the source for the cut in extra VC funding but it was around the same time.

What was the age of oldest person you accepted as founder? What is the preferred age group?

Do you accept husband-wife as founding team? Have you accepted any such teams in the past?

What if the founders don't need money? They only want to be part of the program for experience, expertise, and networking?

The founders of lanyrd were a husband/wife pair who recently had a really interesting blog post about their startup on the hn frontpage. http://blog.natbat.net/post/61658401806/lanyrd-from-idea-to-...

Many of these questions are already answered :

http://ycombinator.com/faq.html

There were at least three husband-wife teams in our W13 batch, including ours (Lollipuff). There are also at least three couples (pre-marriage during YC, one just recently married). Multiple groups with families (spouses / children) too.

The problem with age is, it isn't static. Being in your 20's and being single is a very time limited advantage. And it goes away in some 5-6 years. Then you are in the same boat as the remaining population.

This is also why you, yourself should not pay much importance to your age. Unless you stand to lose more than to gain(Like close years to retirement, and you are making big gambles with your money). Anytime apart from that and you must just go away and do what you want to do.

> The problem with age is, it isn't static.

That is indeed one of the big problems. However it is not the most critical problem. The critical problem is that it is finite.

Life being finite years is indeed a problem.

But there is hardly any point in long life, when you get weak, sick and lose all the teeth as you age.

Health is the key, not old age. If life were to be infinite, with all the suffering around it would be a curse not a blessing.

> What if the founders don't need money? They only want to be part of the program for experience, expertise, and networking?

This is an interesting question.

My 2 cents....

I suggest that there is much more value in the experience, expertise, and networking than in the money. That being said, the money is necessary for some startups based on their (potential) business model or the circumstances of their founders.

Even if the money is not needed, it's a trivial amount for the YC folks to guarantee across the board for the access they get to the ground floor of some of the best startups.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com