A not-so-obvious reason to apply to YC | Hacker News Reader

A not-so-obvious reason to apply to YC

yvonne.posthaven.com

184 pointsmatoe33 comments

>YC is at its core a group of great people.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I actually thought that was the obvious reason to most applicants.

A $120k investment from YC doesn't provide that much runway. That kind of money doesn't give much wiggle room for founders to splurge on luxuries like Aeron chairs and fancy cappuccino machines. That amount is to allow a small team to live in near-poverty in the SF Bay area for ~6 months and maybe also buy some tech necessities like AWS EC2 time. Basically, provide some breathing room for founders to not worry about rent and put the focus on building their idea. What other reason to work 60+ hours a week in modest conditions unless it was the networking and interaction?

This is what I was about to say. If you want money, go to investors. If you want a community, join an incubator.

Ehhhh... Aren't there syndicates standing ready with millions for every YC startup on Demo Day? I think YC acceptance is worth at least 10 million in funding.

That's... not true. I may have missed sarcasm here, but do you really think every company at demo day gets $10 mil?

It's not guaranteed, but it almost certainly raises the odds. The YC "brand" and investor exposure is quite valuable on its own, even independent of any other benefits.

Pretty sure I read about at least a few million automatically on demo day, depending on the startup my guess is getting up to 10 in the year following is not a bad bet. I suppose someone whould have to crunch the numbers.

If you read it...that must be true then I guess

It was much less not too long ago, as well.

I would suspect that this is non-obvious to people who view YC as a structured, semi-guaranteed route to success, the way many people view a degree from a prestigious university. I know many people who are 'interested' in startups and crave some kind of validation that they are a real entrepreneur before sinking their teeth in. My university even offers a 1 year diploma in entrepreneurship. Madness! As though formal training will help you make the hard decisions you face as a founder.

> As though formal training will help you make the hard decisions you face as a founder.

Formal training means a way to structure your thoughts and assess risks. Don't dismiss it out of hand.

Point taken. Education is of course a valuable thing - but a year's worth of instruction on entrepreneurship after you've already got a degree?

Why not? If someone has a degree in something technical I could imagine following a curriculum consisting partly of corporate finance management, fundraising, HR and other corporate issues for a year could be valuable, especially if they offer night classes or something like that so that you can still be working on your main idea.

Most college new grads are not exactly CEO material from the get-go.

I would assert that a recent graduate who wants to be an entrepreneur is mostly doing themselves a disservice by studying those things. It focuses your thoughts on how to run a business rather than how to solve a problem or turn an industry on its head.

Sure, many of those things could come in handy in the future - but there are far more difficult things which you also have to learn "as you go".

Entrepreneurship isn't limited to VC-funded moonshots.

Lots of people just want to be their own boss and run a viable business.

Great point.

Interestingly, I see several tech startups of this nature started by folks having a deep understanding of a specific business problem due to their prior work experience tend to create such startups.

As a service provider for small businesses, I see many amazing bootstrapped services & products come up around the world, that serves a very specific need for a small subset of customers. These viable businesses tend to make enough for the needs of 2-3 folks for a long time. I have a strong inclination towards finding many of them as a service provider because they just tend to be some of the best customers with great ROI.

I am indeed concentrating on the types of companies YC would invest in. I don't know anything about lifestyle businesses but what you say sounds reasonable.

You're going to be better-equipped to solve a problem or turn an industry on its head if you are not also discovering how to run a business at the same time.

Isn't that almost exactly what Make School is? That seemed to garner a lot of praise from HN readers.

> My university even offers a 1 year diploma in entrepreneurship.

Wouldn't it be cheaper and more educational to just launch a side-business and keep it running for a year?

Depends greatly on what kind of mistakes you make and what you learn. Me, I prefer to learn from the mistakes of others.

From some people I know and even have consulted for, who have applied (and not been accepted), there seem to be many who do it for the status. They went to a prestigious school, they don't like the idea of doing something which isn't successful yet (starting a startup) without a bestowal of a mark of prestige that they can refer others to... I.e. hedging against being viewed as unimportant or a failure, as that would rock their identity too much.

(This radar often goes off when I hear someone refer to YCombinator as 'the Harvard of Incubators.')

I think to be a great founder you have to not only know how to handle failure, but to also be OK with everyone dismissing your venture as a failure, as something even laughable.

The obvious reason is that the people at YC are talented, the non obvious reason is that are such genuinely nice people as well.

This is basically what I came here to post. Meeting other founders and having a social and business circle of other successes and work-in-progress companies? Are there any other reasons to join YC? The money is a pittance, relative to the cost of being in SF, but the connections you can make in a month are invaluable.

No. It's obvious that they are smart and talented folks that can give you a good shot at success. It isn't obvious that they are genuinely nice people.

AWS will usually give out around 100k in credits to funded startups.

Knowing all the people mentioned in this post, I don't doubt a single one of these stories. Every one of those people is selfless and eager to help.

Jessica has done an amazing job of instilling a culture at YC that selects for people who are friendly and eager to help others.

A not-so-obvious excerpt I took away is this...

>Before joining YC, I had been working on my startup for 6 months and a few of my customers were YC companies.

I think most people are aware that the startup market is quickly growing, and it is not what the author suggested by any means, but I think entire startups can be created to cater to the startup market...in fact YC is probably so large that a startup could probably succeed by catering solely to YC startups. For example, I applied to YC once with an incorporation/legal service idea, with the thought that even serving as a Delaware Registered Agent (~$100/year) and filing the Delaware annual compliance documents (~$100) on behalf of the YC companies - a captured market - would generate ~$100k/year, which is probably peanuts from a investors point of view, but a solid life style business that has the potential to cater to ever Delaware C-Corp startup.

Its kind of like the 49er days and the old saying: "In a gold rush, some entrepreneurs dig for gold, and some sell shovels."

Funny enough, there's a YC-funded company that does exactly that: https://www.clerky.com

The list of customers on their homepage is mostly YC companies.

I was aware of clerky, but in all honesty I thought they were not operating any longer. Having clicked the link you posted, I am very impressed with the changes they have made in web design and product presentation/description.

Very cool of Yvonne to share about her pivot, not many founders (yc or not) are open about that.

The core message is so true. YC partners (and the founder community) is incredibly genuine, very eager to help out. This scales past being a "small company" as well -- the Collisons are some of the most approachable founders ever.

I attended a workshop hosted by the Center for Applied Rationality, and the most valuable part of that was getting more social contact with the kind of people who are into that sort of thing.

Like, spending four days and $4000 to have a dozen short conversations with Anna Salamon is probably a good buy. It's rather hard to evaluate, since you're getting things that are difficult to buy with money.

I don't have any experience with YC, but I imagine that it's a similar sort of deal - especially since I've heard that they focus on community-building.

Nurturing relationships while struggling to master a subject or anything else for that matter is the main reason for going to any school in the world.

The key here though is the struggling aspect. If a school does not make you struggle to the point where you look for connections, I doubt then there is a point to the school itself.

Further, every major founder of every major startup has always looked back at the single biggest reason to their success are the relationships they acquired, nurtured, and mastered.

once upon a time, all of silicon valley basically operated like this.

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