acecreamu

Thank you!

OP here, I feel the information in my article got outdated too quickly, so wanted to quickly revisit my statements with respect to the current experience (as of 2025):

- I feel the in-person thing makes and breaks the YC magic, people who go through in-person cohorts feel much more connected to their batchmates and partners

- The batches got significantly leaner = more attention to each individual company

- Selling inside YC is a thing again (specifically for AI companies), since everyone around is doing AI and isn't lacking money YC companies basically buy from each other and get to 1M ARR together

- The investment premium is there, with YC startups getting avg cap of 25M comparing to 15M for non-YC startups of similar stage (even with greater traction)

- Bonus: the alumni events and off-site experiences became a nice addition, even for the previous cohorts

Overall, I feel we experienced YC at its lowest, and it's not fair to use it as a reference point. There are still challenges with dilution (MFN) and the alumni experience (you basically lose most of the access), but they definitely listened to the feedback and have made positive changes that founders can already feel.

Need more episodes of this series

They are all legit, but serve different purposes (early vs late stage). I would recommend starting from syndicates or investing with friends, so you have someone to guide you in the first steps.

Sounds like something a HN moderator would ask to identify spammers

Then you will be even more surprised to see another AI Recommendations in the most recent batch

I wrote the original article before we even thought about it, if it helps.

Don't try to blame others, see what works for you and where you can improve. Some people can make other run for them and send donations without even trying. It's not about them or cruel word. Your problems are about you, and you need to either solve them or to switch to something that works for you, or you will be suffering the rest of life.

Yes sir, slise.xyz - new market, new team, much larger and more painful problem to tackle. Lessons learned.

double that, most of the people in the e-commmerce don't have any idea what is YC

The uncomfortable truth is that YC is a highly competitive program, the best teams invest a lot into preparation to get there. If you have nothing and need 150k to start your company, than you have better ways to find it, than the most prestigious accelerator in the world.

The dilution at that point would be unbearable

It means that MFN will likely convert very fast, and these 375k will cost you more dilution than you might want otherwise. Or you have to play very fancy sheningans convincing other investors who wanted to be early to wait, just to postpone it and decrease its dilution.

No one clearly knows, but it should be there for a reason. We used a referral when applying and I would recommend finding one. Won't hurt for sure, prob will increase the chances to be seen.

When we took the money we were planing to build up the original idea, not to start another one. For the consecutive growth of the original idea it wouldn't be an issue.

We didn't take 375k in fact. In W22 batch they were optional, and would trigger MFN for many. As for the rest of money, we returned what has been left. That's why closing so rapidly - to be able to return more.

That's why we did it, instead of spending money dragging the decision or even taking more money and spending them while building mediocre company, we wind up operations in a shortest term, and returned everything, to minimize damage for investors. We even cancelled the checks which were about to get wired.

How to perceive it—is up to you, we sleep well because we did the best we could in that situation.

Here, https://www.ycombinator.com/investors

1.5 - 2%

Harvard: 4%

There is a referral program, hey

Not really, that's why I don't put an evaluation criteria of "how close you going to get with the star founders". It's silly to expect that.

I only expected and discusses the community engagement within the batch, and the power of YC connection between the batches. Both are quite low.

The connection to Brian Chesky or Paul Graham is expected to be ~0 from the start.

That's an interesting perspective! Do you feel YC companies get too pampered / arrogant?

Purely based on numbers YC is more selective ;)

In fact I (OP) have, we went through EF before YC.

They do give you a stipend regardless whether you make it to the second stage (investment)

I replied to a comment which stated exactly that, and my point that it's false.

Exactly, a rational facts-driven investor is a myth

> When you're one of a thousand companies every year, why would it?

Exactly, therefore making very questionable the whole "YC network" concept

There are a lot of good, even in what I write. The strongest I believe is the early and fully independent support for ideas that received no other recognition yet.

Huge % of dilution after going through two accelerators (EF and YC). Would be too much of a burden to drag into a new venture.

I can say, we didn't see significant uplift at Demo Day, the highest bump of valuation happened when we got accepted, it's fair to assume we wouldn't get it otherwise.

I can't answer your question completely as in the end we decided not to raise and returned the money...

I think they did a right move - making the batch smaller and moving it back in-person. The money amount that was not very attractive at 2021 makes a lot more sense in 2023 as well.

As for the community I believe it can only be build relatively strong for <100 people. Hence, smaller niche-specific batches?