dariusmonsef

Could be any of those. "Rich" is able to live comfortably with no financial stress. For some that is a small home in a village somewhere off the grid spending their days fishing. For others it is millions of dollars. But generally, I think if you have a couple hundred grand in the bank you're rich.

Still smart enough to use the word drivel, so I don't feel so bad.

Those lucky bastards.

You talk about what goes on behind closed doors, but provide no proof that you actually know what goes on behind those doors. As a YC alum, Mentor with 500 Startups & PIEPDX and friend of the family to Techstars... This post couldn't be more wrong. It looks like mostly it was written to cause drama and generate pageviews.

"Since 2005, Y Combinator has funded 460 startups with only a handful of big wins."

We were just at the 7 year birthday party for YC in a room filled with successful founders. The collective valuation of the group is billions of dollars... and regardless that some founders have had their companies fail along the way, the network they're a part of adds huge value.

I'd go point by point and explain the counter for this entire post... but I don't have the time.

I think there is a valid argument about which incubator you participate in and the pros and cons each bring... but to warn people about the top incubators is almost comical.

My bad. Mistyped. He specifically said they didn't focus on $ in the app. Yes there is a question that asks about it. (We review applications too), But that isn't a core focus in the application.

And its a bit ironic to tell me no to assume my experience is the same as everyone else's on a blog post telling everyone else how to treat the YC interview, no?

I've said this many times before and perhaps need to include it on every comment regarding startup advice. There are some common concepts, useful general practices, etc. But it's a very different experience for all of us. There is no general advice that will work every time for everyone. Take ideas that work well with you... leave the rest.

So wait.

You note that nowhere in your YC application do they specifically ask you about money stuff.

But, you talked to some YC Alums before the interview and they all asked you about $.

And since you didn't get selected you now assume that the YC partners really only care about the $? Sorry, I think that's a leap in thinking that might be in the wrong direction.

I applied with a website that let people name & share color... There wasn't billion dollar company sitting in front of them. There were a few guys with a passionate community and the ability to build great product. We were never asked in our interview about $ and didn't need to bullshit anything.

Yes, the Valley hype scene is heavily influenced by who's the next billion dollar company and puts little success on people making $5-10M/year in great businesses... But that isn't YC.

PG has on a number of occasions given me advice that is all about us as the founders being happy. Not about YC getting the biggest return possible.

So yeah, hopefully your idea could be a big business. But I would argue the opposite of what your post says. YC mostly cares that your idea is big and that you are a team that might be able to pull it off.

And IMHO... Try not to bullshit. It'll eventually catch up to you.

We don't plan to have a barrier to entry, because we want to build a platform that is accessible to everyone. The pressure is then on us to do a great job surfacing the best content for you, for whatever your need is.

And there will always be people looking for design shortcuts. Much of the web is not breakthrough design of new experiences, it's new faces on existing ideas. I hope we provide a short-cut for designers to get the template easily so they can spend their creative energies making it really unique.

Envato is great and does a lot of things well. We see a lot of opportunities in providing a service that is more affordable, more fair to the sellers & simpler to understand licensing. We're also building in easy integrations to allow our marketplace content to reach creatives where they work.

And we already have 75k people on our early access list... so that long ways isn't all that long. ;)

Everything I said in the post. Get prepared... then create your profile on Angel.co and then work it.

Where are you located? I think when you're fundraising you have to go where the money is. Plan to spend a few weeks in the Valley driving up and down the 280 (avoid the 101 it sucks).

You can use technology and services like Angel.co to make the connections and schedule the meetings... then you have to go out.

I raised this last round from my home in Hawaii. I spent the first few weeks doing phone meetings and then was in SF & NYC for another couple weeks doing partner meetings and wrapping things up.

And you were there supporting me when I couldn't even get any kind of coverage on a blog like TC... So thanks for everything.

Too kind. Too kind.

And yes. Full focus is key.

As a YC founder of a venture backed company that lives in Hawaii now... Like everything in life, it's all a balance. My quality of life in Hawaii is hard to beat. My tech scene is hard to find. Which is why I come back to SF & NYC almost monthly. The travel is a bit of a pain, but I feel like I'm living a close to perfect balance.

It helps that I'm from Hawaii, so I'm not in "vacation" mode... I'm in "home" mode. Where I feel relaxed, comfortable, inspired & supported. From that place is where I run the chaos of a startup.

Way to linkbait that post title. Revenue from either company isn't mentioned in the article.

This argument only works when comparing a Prius to a Corolla... Which is the entry level bottom tier sedan from Toyota. I think it would be a bit more fair to use the Camry as the alternative car.

I'm a Prius owner and I didn't decide to spend an extra $6k just to get a Prius for the gas savings, otherwise I'd have a Camry. If I didn't buy a Prius I would have bought a similarly priced car because... that was the price range I was shopping in.

It was built around color palettes... but is much more than that now. We have... professional desktop color & vector image editing software. Themeleon is a twitter profile tool linked right from Twitter.com. A creative community with 2M visitors per month and ad revenue on those pageviews.

It's enough to keep the doors open and the company growing... but CreativeMarket.com will be where the meat of our revenue will come from.

We consider naming stuff often... You'll be happy to know our new site CreativeMarket.com only has two capital letters in it.

Our plan is to not make any broad changes immediately. I think too often acquirers do that and fuck things up. Kyle & team are staying on and we'll work together to make Forrst a valuable place for designers & developers to share ideas, get feedback and learn from each other.

Well crap. Now I wish I had gone... next year. maybe.

I totally agree... and it reminds me to make sure we tell a great story.

A lot can happen after you don't get in. My good buddy Jon has a positive story with Storenvy after not getting into YC. (similar space too)

Umm. That slideshare post has one upvote. And that is from your submission. It didn't have significant traction and then get buried... it just didn't move once you posted it.

I posted something yesterday not exactly critiquing YC, but presenting an alternate idea to how they should run housing for batches... that post didn't get buried because it had a different viewpoint. PG even commented in it.

Also... any reason to link "Hacker News" 12 times in your post to your old thread? IMHO it makes it looks a bit SEO spammy.

Probably not... but I'll settle for Hacker Holiday.

I would argue that some of the most successful people are where they are because of the powerful networks they belong to... The YC network is an amazing resource of driven, talented and super smart people... wouldn't you want to be great friends with these people?

No love for the Islands huh?

Sure. So don't spend all your time socializing :)

Hmm. Plan might be a stronger word than where I'm at with this :)

It's a 3-5yr vision.

Back before I knew of YC, I schemed on the idea of having a startup frat. Where pledges bust ass to build products, apps, etc. The profits are shared with those that built them, but also heavily reinvested back into the frat... But then I never went back to college. :)

Yeah, that's probably good marketing for some houses.

I think the concept of having other creatives nearby is an interesting one, but there are unique experiences that early startup founders face and having a peer group of others solving the same problems is more helpful, imho.