yaliceme

You realize that "connections" can be cultivated right?

I think this is an interesting experiment, and definitely in line with the idea that YC funds people, not ideas. I do think it will create a lot more work for the partners during review and interviews, but presumably they have taken this into consideration.

If I had to make a prediction, I'd guess that this will greatly increase the number of people who apply, given that the abbreviated option is "easier," having omitted many of the questions that require the most consideration/ research/ field experience. To a lesser extent, it will probably also increase the number of interviews granted, as there will be some impressive-sounding teams who might otherwise have embarrassed themselves somehow on the "harder" application questions.

However, I anticipate that a much higher percentage of people will be cut at the interview stage than in previous years, assuming YC is selecting for the same quality. I imagine it’s hard to judge a team’s merit by the application alone, and the “no idea” application will make it harder still by presenting less “data” about these applicants. I’ve heard a YC alum describe the idea-related questions as an “intelligence test,” so even if the idea is not itself important, it does serve a role in filtering applicants. So the interview will become even more important than it already is.

Overall, though, I think this approach will yield a bigger class than if teams were required to apply with an idea, and I believe that’s good for everyone. If this new approach yields even a few hits that might not otherwise have been considered, it will be a big win for YC. The applicants benefit from a bigger network, and although the “acceptance rate” will probably be much lower, I doubt it will be much harder for a given qualified team to be selected under this new approach. It may even become slightly easier, on average.

TL;DR version - wider net --> bigger class despite a lower “acceptance rate”

For reference, below are the specific questions that appear in the "regular" form, but are omitted from the "no idea" form. Everything else is exactly the same:

- Company name

- Company URL, if any

- YC usernames of all founders, including you, who will live in the Bay Area June through August if we fund you. (Again, that's usernames, not given names.)

- What is your company going to make?

- If this application is a response to a YC RFS, which one?

- Why did you pick this idea to work on? Do you have domain expertise in this area? How do you know people need what you're making?

- What's new about what you're making? What substitutes do people resort to because it doesn't exist yet (or they don't know about it)?

- Who are your competitors, and who might become competitors? Who do you fear most?

- What do you understand about your business that other companies in it just don't get?

- How do or will you make money? How much could you make? (We realize you can't know precisely, but give your best estimate.)

- If you've already started working on it, how long have you been working and how many lines of code (if applicable) have you written?

- How far along are you? Do you have a beta yet? If not, when will you? Are you launched? If so, how many users do you have? Do you have revenue? If so, how much? If you're launched, what is your monthly growth rate (in users or revenue or both)?

- If you have an online demo, what's the url? (Please don't password protect it; just use an obscure url.)

- How will you get users? If your idea is the type that faces a chicken-and-egg problem in the sense that it won't be attractive to users till it has a lot of users (e.g. a marketplace, a dating site, an ad network), how will you overcome that?

- If you're already incorporated, when were you? Who are the shareholders and what percent does each own? If you've had funding, how much, at what valuation(s)?

- If you're not incorporated yet, please list the percent of the company you plan to give each founder, and anyone else you plan to give stock to. (This question is as much for you as us.)

- Was any of your code written by someone who is not one of your founders? If so, how can you safely use it? (Open source is ok of course.)

- If you had any other ideas you considered applying with, please list them. One may be something we've been waiting for. Often when we fund people it's to do something they list here and not in the main application.

If you have previously edited the regular form using this username, the link will direct you to the regular form. To see the "no idea" form, logout of your regular username, follow the link, and create a temporary username/password.

FYI, the "no idea" form is exactly the same as the regular form, except it is missing 18 questions that are idea-specific.

I have a related question, though at a more micro scale: how early should we submit our application for the summer 2012 class?

The application page says that "Groups that submit early have a significant advantage because we have more time to read their applications." It also says we can edit and resubmit as often as we like. Based on this, we'd be inclined to submit as soon as we've completed all parts of the application to our own minimum standard of satisfaction, then update as needed.

However, I've seen pg say in another HN thread that YC does not reread applications when they are resubmitted, "so submit when you're ready for us to read it the only time we'll read it."

I perceive the trade-off to be that the earlier we submit, the more time YC partners have to read our application and engage with us, but the less time we have to improve the application itself before submitting (better demo, more up-to-date answers, etc). Do pg and the alumni have any advice on this question?

I realize the answer may end up being "you will need to evaluate that tradeoff and decide for yourself."

The deadline is Mar 28, which by my calculation is a little over 3 weeks. Am I missing something?

>> "Type the name of almost any successful consumer web company into your search bar and add the word 'addict' after it. "

^ I really think he means "successful gaming or social media consumer web company." "Dropbox addict" just sounds silly.

I disagree. I always trust people unless (or until) they've proven themselves untrustworthy. This may sound naive, but it's what works for my style of doing business, which hinges on mutual trust and almost over-the-top openness.

Here's what "guilty until proven innocent" misunderstands: without trust, the relationship is doomed regardless of whether the mistrust is justified or not. If I don't trust someone, I don't do business with them, period. And if I subscribed to your "simple rule," there would be practically nobody I could do business with.

Most of the discussion seems to be about whether or not it's "bad" that the Samwers are "copycats." I was more struck by the culture at Rocket, which sounds quite nasty judging by the article. (“team meetings are full of insults, non-performers openly bashed in meetings as well as via e-mail.”) At least one top Rocket employee is cited as leaving due to the "climate of aggression" (the bad, inwardly directed, self-destructive kind).

Don't we at HN usually say that it's the people that are most important? If culture is destiny, then the Samwers' copying of website layouts is the least of what's wrong here.

This was a good read. I try to read one or two startup horror stories for each startup fairy tale I hear. Though I've not yet considered simply abandoning startup life, so perhaps I should up the ratio? :-p

This is a good question. Everyone's situation is different, but if you are young with no family to support, I think it's best to minimize expenses so you can minimize time spent at a day job, and thus maximize "free time" to work on your project. You may have to be creative and/or lucky about finding a free or cheap living situation, that is still conducive to productivity. If you are really passionate about your startup, though, it will be worth it; you'll know for yourself what sacrifices are worth it to you.

If you can find a part-time job with relatively high wages per hour and some flexibility, that's a good compromise between working a full time day job and being completely unemployed.

Depending on your personal risk tolerance and risk attitude, you can supplement/replace your part-time income with savings or credit.

If you're really creative, you can do something akin to Airbnb's cereal stunt to raise money. :-p

Again, the answer to this question is going to vary depending on your situation, and even for the same situation, people will have different advice based on their own experiences and values.

Thanks for the advice.

Thanks for the advice. I may be taking the post too literally, it's true. What I'm really interested in is the conventional wisdom surrounding the desirability of various domain characteristics, so I have an idea of expectations before going in. (e.g. is a CVCV.com nonsense word considered more valuable than a .com with two dictionary words, and by how much?)

Really, though, circumstances will dictate what I offer and when. I'm in no position right now to offer 5k-10k for a domain, so if the $1k offer gets me nowhere, for now I will just use my backup domain of [dictionary verb]CVCV.com, which is available.

I watched a few episodes of Shark Tank and thought to myself "I can't imagine all of those deals actually go through." I'm really glad altucher actually researched some of the deals that fell through, and reported it for us to see. It's really important to be reminded not to treat money like it's real until it literally shows up in your bank account. I've known people to get into big trouble by failing to observe that principle.

I think this article's advice applies best to an established company looking to improve an existing product for which you already have a user base that you understand well (i.e. Google developers testing Priority Inbox for Gmail, which is the article's main example).

I would question the value of this advice for startups, particularly very early-stage startups. If you are idea-stage/pre-launch/pre-seed, I think this process is actively harmful, because it encourages the bias toward over-planning and under-doing that most of us already have (knowingly or not). Defining criteria, writing screeners, and scheduling testers all feels very productive, but in many cases, it is actually a form of procrastination -- avoiding that scary moment when you must expose your project to a true outsider's judgement.

Margolis writes: "Startups often point to recruiting users as one of the biggest reasons they’re not regularly talking to their users." I would submit that there is NEVER a good excuse to not talk to users, including "we don't have any users yet" and "we're not quite sure yet who our target user actually is."

The solution to this difficulty is not a 3-step process of screening, recruiting and scheduling testers. It's much simpler, though perhaps more difficult: swallow your shyness and go talk to people as many people as you can. Actually talk, face-to-face, not through a survey. Give your elevator pitch to everyone and anyone, every day, even if it's just to a stranger on the bus or random people at your nearest university campus. You will learn a lot more a lot faster than if you dither around with a more "systematic" process.

When I first started working on one particular startup idea for an entrepreneurship class, my partners and I spent a few days early on designing a survey that we were very excited about; it was going to help us understand people's habits, behavior, and preferences with respect to the service we were going to provide. The instructor for that class was a serial entrepreneur; I showed our survey to him for critique during one of my first office-hours meetings with him. He absolutely tore me apart (rightfully so, in retrospect). He told us we had no business making surveys at all, this early in the process, and he refused to meet us again until we'd talked to at least 50 strangers about our idea. So I did just that, and it was one of the most formative and eye-opening experiences I'd had up to that point.

I'm not saying that the process described in the article is always a form of procrastination, and certainly Google is beyond the point where it's efficient to test by interrupting random strangers on the engineering quad. I'm just saying that most startups are, almost by definition, not at a stage where "user studies" is a productive concept.