I got into the fifth batch (s07) and remember my other startup friends staging an intervention to dissuade me from accepting because "the valuation is really bad."
Interesting to see how long even the industry insiders failed to take YC seriously. And then once it was working, they flipped immediately to complaining that YC was too powerful and too influential (unbeatable network effect, seed/A valuation inflation, and so on).
I also remember the constant naysaying about scalability and batch size. Our batch was ~19 companies. People kept naysaying, "Well this model is fine for now, but it will never work past 20 teams."
PG would always reply with something like, "Yeah, they said that when we had fewer than 10 teams also. We aren't thinking too far ahead; each batch, we just find the next bottleneck and solve it, and we'll see how far that gets us." Which evidently got them pretty far. A lovely example of doing things that don't scale.
I was in the S12 batch “the batch that killed the YC model” with 80+ teams I think. After that they switched to the group model where the batch is divided in to groups and each group has specific partners. In our batch is was definitely challenging when you often got a randomly assigned partner each week and most of the time they didn’t know who you are or what you do. However, Coinbase, Instagram, Zapier etc came out of that batch.
For me as first time founder YC was super helpful and they really drill the right kind of mindset for you. Build product, talk to users. The stuff they tell you is often very simple but I think lot of founders naturally complicate the startup building and focus on the wrong things because they think thats what should do. YC cuts through all the bs and just makes you focus on the few actually important things
Your success and the success of YC doesn't make your friends wrong. YC has improved over time, both in valuations and processes. Even today, it is not perfect, and there is a significant survivorship bias used to describe its success as the unicorns are called out, but I don't hear much talk about how all the founders do - what is the median result of all YC companies, for example? (I honestly don't know that answer... I would love to see it because don't see such overall stats.)
YC absolutely has accomplished something, as have some of its companies. I don't want to be dismissive of that. But we should acknowledge that it embraces and encourages the high-risk/high-reward model, which should be entered into with open eyes.
What? The entire industry of venture capital is based on a tiny percentage of companies absolutely exploding. The point is, compared to everyone else, YC does it much better - the gulf between YC (which is on track to have multiple $100b portfolio companies) and second place accelerators like Techstars (who have, at best, a couple of single digit unicorns) is astronomical.
> we should acknowledge that it embraces and encourages the high-risk/high-reward model, which should be entered into with open eyes
We were W21. I would argue one of YC's main goals is to reduce the risk to founders, and enable starting startup more accessible to those with the right skills, regardless of circumstance.
Getting into YC guarantees a certain minimum amount of funding and essential support, which not everyone outside SV has access to. It's commonplace to see people quit high paying jobs, and start businesses whilst married with children (the old narrative of 20-something male dropout is no longer the norm). This all happens because YC creates a platform that reduces risk for founders.
Even though I'd never apply and thus never get in because of my preconceived notions about YC's preconceived notions (too "old"?, proud Dad of a bunch of homeschooled kids, mostly solo founder (well, I've got kids who code!), building a social/chat app way outside of the Bay area echo chamber, and not toeing any particular political lines (hey, I'm a coder so I'm allowed to recursively nest parens -- don't tread on me), and even if I'm doxing myself a bit with this comment!), YC and PG (through his essays, Hackers and Painters, and his genuinely kind and sincere approach to everything, even with people who are on the opposite side of the political aisle, like me) have taught me so much about how to be a force for good in this strange and weird world.
PG seems to truly live out Jesus' wisdom and the Golden Rule. He wisely avoids getting dragged into political discussions, and the HN moderators wisely steer even very wild discussions away from flame wars. For my next act, I'd like to build a social app that scales up the same sort of non-partisan (or multi-partisan!) active, intelligent discourse that occurs here, even if there are, sadly, very few dang's in the world.
I would like to say a very, very warm and very sincere thank you to pg, dang, and the rest of the YC team who make it possible to still have a civil, mostly uncensored, and wide-ranging conversation, and has helped so many great startups get off the ground, both inside and outside of YC with things like the SAFE and the startup-school opened to all, proving to VC's how things can and should be done, and just pursuing the most interesting startups, period. If I truly thought I had a chance given my coloring so far outside the SF political lines, I'd apply in a heartbeat!
Much love from someone deep in the heart of Texas. Keep up the incredibly awesome work.
If you're making something people want, just have a go and apply. YC says it outright in their motto. That's really all that matters.
The application itself can help your own thinking about what you're building, so it's worth doing just for that.
Great products come from all sorts of unconventional backgrounds, precisely because the people who made them were from an unexpected background. Some of the best new ideas come from the need to solve a problem that mainstream products don't cover, or from an insight that someone in the mainstream would never have.
Airbnb's founders weren't conventional startup founders. They were struggling and needed to pay their rent.
Also, 1000% agree on the sentiment and thanks to YC for the community here. HN is one of the blessings of the current day web.
PS there is a section in this talk by Dalton Caldwell from YC on 'how to create luck' (in the context of applying to YC). It's really great on just this topic:
There's also a separate short talk on creating luck that has an interesting story about how Brex started, and also about how sometimes you need an "outsider's philosophy":
These helped my thinking. The application is a helpful way to think about your startup even if you don't submit it. And once it's done, you might as well submit anyway :)
PG has expressed on Twitter multiple times he loathes the HN culture and always angry Californians. Probably that is why he stopped posting here as well, at least under his name.
An acquaintance was in the 3rd batch of founders and turned me on to the ecosystem and community here. Around that time, I was a few years out of high school and working for minimum wage at a pizza shop.
I was experimenting with web design, making a few extra dollars running google ads on phpBB forums, and learning to code in the process. I never realized my geeky side could translate into something entrepreneurial until I started spending time here. Tracking the progress of my friend and this community planted a seed that turned into a dream of someday being a founder.
Today, my two business partners and I have been running a successful software business for almost a decade. We were distributed before it was mainstream. We're in the WordPress space and have a team of 20+ people all over the globe. I've had the opportunity to travel, meet investors, smoke cigars with business heroes, sleep in if I want to, and enjoy an exciting and fulfilling life.
I still find myself regularly googling about issues that arise in my company with "hacker news" appended to the end of the query. The stories here helped us navigate a very stressful M&A process and countless other "business stuff" hurdles that we encountered over the years (ie business insurance "hacker news").
YC provided me with direction and inspiration when I was floundering around in my early years. The simple ideas that you don't need an MBA to start a business and being an odd duck is a valuable entrepreneurial trait were life-changing. The community and discussions here are where I come to learn and be inspired. I sincerely hope it continues to be that for myself and others for many more years to come.
I was rejected by YC and still point to them (namely, the combo of PG’s essays and HN comment wisdom) as the greatest single source of startup advice as I’ve built a company in the 9-10 figure range. Thank you YC! You have done so much for the startup community!
Happy birthday, and thank you. Even though I have a bit of an HN addiction, it has helped me sound out a lot of different ideas and put them up for challenge in a way that would not been possible otherwise, and doing startup school in '18 was a significant personal and professional turning point. It's not just startups, users, and customers, you've enriched a lot of lives.
17 years seems like a long time, but looking back, it's not, and it's an example of how much all these things can grow. Cheers to another 17 years of finding and making things people want.
Readit News
Interesting to see how long even the industry insiders failed to take YC seriously. And then once it was working, they flipped immediately to complaining that YC was too powerful and too influential (unbeatable network effect, seed/A valuation inflation, and so on).
I also remember the constant naysaying about scalability and batch size. Our batch was ~19 companies. People kept naysaying, "Well this model is fine for now, but it will never work past 20 teams."
PG would always reply with something like, "Yeah, they said that when we had fewer than 10 teams also. We aren't thinking too far ahead; each batch, we just find the next bottleneck and solve it, and we'll see how far that gets us." Which evidently got them pretty far. A lovely example of doing things that don't scale.
For me as first time founder YC was super helpful and they really drill the right kind of mindset for you. Build product, talk to users. The stuff they tell you is often very simple but I think lot of founders naturally complicate the startup building and focus on the wrong things because they think thats what should do. YC cuts through all the bs and just makes you focus on the few actually important things
(By Instagram, I imagine you meant Instacart?)
YC absolutely has accomplished something, as have some of its companies. I don't want to be dismissive of that. But we should acknowledge that it embraces and encourages the high-risk/high-reward model, which should be entered into with open eyes.
We were W21. I would argue one of YC's main goals is to reduce the risk to founders, and enable starting startup more accessible to those with the right skills, regardless of circumstance.
Getting into YC guarantees a certain minimum amount of funding and essential support, which not everyone outside SV has access to. It's commonplace to see people quit high paying jobs, and start businesses whilst married with children (the old narrative of 20-something male dropout is no longer the norm). This all happens because YC creates a platform that reduces risk for founders.
Even though I'd never apply and thus never get in because of my preconceived notions about YC's preconceived notions (too "old"?, proud Dad of a bunch of homeschooled kids, mostly solo founder (well, I've got kids who code!), building a social/chat app way outside of the Bay area echo chamber, and not toeing any particular political lines (hey, I'm a coder so I'm allowed to recursively nest parens -- don't tread on me), and even if I'm doxing myself a bit with this comment!), YC and PG (through his essays, Hackers and Painters, and his genuinely kind and sincere approach to everything, even with people who are on the opposite side of the political aisle, like me) have taught me so much about how to be a force for good in this strange and weird world.
PG seems to truly live out Jesus' wisdom and the Golden Rule. He wisely avoids getting dragged into political discussions, and the HN moderators wisely steer even very wild discussions away from flame wars. For my next act, I'd like to build a social app that scales up the same sort of non-partisan (or multi-partisan!) active, intelligent discourse that occurs here, even if there are, sadly, very few dang's in the world.
I would like to say a very, very warm and very sincere thank you to pg, dang, and the rest of the YC team who make it possible to still have a civil, mostly uncensored, and wide-ranging conversation, and has helped so many great startups get off the ground, both inside and outside of YC with things like the SAFE and the startup-school opened to all, proving to VC's how things can and should be done, and just pursuing the most interesting startups, period. If I truly thought I had a chance given my coloring so far outside the SF political lines, I'd apply in a heartbeat!
Much love from someone deep in the heart of Texas. Keep up the incredibly awesome work.
The application itself can help your own thinking about what you're building, so it's worth doing just for that.
Great products come from all sorts of unconventional backgrounds, precisely because the people who made them were from an unexpected background. Some of the best new ideas come from the need to solve a problem that mainstream products don't cover, or from an insight that someone in the mainstream would never have.
Airbnb's founders weren't conventional startup founders. They were struggling and needed to pay their rent.
Also, 1000% agree on the sentiment and thanks to YC for the community here. HN is one of the blessings of the current day web.
https://www.ycombinator.com/library/6t-how-to-apply-and-succ...
There's also a separate short talk on creating luck that has an interesting story about how Brex started, and also about how sometimes you need an "outsider's philosophy":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmEyx9TEkRw
These helped my thinking. The application is a helpful way to think about your startup even if you don't submit it. And once it's done, you might as well submit anyway :)
Good luck!
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An acquaintance was in the 3rd batch of founders and turned me on to the ecosystem and community here. Around that time, I was a few years out of high school and working for minimum wage at a pizza shop.
I was experimenting with web design, making a few extra dollars running google ads on phpBB forums, and learning to code in the process. I never realized my geeky side could translate into something entrepreneurial until I started spending time here. Tracking the progress of my friend and this community planted a seed that turned into a dream of someday being a founder.
Today, my two business partners and I have been running a successful software business for almost a decade. We were distributed before it was mainstream. We're in the WordPress space and have a team of 20+ people all over the globe. I've had the opportunity to travel, meet investors, smoke cigars with business heroes, sleep in if I want to, and enjoy an exciting and fulfilling life.
I still find myself regularly googling about issues that arise in my company with "hacker news" appended to the end of the query. The stories here helped us navigate a very stressful M&A process and countless other "business stuff" hurdles that we encountered over the years (ie business insurance "hacker news").
YC provided me with direction and inspiration when I was floundering around in my early years. The simple ideas that you don't need an MBA to start a business and being an odd duck is a valuable entrepreneurial trait were life-changing. The community and discussions here are where I come to learn and be inspired. I sincerely hope it continues to be that for myself and others for many more years to come.
Thanks YC!
When I was 17, I: (a) was immortal (b) knew everything (c) had boundless energy (d) was out to change the world (e) did not know myself.
Fifty years later, I am • finite • humble • energetic in spurts • want to teach and encourage • still learning about myself.
Y Combinator, my best BD wish is that all your mistakes will be instructive. <3
17 years seems like a long time, but looking back, it's not, and it's an example of how much all these things can grow. Cheers to another 17 years of finding and making things people want.
This is about a ten minute walk from Harvard Square near an area known as the Radcliffe Quandrangle.
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