snowmaker (u/snowmaker)

snowmaker commented on Do YC after you graduate: Early decision for students ycombinator.com/early-dec... · Posted by u/snowmaker

Illniyar · 3 months ago

Seems like a good thing for founders, doesn't force them to quit school to start a funded startup. Especially for under-privileged youths who might not be able to miss a high paying job opportunity or have no income for months.

Seems like a bad signal for YC though - if you aren't committed enough to quit school or at the very least reject job offers and do your startup anyway - feels like you might not be committed enough to do what it takes?

But if anyone does, YC knows how to pick founders with the right mindset.

snowmaker · 3 months ago

I think there is some risk of that. But commitment isn't static. A lot of incredible companies started with founders who were just toying with an idea and weren't committed at all, then they became more committed over time as things started to work.

snowmaker commented on Do YC after you graduate: Early decision for students ycombinator.com/early-dec... · Posted by u/snowmaker

omosubi · 3 months ago

I don't know why there's so much negativity. I see this as a big win for students interested in it.

1. it's a short commitment - only 3 months. more time-bound opportunities should be available to kids coming out of school. too many people go straight to big finance/law/tech/etc and get stuck because they don't want to give up the salary or safety.

2. get access to a network that is very difficult to get access to otherwis

3. better status boost than most other things you could be doing. There are likely better status signals about someone's abilities/intellect than YC, but i'm guessing they are few for people in the valley.

4. Get to work on something you are interested in

5. learn a lot very quickly.

6. gives you a lot of optionality

yes, YC is trying to make money but they do seem intent on developing talent and this is a good avenue for that.

snowmaker · 3 months ago

This is a good way of thinking about it!

snowmaker commented on Do YC after you graduate: Early decision for students ycombinator.com/early-dec... · Posted by u/snowmaker

FinnLobsien · 3 months ago

I think everyone criticizing this is comparing it to the wrong thing. Many ambitious students:

-graduate and work 100 hour+ weeks as investment banking associates.

-join other people's startups where they work crazy hours

-work hellish hours in PhDs/med school/law school

Yes, being a founder is hard and can be absolute hell at times. But so are some of the "normal" things ambitious students already do post-graduation.

It's not like YC is saying you either do an internship with free lunches, corporate yoga classes and kombucha on tap or you dive into the trenches of being a YC founder.

snowmaker · 3 months ago

Yes, this is an excellent point.

snowmaker commented on Do YC after you graduate: Early decision for students ycombinator.com/early-dec... · Posted by u/snowmaker

neilv · 3 months ago

If the funding is available immediately (not just an immediate commitment for funding once they start a batch), would it address the following problem I've run into a few times?

In the last year alone, I've had to bow out of co-founding two promising startups with good biz co-founders, because first-year MBA students wanted to finish their degree before they sought funding.

Two ways funding could help:

1. I couldn't afford to work over a year as a technical cofounder, executing in full-time startup mode like usually needs to be done, with no income. While they were part-time, and getting an MBA and networking out of it during this period. Even ramen lifestyle funding would've made this closer to an equitable balance of contribution and risk among the cofounders.

2. There's also the concern that MBA programs seem to push students to have a hypothetical startup, so there's always a chance that the MBA student won't be fully committed to actually do the startup once they graduate. Maybe accepted funding could make this a firmer commitment. (Even if there's no contractual obligation to pursue the startup, I'd guess that new MBA graduates don't want to burn bridges in the small world of investors, so would take the commitment fairly seriously.)

snowmaker · 3 months ago

Yes, I think it would.

snowmaker commented on Do YC after you graduate: Early decision for students ycombinator.com/early-dec... · Posted by u/snowmaker

kurtis_reed · 3 months ago

What do you mean "turn out their other job offers"?

snowmaker · 3 months ago

Whoops - I had a typo! Thank you; fixed.

snowmaker commented on Do YC after you graduate: Early decision for students ycombinator.com/early-dec... · Posted by u/snowmaker

cassonmars · 3 months ago

Does YC ever intend to revisit doing remote batches again?

There's many founders in the country who are just as driven and motivated, but have real-world situations that cannot allow uprooting themselves for several months, two very common ones:

- new parents

- disabled family members, or are themselves physically disabled

The discourse on Hacker News has frequently chastised companies demanding RTO, and some of the companies in your portfolio are remote-first (or remote-only), why does YC make the same kind of RTO demand with batches?

snowmaker · 3 months ago

We might, and I'm sure you're right that there are many great founders not applying to do YC because they don't want to move here.

But I think it would be a better analogy to compare YC to a university, rather than to a company. It's true that many companies operate remotely very effectively. But essentially zero universities have stayed remote since the early days of the pandemic.

snowmaker commented on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (September 2025) · Posted by u/whoishiring

snowmaker · 4 months ago

Y Combinator (yes, the people who run this site) | Full stack web and AI | San Francisco | Onsite | Fulltime

YC itself hires software engineers from time to time. Many people don't know that YC has a small but very important software team. We run several websites - not just this one, but also workatastartup.com (the main way YC companies hire), a social network for YC founders, and the core infrastructure that YC itself runs on.

Recently, we've been spending most of our time building our own AI agents. Over the last year, YC has mostly funded AI agent companies, so it's been cool to go really deep building our own AI agents too. We're building agents to automate every aspect of what we do, and pushing the limits of what's possible with the current models to do it.

An unusual aspect of being on the YC software team is that you'll get full access to the YC program, founders and partners. The YC batch runs in the same building we work out of, so there are talks with famous founders happening most nights, right downstairs in our building. If you want to start a startup someday, working at YC would be an excellent jumping off point - several YC companies have come from team members who decided to start their own company.

YC works fully in-person in SF. We're happy to help you move here if you're in the US already. Unfortunately we can't sponsor new visas, but we're happy to transfer existing ones.

YC offers highly competitive compensation and benefits.

You can apply online (https://www.ycombinator.com/careers) or just email me at jared@ycombinator.com