On a serious note, can one apply as a single hacker who doesn't care about which project he takes on?

Not to be YC specific, but just in general, who would want to invest in someone who doesn't care?

Here is what matters to me more than a specific idea:

1) I'd like to have lawyers and accountants from the beginning, versus doing it myself.

2) I'd like to start with an investment from the beginning, versus doing it with nothing, therefore being undercapitalized the entire time.

3) On a daily basis, I'd like to work with smart people, versus working with nobody else. It'd be great to have an even ownership split, and to start with each other from day one.

4) I want to afford to live (by live, I mean sustain, nothing special) in a place with other technology folks, so I never feel bored or get an ego, versus living in the middle-of-nowhere.

The reason I'm asking here is because I've considered visiting big universities or even furthering my college career just to meet people for a future project, but it would be logically crazy to do so. The problem is that a lot of CS majors aren't entrepreneurial, and sometimes even immature. News.YC is the best place to find other hackers who want to do a startup. Period. Even better than attending a great computer science school.

I originally followed pg's correct advice to leave school and release "early."

The problem is that after I released "early", I had a small userbase that I gradually grew, and while they helped me find bugs, I got stuck to a small income stream and could never find the time to expand to bigger sources of revenue considering I was fixing bugs, adding features, doing market research, and tech support.

Releasing early is good if you have the means (money, people, contacts, knowledge) to not get distracted, so it's nice that YCombinators and TechStars exist now to take advantage of your highs and give you advice.

However, creating a product while being undercapitalized is futile. From not having health insurance and getting injured for a while, to having to progressively go from a $2/mo host, to a $20/m host, getting tons of visitors to my site from my specific, paying audience--except my site used up the 15GB of bandwidth in half a day. I've also had to make a lot of 'transitional' ideas to keep it all working, all so I could have this experience on a low budget for many years. Another problem was that I was tied to an income stream and keeping up with it for the $500 or $600/mo just to keep the business expenses, keeping me away from doing 2 important things that I planned my first year, because otherwise, I'd have to fold. It's definitely been worth it for everything except money, of course.

For example, I got dozens of great reviews from different paying customers all over the world, and that was the #1 most important thing to me all those years. So I spent this summer making it run on auto-pilot, this time with my own custom software, and a better self-service (another problem is that before, I preferred to have a simple interface and have users e-mail me with questions to avoid being too public, but now, I will add tons of Q&A's so I don't have to answer questions about what the program can do and what I'm planning on adding to it.)

So, I proved to myself that I can make people happy with no investment. Now I want to do it the right way.

In fact, maybe I should do something for people my age while I can still relate--another reason I don't care about the idea is because mine currently targets adults, and having been Student Body President, founding a newspaper club, a chess club, and being in many different unrelated after-school activities when I was in high school, I found I enjoyed it all. But, there is no reason that while you're spending all your time on a project, that you have to do it underfunded, since even for a realistic web service you'd have to be able to support servers costing hundreds of dollars and not annoy users with ads until you can figure out the best way to make it work, and more importantly, start with good resources (teammates, investors, advisors, money).

You can do something for people your age, see if they relate, and then take investment when you need to scale. Apparently, it's not hard to get investors if you're so snowed under with traffic that your servers are busting at the seams.

Yes, I know the hypothetical. However, I'm talking about reality. If YCombinator is an option, I'm going to take it.

1) I'm leaving my desktop app available so my current customers, 93% of whom of 153 survey respondents say they love it, can access it. I already know I can deliver software that makes people happy enough to pay money for it. I'm just creating a free version and getting it up to distributors to see if it can make even more people happy than I can imagine.

2) Finding cofounders on News.YC for a web-based app the team agrees on.

3) Applying to YCombinator.

4) Working as long as it takes to make a lot of users happy.

PG, Max Levchin, and other investors favor teams who are dedicated and flexible versus one specific idea.

Anyway, I also think you're right in doing all of the above. And it looks like you'll find your cofounders, judging from other responses to your comment. Good luck with that.

I'm just saying that even if the investors (including YC) say no, you can still build something, see if people want it, and then get investment. You don't really need investors to start something, nowadays, and when you do need them they'll usually be there.

Thanks, but like I said in my post, I would rather get an exciting team together, get the legal and accounting stuff out of the way, and build a trusted relationship with an investor, and put to use what I've learned over the past 4 years. And none of those people work for free.

If it's possible to take care of all that stuff right away, it makes life very easy.

If you don't feel compelled, it's because your goals aren't inspiring you. You need bigger goals. Possibly getting accepted to possibly work with unknown people on an unknown web app is not interesting enough to capture your imagination.

You have to think of something you really want, something that grabs you, especially if you don't know if you could do it or if it's even possible at all.

As for 5), have you heard of Pollground?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y_Combinator

That said, some great ideas seemed stupid to "experts" at the time; just trust your own gut feeling, not anyone else's. If you don't have a gut feeling, then you probably don't understand what people want in that area and should switch to another one (or steep yourself in the original a lot more).

> it is more important to have a good team, than a specific idea or a specific market

Ideas are certainly easier to come by; executing is the hard part. But there's no such thing as a generic "good team". If they don't have a feel for the particular idea then they are not going to execute as well.

If there is a lack in passion there is a lack in results.

No matter how many times you post, the team means more than an idea. Ideas can be changed a million times once you're incorporated, invested, have a prototype, and user feedback. PG, Max Levchin, and others prefer a team versus an idea.

Again, thanks for sharing your experience.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47588

Here's an example of what I mean by there being no generic "good" team:

Give me the top 5 athletes in the world. Maybe you pick Tiger Woods, Lance Armstrong, Roger Federer, LaDainian Tomlinson, and Wayne Gretzky. Or maybe you pick Barry Bonds; or a top marathoner or sprinter or a boxer. Then I tell you we're playing basketball. And you get beaten by Venezuela.

> Again, thanks for sharing your experience.

I think you're taking what I'm saying the wrong way.

I'm pointing out that if you don't care what you work on, your results won't be as good. Thus, you should figure out what you do care about, and work on that.

"I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle." -- Steve Jobs

http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-06150...

(You can also find it on Google Video)

> as long as I'm with a great group of people

Except how are you going to know that until they do great work? Which is very unlikely if you're not all working on what you love. If you don't care what you work on, then you haven't found what you love -- otherwise you'd work on that.

Merely being "great" without reference to a particular context isn't very useful. Take your favorite 5 entrepreneurs, stick them in a room, and probably nothing gets done. PG and Max Levchin we know; maybe Marc Andreessen; take your pick. They probably couldn't even agree on a language, and they're all used to being the one in charge.

I DO want to work on what I want to work on, but with investment and other people (which might not be exactly what I or my team envisioned, of course.)

I wish you well, and thanks for the discussion.

P.S. I am looking for co-founders with amazing hacking skills to join our application team. Any Hackers without an idea or team are welcome to contact me: colinbeattie@gmail.com. I have strong ideas to discuss and am keen to organise a team together or discuss other ideas we, as a TEAM, may propose.

The question is, did my post help people? I've never mentioned my project here before, and I hope it did help. Best of luck to you!

We ended up getting rejected anyway, but he turned out to be right. Basically, if there's an obvious problem with the application, he'll point it out to you. Don't expect him to write volumes or fix something that's so far out in left field that it's hopeless, though. Maybe a paragraph or so.

I also got back a long response from Trevor when I applied to SFP05. In retrospect it had a lot of good points, though I wasn't ready to hear them at the time. I doubt they have time to do that sort of detailed fixes/clarifications now, though.

Bravo!

You should become an economist.

As for the other assumption that YC will accept more than they did last time, I'm basing that off of Paul's words.

Can I still become an economist?

http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2007/08/for_introductor_...

And don't forget there are many, many other investors.

[Edit: Also don't forget you can set up Google ads on your own; or have actual paying customers. You may not need any investment at all.]

A decision is both likely to be affected by, and dependent on, multiple factors. In YC's particular case of selecting among many young, first-time, unproven, possible entrepreneurs, there likely isn't much of a track record to go by so the decision has a very large subjective component. Not only can they not predict the market performance of what you're building, but they want you to be "flexible" with the idea, even to the point of throwing it away and switching to something completely different. In those cases it means they can't possibly objectively evaluate your plan, because you don't have one yet.

The greater the lack of objective data, the more subjective preference comes into play.

> that doesn't sound quite so undeniably prudent anymore, does it?

Good thing it's definitionally equivalent and I used the form that would provoke a stronger visceral response, in order to get the idea across more forcefully.

YC should just be one possible tool you can use. Keep in mind that if you do actually have something valuable, you're doing them quite a favor by letting them get a percentage for such a tiny investment.

> Especially considering that the "someone else" in question is highly authoritative on the subject.

You're a bit mixed-up there. Starting your own investment company doesn't make you an expert on people and ideas any more than starting your own record label makes you an expert on music.

It's also fairly apparent that no one person is going to be a good filter for all ideas or people. We've all been surprised by various start-up successes.

True, but advising dozens of startups, some of which became highly successful, does. Especially when your investment money came from the sale of your own successful startup.

"Whim" and "arbitrary" have a connotation of carelessness; I don't think they fit here.

Still, there's truth in what you're saying: The large number of applications necessitates that they use heuristics and gut feelings to choose whom to interview. Their rejection letter admits that the process isn't perfect, and it would be unwise to give up on an idea on the basis of a YC rejection.

What you're doing here is a lot like the game telephone. If you follow a long enough chain of definitions in this way you can prove white = black.

Every native English speaker knows "whim" does not have the same meaning as "decision," which is what your argument implies.

I assume you're not deliberately trolling, but I have the same feeling of having to explain things I shouldn't have to explain that I do when I'm tricked into arguing with a troll.

That's pretty amusing. Whim -> arbitrary doesn't exactly constitute a long chain. Might want to start employing your proofreading team for your comments ;)

I'll refer you to one of my other responses:

"Not to mention, a substantial number of people haven't even built anything, which means they really have no choice but to judge the book by its cover. There are always snap judgements and rush decisions in any big application process."

YC's process reminds me of the Feynman story about choosing schoolbooks.

You have a bunch of young would-be founders who don't have a track record. How else are you going to choose? You just don't have enough evidence to go by in many cases.

Assuming a large portion of the applications come in near the deadline, you're in the position of having to review hundreds in the space of a week. It's like going through stacks of resumes, your eyes glaze over.

Making the observation is no slight to YC. You give people a chance despite them not having much of anything to show. I also know whim is a big factor even when there is a lot of supporting evidence because it's just human nature. That's why Cisco was turned down by 80 VCs despite having great numbers and committed people already.

Accusing someone of trolling because they had the audacity to bust out the dictionary to prove you wrong? Classic! "Every native English speaker [...]" -- too funny!

"Where the dictionary and I disagree, the dictionary is wrong." That should clear things up around here!

I wish they devoted more time to the decision making process, because I remain convinced that our outcome with YC would have been much different with a 1 hour interview instead of a 15 minute interview. The seedcamp interview process is orders of magnitude better and more fair from a founder's perspective.

I didn't say the process was completely arbitrary or only whim. I said not to leave your fate up to someone else's whim -- which is probably what it comes down to for the group of "maybes". Whim is generally the make-it-or-break-it deciding factor. And when there are more unknowns -- as with applicants who lack experience, or lack a demo -- it plays an increasingly larger role.

> I wish they devoted more time to the decision making process, because I remain convinced that our outcome with YC would have been much different with a 1 hour interview instead of a 15 minute interview.

You're essentially saying now that YC lacked solid reasons for making their decision because the process is too brief. I agree. They don't have that much information, and they don't spend that much time on it. They make a call one way or the other and then go on to the next applicant.

> The seedcamp interview process is orders of magnitude better and more fair from a founder's perspective.

Which is to say, it is less based on whim than YC.

Edit: And one more thing -- your chances are always better if they like you personally, and almost always zero if they don't. That is why whim plays a big part in any human relationship, and investing is no exception. If they like you enough, that is often all it takes. I've heard and read interviews with VCs that go like this: I didn't understand what they were talking about, but I didn't care, I said, "I like you guys, here's some money, now go build it."

Of course, your judgment of what is suitable in the context may be different from mine, but there is at least one thing that speaks in my favor: your very own claim that your version "would provoke stronger visceral response". Why would it, if its meaning was the same?

It most certainly is: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/whim

> Why would it, if its meaning was the same?

You may as well ask, "Why do words matter?"

You're unsuccessfully trying to argue an academic point while ignoring the basic gist of the decision, which is de facto one of considerable extrapolation. There simply isn't enough data in many cases to make a decision based on reason; that leaves whim. Even in cases where the data is obvious, whim comes into play, which is why Cisco had to go to 70 or 80 venture capitalists despite doing hundreds of thousands a month in business already without outside investment. Other VCs' stories of "the one that got away" involve a long-haired Steve Jobs.

This is merely human nature. It's no particular indictment of YC, everyone does it. I'm advocating for not leaving your decision of what to do with your life up to any single investor, or indeed, a series of 70 or 80 of them.

This is not a matter of chance. If your idea lines up perfectly with YC's vision, you get in, no matter how many other people apply. If your idea is completely unworkable for YC's goals (such as: you have a single founder, you're planning to run the startup indefinitely rather than sell it ), you may as well not apply, because even if there are 25 slots and 20 applicants you'll probably be rejected.

Certainly not hard evidence but the limiting factor seems to be good applications, not how many they're able to accept. That's a great sign.

I'd bank on about 700-800 applications.

If anything it's the other way around, because fewer people are free to try something new on Jan 1 than June 1.