I was curious about who this guy was, since this is full of inaccuracies and yet shows some inside knowledge. It turns out the author is not a YC founder, but a programmer who worked for one of the companies we funded, and who didn't stay with the company long. So for example it's not merely because "this has been covered so many times it’s not really worth mentioning" that he doesn't go into detail about the interview. It's because he wasn't at the interview.
I wasn't hired part way through the batch, I joined them as they were going through the interview process, true. I didn't stay with the company until the very end, you're right. I had a different vision than they did. I still was on the YC Founders list. I still went to every YC event, meeting, and dinner as a founder. Just trying to share what I know and learned from YC so people can still find success and community.
After I left the company I was taken off the founders list, that was fine by me. Does that make me any less a part of YC or the spirit of this community?
The most striking inaccuracy is the superficial description of YC, both in breadth and depth. You can't accurately describe the interview, or the many interactions we've had with the company since Demo Day, since you weren't there for those, so you effectively omit them. And you can't describe the many individual conversations YC partners had with the CEO and founders of the company you worked for outside of office hours (many of which were about what to do about you), because you weren't there for those either. So the impression you give of YC is that it consists of dinners plus Demo Day plus a few office hours, because that was what you saw of it.
What does this mean? Is this as an attack on the author's credibility, character, skills or otherwise?
It seems like there should be a distinction on whether he shouldn't have written this because he didn't have the full experience of a founder or because he is not a credible witness because he was an employee that was going against the grain and that the founders were struggling to deal with in some capacity.
The troubles the company had with him don't reflect on his credibility as a witness of the things he did see. My point is that there was also a lot he didn't see.
Thanks pg. Based on filling in the details you provided I agree with you. As a reader I assumed this was his analysis as a true founder - present from pitch to alumni. Clearly, that's not the case.
Additionally, one of the glaring inaccuracies of this post is the amount of time spent on pitch practice. One of my team mates is a YC alum. He mentioned that YC gave his company brute force focus on customers and product.
I was taken off the list too, but I left voluntarily, and without drama(purposefully). It was the right decision for me. The friendships I made at YC are still awesome.
You might have just burned a potential bridge needlessly.
I read this article and saw too many inaccuracies, felt a little angry, and then let it go. I strongly advise proof checking your writing in the future.
I wasn't trying to capture every aspect of YC. The article wasn't about diminishing YC. Just trying to keep things positive and help people keep building. :)
You just attacked the credibility of the person instead of the credibility of the points and you said it's "full of inaccuracies" without going into specifics.
Have you changed your stance on whether you feel those two things are in the spirit of a quality HN discussion?
While I'm sure pg has his reasons for disliking an article generalizing the program he's built for most of the past decade, he may have wanted to say something almost as a method of damage control. It sure shows that the article struck a chord somewhere, as he usually doesn't respond to these sorts of things.
Interesting. That tidbit of information puts a whole new spin on the article. Slightly off-topic: Do a lot of companies end up hiring during YC? I thought that didn't happen.
There are plenty of YC companies with employees before entering YC, even. Certainly not a majority, but there are some surprisingly far-along companies entering YC.
The other funny part is that even you and the other YC partners don't see probably 95% of the interactions between YC companies, which IMO are one of the most worthwhile parts of YC, especially after demo day.
Question for dpg. I heard that as a founder you get access to a mailing list read by every other YC founder.
Out of curiosity, how many founders read it nowadays? Most of them? YC's funded 440 companies, so there've been around ~1k founders. I was just wondering how many of them still use it.
It's quite cool to see the alumni network growing so large.
To add another data point, I'm not on the YC list but I am part of the Techstars and 500 Startups lists, which are similar (I have several friends who went through YC and we've compared notes.)
Surprisingly, the lists have similar threads--lots of threads like "Who should I use for health insurance in NYC" or "Do you have an experience with X company/VC/investor" or "Looking for an intro to an X person at [huge company]."
Both 500 and Techstars have brought on in-house devs to change from a standard email list to a dashboard where you can subscribe to topics you're interested in to cut down on noise.
Both are pretty active and the founders and leaders participate. Techstars in particular gets some great responses--Brad Feld often responds to emails asking for a VC perspective on an issue, for instance.
It isn't really a discussion list so much as people sending important announcements or sometimes sending posts asking a question, soliciting private answers, then compiling and potentially anonymizing the results before posting a consolidated response a few days later -- super efficient.
Per batch email, group discussion (FB mostly, for us), group chat, etc usually involves a subset, or direct asks of other groups. I personally know nothing about consumer stuff, so no one ever asks me for CSS advice, but plenty of times hosting, security, etc questions come up.
Plus the purely social stuff is usually with a self selected subset; YC is diverse in interests. There is even basically a YC gun club, and a bunch of YC anti-gun activists, coexisting peacefully :)
I think that for a first-time entrepreneur, that's definitely worth it. I wish I started my first company (ten years ago) at something like YC. We did so many mistakes we could have avoided , it would have been a huge time saver.
The question I'm asking myself today is: is it worth it for an experienced entrepreneur? As a so-called successful entrepreneur who has had good exits in the past, you already have a network of investors, credibility, and while any advice is always good to hear, it's not like you are just starting for the first time. But still, with YC you get the alumni network, a lot of audience for your product launch, and more competition among investors (which alone could "reimburse" the 2%~9% you'll "lose" to YC).
It would be great to hear the opinion of experienced entrepreneurs.
After having thought a great deal about it, it's worth it for two reasons in my mind:
1) the recognition, the prestige, the 'YC' name that gets you really good deals, which entails VCs (the good ones) coming to you, press taking you more seriously, potential candidates being more enticed working for a 'YC' company (so the normally difficult task of finding early employees/co-founders is made considerably easier)
2) You get to be in the YC network (in some senses this is comparable to being in the Harvard Alumni association, where being a friend of some guy can mean you can become a C-level or VP of some company). Moreover: Being friends with other talented founders, getting advice from people who know their stuff and have done many things before, and a lot of times getting good deals from them and their startups (if you happen to be low on cash [1]).
[1]: Speaking of which, a possible third reason is the seed money.
If you are going to raise money, it is probably worth it. There's some level of "past success" that would be a good stand in, but it's a really high bar ... which is why you see people repeat YC reasonably often.
At the very least, YC is an ally if you run into issues with other investors. They are incredibly pro-founder (as is SV Angel) and not afraid to wave a bat around.
I can't speak for YC but I can speak about Techstars--I was in the first Austin Techstars class, and our Demo Day was a week ago.
I have had one successful tech company exit and had already raised a seed round for my current business when we decided to join Techstars. I can say this: Not only was it easily worth the 6% equity stake, but it fundamentally changed how I run a business.
I thought I knew what I was doing pre-Techstars, having run a tech company before and having a technical background. Heck, I have even spoken about Lean Startup at conferences! But now I look back on where I was three months ago and I am fundamentally a different person. One who now really has a shot at running a successful software startup.
Having checked in with several people who've gone through YC, they did not experience as much of a shift as I did. I think the credit goes to the unique experience of Techstars throwing you in 100+ 1:1 meetings with successful entrepreneurs in a 2-3 week period. You meet with people who have run and sold companies worth over a billion dollars. And at some point you wake up and realize, "If I have to go in there one more day and talk to a hugely successful entrepreneur again and I don't have my shit together again (because everyone gets ripped to shreds the first week) I am going to snap."
And then something kicks in inside of you and you realize you have to get it together. On the wall the days tick down to Demo Day whether you want them to or not. And the mentors tear down your ideas every day.
It's that constant tear-down and the internal strength and direction it gives you that is invaluable. I can pitch my business now in my sleep and get people motivated about it. You have not perfected your pitch until you have had it ripped apart by 100 ridiculously successful people. It was one of the most painful experiences I've ever been through...but here I am, on the other side, and not only did I survive but I've discovered confidence and clarity that I never knew I had.
Techstars is something I'd recommend every founder experience. Again, I can't speak for YC or any other accelerator, but I can tell you if every founder went through what I've just been through in the past 90 days, we wouldn't have sad startup failure stories on the front page of HN very often.
Get users, revenue, and growth and go through the grind of raising capital. You'll find out the black box that is the mind of investors and then you'll come to appreciate the algorithmic efficiency of YC.
[1] a fellow YCer says you should be networking with investors as opposed to working on product, contrary to what PG asks of you.
I remember at the beginning of my batch there were rumors of this "insider tip". Turned out that the best companies did exactly what YC said: make something people want (build product, talk to users) and stay somewhat healthy (exercise).
Anything else was a time-sink: worrying about hiring, adding co-founders, interns, getting press, "networking" etc. Focus on them too early, and risk serious injury or death. These have their place .. after you make something users want.
There were some good startups who were talking to investors, but they weren't "networking" as much as closing deals because they were doing so well.
Also, at least 90% of our dinners (s12) were still served Oliver Twist style, not catered, unless you can cater gruel ;)
Of the dinner speakers, there was one disappointment (canned speech), but most were great with the absolute highlight of Brian and Joe from AirBnB. Before dinner, PG was giddily floating around the room, every once in a while almost whistling "the AirBnB's are here".
Two hours of $40 cereal boxes, rejections, troughs of sorrow, and cockroaches later, I have a crystal clear memory of the room (of 300+) going silent as Brian stated "and then we started YC". Three hours after that, when ever question was answered, I don't think anyone walked out of that room the same.
For me, that is the essence of YC: the sheer energy in the air. The money's great if you need it (we didn't and it helped kill us), the network is powerful and helpful of course, the advice is often brilliant and more importantly brilliantly obvious. But the energy changes you, for many this happens in time to make their YC startup explode (in a good way).
For other founders, the realization comes late. I have an inkling that Ben Silbermann will not be the only YC alum to start a billion+ dollar startup after not doing so great during YC.
Why are so many people fretting about not getting into YC and why do crappy stories like this get upvoted? If getting into Y-Combinator was your idea of validation, your startup is doomed anyways.
I simply don't understand the obsession of founders with getting into YC. If you are a founder and you are really passionate about an idea, you simply don't have time to think about "how to game the system and get into an incubator". You have more important things to think about - like product-market fit, hiring the right people etc. etc. In Aileen's Lee recent article about unicorns or billion dollar startups - 2 out of 39 were YC companies, the rest 37 were not.
Being part of YC adds a whole new dimension of political clout and credibility irregardless. It's definitely a 'who you know' rather than 'what you know' notch on the belt beyond simple validation. Saying you were part of it may be worth something to the right people at the right time, one day.
So, it's "bragging rights". But, temporary bragging rights considering the fact that they have at least ~100 teams per year and unless your startup goes somewhere after YC, you're just wasting your time.
I've talked to bunch of people who've gone through YC and it doesn't seem like anyone is really missing out on much.
It seems to be more of support group than anything else, and really while a support group is important it doesn't justify near as much hype as YC gets.
The future of Silicon Valley's greatness is not within the reach of YC. The power of media and investment dollars is decentralizing fast and for the better.
"In addition to office hours, there are dinners. Dinners are typically catered now, but in the early days, PG would make some goulash for the handful of YC companies."
Having been in the most recent batch, this is one of those comments on the author's part that makes it clear that he doesn't quite know what he's talking about. There is a single person who cooks meals but they're hardly catered. They feed ~130 people out of slow-cookers and rice-cookers. Every meal is some slow-cooked...stuff..and then rice or noodles or something to put on the bottom of your bowl. It's no one's dream of a catered affair.
Any ideas for a Demo Day substitute? The deadline is probably just as important as the investor connections (i.e. something that only produces the former would still be valuable).
I think that's on you and your group. Being realistic and setting goals, then going to your support group and being accountable for hitting those is really important. You feel guilty when you show up empty handed, meanwhile everyone else is showing progress. It keeps you motivated.
Which also means that tech entrepreneurship is supposedly under sabotage, though some would call it a spell. It's the MITM thing that I don't like. It's like the age of shovel sellers to gold diggers for the Internet?
Something that is both good and bad depending on which side of application process you are.
The format for http://tribes.techendo.co/ has been meeting at my house and from 2-3pm we go around the circle, announcing our progress and problems, then as a group we offer our resources and help. After that we sit around and hack on stuff together and just socially chat.
We just started one of these within the company I work at. We are all working on a project on the side aside from our day jobs and I have to say it has been really helpful so far.
We only have 4 people so we take turns each week, 1 person brings a problem to the table and then we get 3 other peoples thoughts on it. That week is dedicated to the one startup... Because we work day jobs it works better this way as we won't have any astounding advances each week but each month we do.
