They don't say that and that doc doesn't even mention traction. And, amusingly, it points to Dropbox's application as example of how to apply. When in reality it was due to traction on HN that Dropbox got into YC, Drew Houston was a solo founder so likely would've been rejected again on the basis of being a non-great founder since he hadn't even convinced anyone to join him.
Of course, one can always claim that "great founders have traction" but that's an obvious cop out.
This isn't malicious or bad. It's just an example of the common problem where people's view of themselves is different from their actual behavior. Something all founders should learn. It applies to users just as much as investors.
> This isn't malicious or bad. It's just an example of the common problem where people's view of themselves is different from their actual behavior. Something all founders should learn. It applies to users just as much as investors.
I did a bit of research and you're right; they clearly say in multiple places (including here on HN) that they fund non-traction companies often. I'd agree that this is stretching the truth and it's probably orders of magnitude more difficult to get into YC with no traction.
> If you're a single founder, It's definitely harder to get in. But that doesn't mean you can't be a single founder. For single founders, if you can demonstrate traction, it's much easier to get in. Traction solves everything.
I would have thought that the reason a single founder would apply to YC would be so that the program would help gain traction (or pivot till product/market fit).
If a single founder builds a product and demonstrates traction then IMHO the hard work of building a company and getting customers is done and advantage of applying to YC is less apparent (atleast to me).
In other words, if you build a product and get traction and have customers then what is the value of applying to YC vs just pitching to VCs?
I'm sure I'm missing something here. I just don't know what it is.
Interesting. I applied to YC with https://icanpriceit.com/, not much traction yet. I was hoping I'd get an interview at least, based in part on my existing experience of building an ecommerce/Amazon business to 100k in sales (plus my answer to the "hack" question was pretty good).
I didn't get invited. I know that https://www.ycombinator.com/whynot/ says I pretty much can't get a direct answer why, but my own takeaways were that one of the following must be true. Either:
1. Solo founder+no traction was just too low to meet their bar.
2. I messed up some other part of the application, which is very possible.
or
3. 100k in sales isn't that impressive, relative to the kinds of impressive things other founders did; and the fact that it's not the startup I applied under dilutes the achievement.
Now in the month and a half since I applied, sales (on my amazon business) have jumped and I'm looking at close to a $1 million ARR (~$4500 sales today, ~$22500 sales 7 days, ~$78000 sales 30 days, majority of which are from nonseasonal, replenished products, so can reasonably extrapolate yearly i.e. no Q4 boost). Maybe in 5 months that will be impressive enough to get an invite, at least, assuming I still want YC. Without funding I likely won't be doing too much work on the startup and will mostly focus on my existing business and college.
(I actually talked to Aaron briefly after a talk in NYC, he said I shouldn't worry too much about being a solo founder.)
I'm pretty sure they've said multiple times that traction is the best indicator of future success. Very rarely do they fund startups without traction (if they do, it's usually someone from within their network).
> YC itself says they can't fund all the companies they want to.
No reason that won't change, and even if it did why would they ever make that public? In other words, they'd say that, even if it were not true.
> I know a number of founders who were rejected from YC and while they don't plaster it on their website, they don't hide it if it comes up.
It stands to reason that there are in a pool that large founders that feel one way or the other.
The HN wisdom is that if you let such a rejection affect you then you weren't successful start-up founder material to begin with but in reality it isn't all that simple.
> YC is not some magic oracle at picking startups.
That must be why the chances of getting follow on investment from other investors is so much lower once you reach demo day /s. YC start-ups are generally oversubscribed, especially when compared to non YC start-ups, so even if YC is not an oracle it definitely is a stamp of approval. Lack of such a stamp after trying to obtain it is a negative signal of sorts. And getting continuity funding or not is another signal of that kind.
> They just have way better dealflow because of their reputation and how simple their process is.
Yes, that reputation is what this is about, and that reputation is in a feedback loop. The process being simple has little to do with it, most start-up accelerators have a simple process.
The big factors are: founder friendly, huge alumni network with vast amounts of knowledge, huge pool of people willing to work for YC backed start-ups, coming to America, large chance of finding follow on investment once you are accepted.
Note how all it would take to make a play at this is to drop one single line from the YC continuity program terms, which is that YC continuity won't take the lead. The existence of that one line is the sign that they are not yet ready for a play like that. But that won't always be the case and at some point YC will be flush enough that they can run their incubator at the next higher level.
> Getting into YC is not an achievement. Even if you get in, you're not special. You still have to bust your ass like everyone else trying to build a company. Not getting into YC isn't a big deal either, because you're still not special.
Unfortunately, the marketing of YC (and many other accelerators) disagrees with this, with emphasis that joining a startup accelerator validates you and makes you part of the elite and gives you the authority to make a I'm-a-thought-leader Medium blog post. (Case in point, the "A YC alumni’s tactic to hack some early investors interest through a prolific Angel" incident: https://www.dropbox.com/s/go9lfnxwt9fnax2/My%20Investment%20...)
The disconnect between <X>-group-likes-my-startup and the reality of operating the startup is one of the reasons why there is a rise in stupid startups which eventually crash and burn. (This is also one of the reasons I hate sites like Product Hunt)
> usually fail because they are bad at convincing anyone of anything.
Without any data on usually vs. unusually a debate is lost anyway! FWIS there are enough stories of successes from solo-founders to contradict your theory - flat on its face.
> can't even convince one more person to join you
... is not the same thing as don't want another person in the founding team. I still do not see how that 10 year old logic of a co-founder must-have is going to hold good in the coming next 10 years. I may individually fail but times for startups have changed, haven't they?
Also it is still a bad deal for most entrepreneurs (especially those who are outside) to let YC become the fulcrum of startup destiny - for it has almost become a monopoly and a monopsony as I'd mentioned earlier. It doesn't matter whether YC likes it or not.
> They are there to give you access to hundreds of exceptional founders
Is there anything you can't do on your own? Like finding email and writing? Mentioning that you're from YC in the beginning adds less to the conversion than the actual message you're conveying, imo.
> The failed founders are adults who walk into the project with risks understood.
Most of the YC founders are barely out of college.
> However the ones who fail wind up with invaluable experience, an excellent item on the resume, and a network of connections to help them either try again or get a job.
You're really just pushing the startup religion; that somehow inexperienced people who failed at getting traction now have a resume bullet point and a great network?
If that's true, then it just lends credence to the original article's point that we've replaced quantifiable quality with politics.
> I got an email from Paul Graham saying basically that being a single founder put me at a disadvantage, because two founders can talk each other out of bad ideas, but I appeared too stubborn.
This applies equally for being talked out of good ideas.
And if your idea is good to start with, then there would be no point in changing it until you've pursued it long enough to see where it leads.
The thing to remember about YC is that it becomes a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. For example, let's say that Cal State Chico (not a top school) somehow convinced all the top students to attend next year. Pretty soon, it would start to be known as a top school. And let's say Stanford only got applications from the bottom 5%... you see where this is going.
Paul Graham's evangelizing means that, regardless of the utility of Y Combinator, if he convinces the top start-up prospects to join the program, it will make the program look good. They are looking for people who would be successful even without them.
Y Combinator could be minorly helpful and they would go on to success; it could be a wash, and they could go on to success; it could be a slight negative, and the strongest candidates would mostly still go onto success.
People could also FEEL that it's an incredible experience, even if this isn't objectively the case. Many people join various kinds of self-help or self-empowerment groups and enjoy the events and believe in them strongly, even if there is demonstrable practical harm.
Y Combinator could also have a net negative effect on the startup landscape, because NOT getting in can be so disappointing that it can lead people to give up (I wrote that before your post, but the link expired; I reloaded, and made this a reply instead of top-level comment); in other cases, they've found people who applied and got in, who considered getting in to be the accomplishment. Paul's viewpoints have been increasingly dominating the national conversation on startups the last few years, so the hypothetical indictments are meant to address its success as propaganda. Obviously if it really WERE the best approach, criticizing it for being too successful in its results would be disingenuous.
There's also a huge emphasis on getting funded being an accomplishment, which is a big distraction from the real priority for a business, which is making something that makes a profit. (A nice big funding round also means now you need an even BIGGER exit. This can actually reduce your chances for personal success. Xobni couldn't sell to Microsoft for $20 million because it wouldn't have been a big enough ROI for its investors. Perhaps they really thought they could be a billion dollar company and didn't want to sell anyway, but you see the point.)
Paul's talk about angels and super-angels and valuations focused on the main point being "the percent chance that the start-up is Google," if I recall correctly.
To me it looks like Y Combinator has the wrong model for that. The resources and timeframe favor much smaller ideas. According to the unofficial YClist.com, the top exit was 280 North at $20 million, which means not only have they not had another Google, they haven't yet had another ViaWeb.
It would be interesting to find a list of angels and their investments for the last 5 years and see which ones had bigger deals than that. I'm guessing a lot. So, that covers instincts and judgment, at least so far.
As for changing your idea, there are market segments that have been goldmines which I have yet to see a single YC company delve into. Thus, I'm not so sure on the advice portion.
There is a pretty big generation gap with the hot web properties and I don't know if any of the YC principals really grok it.
If PG reads this I expect to be told I'm wrong on every point except perhaps for a token concession for decorum. It's hard to talk people out of bad ideas when they're stubborn ;)
> YC used to be for people who investors wouldn’t normally take a chance on…and imo, it still is.
It absolutely is not. The recently released Founders Directory[1] shows that YC is practically a big tech company now. Most alumni are from FAANG or Ivy League. This was an inevitable result when YC became the most prestigious accelerator in the West
> If bad founders succeed at all, they tend to sell early. The most successful founders are almost all good.
I wonder what chances these people would have if they were to apply to YC now: Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jack Dorsey etc.
>I feel like people think if you're in YC you're a sure bet.
Did not mean to imply I feel YC makes success a sure bet, that is obviously and demonstrably false.
That said; non-monetary resources made available to YC companies are 'mostly' available to every startup? Really?[0]
-Regular founders dinners(networking, helps with initial traction)
-Free legal counsel
-AWS/Azure credit well above what the respective companies offer non-yc startups.
-Being YC alum helps with future funding rounds.
->but even YC companies that raise smaller-ish rounds fail all the time.
Yes...Of course they do, that's the point of VC
Yes blog posts and AMA's are great learning material, but I'd argue they aren't nearly as valuable as regular 1on1's with the people that wrote them.
I'm not trying to say YC is a magic bullet or that YC alum 'have it easy', it's hard as hell to create a successful startup. I am saying that there are not-so-trivial advantages to being incubated at/by YC
Indirectly, YC quite possibly are ripping most founders off financially, even though the average company return is high (power-law — few winners and many losers[1]). It is hard to find good figures, because we have reliable dollar estimates for the companies that win, but a paucity of information about the founders that lose, or what individual founders made[2].
When YC only selects the best 1 of ## applicants, it is hard to remove selection bias from any later analyses of returns for founders.
Value and opportunity-cost are messy, so measuring the returns for “loser” founders is really difficult. I am unsure if founders’ own self-assessment would be trustworthy information.
> I don't understand where the fixation for multiple founders stems from
Basically the YC model stems from PG recreating his experience with ViaWeb. He started a company with his
best friend and another expert programmer, so that's the model that seems like the "right" model to them.
Others have very different experiences working with other people (e.g. the much-maligned group projects in
college) so they have a different mental model of what works and what doesn't, at least for themselves.
There are extremely valid arguments both ways which largely boil down to individual variation, but here's a
key point that gets overlooked: Perhaps if you haven't done it as a single founder, you don't know what it
takes, and so you don't know what to look for.
He has done it in a group. So if you're good at picking twos and threes, or feel you are, you can fill up
your whole complement with those.
And then it becomes self-reinforcing. You get more and more confident with the one than the other which is
avoided. Some pitchers rely on their fastball and don't develop their slider.
So eventually you're looking at, let's say for sake of illustration, 90% confidence in picking groups, but
hardly any confidence still in picking solo founders.
So when you're looking at the last slot, do you want to add another group you are 90% sure of, or say no to
someone you are excited about and go with some solo founder you are dubious about? And what about the
second-to-last slot? And all the way back... Surely your FIRST choice isn't going to be a solo founder!
Even though YC claims not to have a fixed limit, obviously there is a practical limit. And when they say
they fund everyone they find promising, you have to take it with a grain of salt, because in their model,
being a single founder already isn't promising.
>YC filters applicants for dedicated founders who will not give up easily
Well, they try to filter by that quality, as would any other incubator or investor. It would make no sense to accept apathetic founders who will surrender at the first obstacle. Personally, I'm skeptical that they having any advantage in identifying such abstract traits. How would you identify it from a 15 minute interview?
> Take a look at the top 10 highest valued YC startups. All their founders came from schools with less than 10% acceptance rates.
This is not true. AirBnB is the top valued company that went through YC [1]. AirBnB was founded by Brian Chesky among others. Brian Chesky went to the Rhode Island School of Design [2]. The RISD had an acceptance rate of 20% in 2020.
They don't say that and that doc doesn't even mention traction. And, amusingly, it points to Dropbox's application as example of how to apply. When in reality it was due to traction on HN that Dropbox got into YC, Drew Houston was a solo founder so likely would've been rejected again on the basis of being a non-great founder since he hadn't even convinced anyone to join him.
Of course, one can always claim that "great founders have traction" but that's an obvious cop out.
This isn't malicious or bad. It's just an example of the common problem where people's view of themselves is different from their actual behavior. Something all founders should learn. It applies to users just as much as investors.
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