

Y Not - YC rejects of the world, unite! - mdemare

Is anybody is interested in moving to SV anyway? After all, weekly dinners and a demo day are not that hard to organize. You might meet potential co-founders, or at least find people willing to discuss your start-up with, share apartments, etc. I'm just thinking out loud here.
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kmt
How about gathering in one of the countries that recently joined the EU:
Bulgaria, Romania... Living is cheap, labour is cheap, people are smart.
Anyone interested?

On the other hand conditions there not that professional and engineers don't
have adequate experience. Hmm...

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danny76
I'm living in Romania. It would be a great place to join up with other
entrepreneurs. _My_ biggest problem is finding entrepreneurally-minded people
(co-founders).

Finding experienced programmers to hire is not a problem, there are plenty.
There's an entire outsourcing industry working for US and Western Europe
clients.

Finding "professional conditions" (office space? net? or what?) is not a
problem either.

Living costs are still cheap, but rising, and so are wages.

~~~
kmt
I'd be interested to learn more about Romania. Danny76, please contact me if
you wish to discuss this further: kmt at ftml dot net.

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cstejerean
Personally I wouldn't recommend Romania as a place to do a startup yet, at
least not to incorporate in Romania. I moved to the US from Romania about 7
years ago and while some things have improved in the mean time I think the
current system in Romania would impose too many road bloacks for a startup.
Great place however to outsource.

~~~
kmt
Well, you could incorporate in Delaware but be located in Romania for a while.
Also, Romania has probably improved a bit since you left.

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danny76
Incorporate in Delaware; bureaucracy is still time-consumming in RO. You could
work like that for a while and nobody would bother you (or even know you exist
for that matter).

Eventually (i.e. when you have profits and want to take dividends) you're
supposed to register your business with Romania. Or you could just go back to
the US. At that point you probably have enough money to have lawyers and
accountants take the hassle out of doing business.

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brl
This is something I was thinking about after reading the rejection thread.

How many other rejects are still going ahead with the plan to move their
startup to SV this winter even though they aren't participating in YC? (or are
already there after not getting accepted into previous cycles?)

We'll be there for sure, and would be highly interested in organizing
something with other 'Y Not' startups to have some kind of social environment
and network and have fun with other groups.

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joeguilmette
I live in Santa Cruz right now, and am going to be moving up to the bay. We
found YC about 3 months early, unfortunately, and are just now working on a
demo to shop around for seed funding.

I'm going to be moving up sometime in January. If people want to get together
and rent and apartment, I'd be really interested. I'm thinking a 3 bedroom,
with bunk beds and the whole nine yards.

Also, just getting together and eating dinner and talking would be immensely
helpful.

Is anyone interested? How can we organize this?

I've created a facebook group (hold the lynching mob please).
<http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5381210911>

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yrashk
I am interested, though I need someone to invite me to US to let me apply for
visa.

P.S. That is basically what I was talking about yesterday
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=70071>
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=70107>)

P.P.S. I am interested to move, to communicate frequently and to share
apartments to reduce costs.

~~~
corentin
The silicon valley probably ain't a bad place to be but:

\- there is this thing called the Interweb that helps communicate efficiently
from all over the world (I find amusing the idea that you have to be in a
certain place in one country to work on Internet stuff; doesn't sound like
"eating your own dogfood" if you ask me);

\- instead of all european entrepreneurs moving to the US, why not organize in
Europe? Most people want to move to the US because it's easier, with less
bureaucracy... yet they have to face complicated immigration issues.

Just because pg is a brilliant entrepreneur who identified a few specific
rules to help replicate what he did ten years ago doesn't mean it's the only
way. Far from it. _Think different_.

~~~
mdemare
On the internet, nobody can see you fail. Peer pressure, weekly dinners, demo
day - you can't really replicate that on the web.

As for organising in Europe, where? London is very expensive, and nothing else
springs to mind.

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falsestprophet
I understand that Copenhagen and Amsterdam are thriving tech centers. They are
also full of English speakers and beautiful women.

~~~
mdemare
A "thriving tech center" is overstating it a bit for Amsterdam, but we
certainly have our share of small web start-ups, and there are plenty of
programmers available. The atmosphere is great, the climate is no distraction,
(but the nightlife is).

Language is not a barrier, but I don't think you should incorporate here - we
have high capital requirements. NTIAALOA (not that I am a lawyer or anything).

~~~
idea
Current minimal capital requirement is 18000 euro for a Dutch limited company,
but a new bill will remove this requirement.

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imsteve
Is it really so hard to incorporate in the US but operate from overseas? I
don't think it is.

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davidw
Probably not, but I don't think you get any of the benefits of the corporation
unless you also register a local branch of it, and then you're back to square
one. Meaning you can't really be employed by your own company...stuff like
that.

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imsteve
I highly doubt that.

~~~
davidw
Yeah? What's your information? Mine is spotty, but comes from a friend in
Italy who is a registered accountant there, who told me in no uncertain terms
that having DedaSys LLC in Oregon is all fine and dandy, but in terms of
Italy, it basically doesn't exist. If at some point I would want to be
employed by it, it would require creating a local subsidiary that then has all
the same bureaucratic requirements that any other company would have. If you
think about how governments operate, it does make sense. Even if you do
business a lot in another US state, you're supposed to register to do business
there - let alone another country.

The potential "loophole" is registering a company in an EU country that's not
so lame as the continental ones (i.e. Ireland or the UK), but I don't have
good information on that.

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breck
If anyone who wasn't accepted wants to move to Cambridge, my roommate and I
may have a deal for you. We'll provide you(or ya'll--up to 2) with free room &
board in return for doing some development for our company(an angel funded web
2.0 startup). Then you can spend your time working on your company in the
center of innovation in Cambridge. I'm not saying this will definitely happen,
but if you're nice enough and seem like you just need a boost like this to get
going I just may. Email me breck at breckyunits.com if interested.

BTW- Our company started the YC application but our customers are closer to
Cambridge so we never finished the app. Judging by the acceptance rate we most
likely would have gotten rejected anyway but it still was too bad we couldn't
apply. I've been living in North Carolina for 5 years, is there something
about the winter in Boston I should know ;)

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andreyf
Let's just not call it YC rejects ... I know they say that all PR is good PR,
but I don't see the point of labeling yourself by one person's turn-down.

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kmt
"Y Not"s sound pretty good, actually.

~~~
brl
Yeah, that name is awesome :-)

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yrashk
I second it :)

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cooldyood
that's a brilliant name..

~~~
kmt
I think based on that and my other comment in this thread
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=70299>) I'd like to start
<http://ynot.bg> for all of us who may be willing to go to Bulgaria and work
on their ideas there. Hey, I think I even have 200m2 of class A office space
available there. Hmmmm :-)

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Jaggu
YC is great because you get environment and advise from people who were part
of successful startups. Also their connection helps. After the rejection - it
is better i do my work myself and then if needed - for connection and advise -
I will apply again in YC for next round. You might be next BillGates or
PaulGraham but at this time you are just like me and other developers who
wants to be their own boss. So, as you don't have proven track record - I am
not gonna move to SV just so that I can stay with other like minded. I am
motivated enough to do same by staying at my place. I might be wrong but
people should rethink about what they wanna achieve by moving...

~~~
gscott
YC is great, but I have realized this round that you need an easy mass appeal
type idea to get in.

So a club of interested parties called 'Y Not' sounds good to me, I am not too
far away to drive to SV (from San Diego, CA).

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tobin
First I'd like to say congrats and good luck to those who were selected to go
to the next round! I'm sure this is going to be a very exciting, yet very
nerveracking experience.

For those of you in europe, although it's not quite the same thing as Y
Combinator I've been following the Seed Camp blog. This seems to be something
that may be of interest to you not in the US. <http://www.seedcamp.com/>

As for those who got rejected (like me and my partner), just keep on working
at it and keep your eyes open to opportunities. We tried and by far that's far
better than not trying at all.

t.

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imasr
At this point, I wonder if we should start sharing YC applications, checking
mutual interests and after that decide where, whom and when. Let's take the
best out of a loss. If anyone is interested in South America (Buenos Aires)
and build a p2p development platform, or need a highly skilled/experienced
C++/webstuff programmer, drop me a line: rafael_imas[at]yahoo[dot]com.

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ivankirigin
Why not just organize some regular BarCamps?

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kingnothing
It's completely off topic, but after reading through this thread, I have to
say it: I love this community.

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ardit33
Please don't come here. Stay where you are and try to make it work. Rents are
already thru the roof from too many people moving in.

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perezd
I live in Santa Clara, here in SV, I'd love to meet up, please feel free to
contact me.

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naivehs
Well if you weren't interested why did you even apply at all?

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mdemare
You misread my post, it isn't a rhetorical question, but an call for action.
I've clarified it now.

~~~
davidw
You should not call it 'rejects', but 'YCommunity' or something like that. If
I were in the area, I'd be interested, but I'm not a YC reject (I'm a didn't
even apply:-) Heck, maybe some of the YC-accepted would be interested in
meeting up and sharing information.

~~~
yrashk
I don't care how to call this community. Name is not that important comparing
to the value of community itself :)

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ideas101
I'm interested in the idea for weekly dinner and demo day - just wondering how
would you get all the VCs to attend?

~~~
davidw
> how would you get all the VCs to attend

You're not going to get that. If there is no way to keep bozos out, there is
no guarantee of quality, and thus less interest. So just stick to fun meetings
once in a while, rather than anything smacking of an 'organization'.

