

Advice For Your YC Application - kunle
http://blog.hipmob.com/post/64689083699/advice-for-your-yc-application

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PabloOsinaga
This is great advice - and similar to the one we got from another YC alum:

"My advice is 3 points to communicate in your application. 1\. You have
revenue or a plan to make it 2\. You and your co-founders are a solid team 3\.
You will pursue this even without getting an investment"

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kunle
> 3\. You will pursue this even without getting an investment"

Makes all the difference in the world. If you're doing a startup contingent on
getting into YC, its worth re-thinking. YC helps, but startups are still hard
regardless.

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praxeologist
I forgot about #3, so now I feel much better about not applying this time
around. I'm still weak on #2 with two "maybes" which was just one of several
reasons I don't think it would have worked anyhow.

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kunle
Makes sense. Knowing those reasons you don't think it will work and attacking
those specifically is actually a really good way to debug. Dave Friedberg
(Founder of Climate Corporation) actually has a really good approach to this
that he talks about here (3 minute video):
[http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2796](http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2796)

He basically says to lay out the unknowns, and systematically work towards
making them knowns. Good luck!

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nivals
Postmortems like this are really interesting to see, they benefit incoming and
future YC classes. I'd love to see more as well.

I agree that if you don't pass the conviction 'sniff test', it's really hard
to grind through the ups, downs, and fundraising.

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beambot
If you're interested in seeing more like this, then I'll throw ours into the
hat as well:

[1] [https://www.lollipuff.com/blog/102/lollipuffs-ycombinator-
ex...](https://www.lollipuff.com/blog/102/lollipuffs-ycombinator-experience)

[2] [http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/20/how-to-write-a-winning-
y-c...](http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/20/how-to-write-a-winning-y-combinator-
application/)

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keithwarren
Great advice but I wish more alums would share their actual application and
video. There are a few floating around and we all try to divine as much from
them as possible but the bigger the sample the better.

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abgupta
Good advice, staying with it and believing in your idea is certainly important
and I guess they'll see through that if you're not genuine.

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kunle
> believing in your idea is certainly important

Not just your idea - also important to believe in yourself and your team. In
many ways this will supercede the idea because the idea is just one
manifestation of a solution to a problem that you're solving. With time and
experience your understanding of that problem will evolve, as will your
solution.

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TheMakeA
Great advice, Ayo! I'm glad that you focus on the company rather than writing
the application.

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kunle
Thanks. It's pretty easy to focus on optimizing your app rather than
optimizing your business (I see this a lot actually), and it's a bad way to
go. Similar to PG's thoughts on raising money as quickly as possible and then
going back to work, you should tell the best story you can in your app and
then get back to work as quickly as possible. Whether you get into YC or not,
your business will still be there waiting, warts and all.

