
Founder recommendation after working at a YC startup can help get you into YC - BIackSwan
http://blog.ycombinator.com/one-surprising-hack-to-get-into-yc
======
soneca
No doubt a step in the direction of the Ivy League style of biased selection.
Sure, you can say (and mean) that non related people still have a chance to
get in, but this action spoke louder than the words.

I not saying YC is elitist, because the since-the-beginning action of actually
reading ALL applications, no matter from who, says a lot about the meaning to
accept people with no connection at all to YC ecossystem.

But, said that, this announced action is a step on the opposite direction. I
would appreciate another step in the direction of "we give a fair chance to
not well connected people". Maybe some active recruiting actions on other
places outside Silicon Valley.

As a double counter-example, 500startups do a lot of active recruiting outside
USA. But, at least in Brazil, to have a real chance on getting in, you need
the personal approval of a particular individual (Beddy Yang) to endorse your
application. Having an application from Brazil, with no endorsement from this
person, is as good as not applying at all. So solve one problem, but creating
another to the openness of the selection process.

~~~
sama
The great majority of people we fund have no connection to us whatsoever.

YC partners do dozens of events every year in the US and dozens more in the
rest of the world to reach out to people we don't have any connection to.

A great idea, product, market, traction, etc. will always carry more weight
than anything else. As much as there is any single secret to YC's success
(other than not having a coworking space), being willing to talk to people
with no connection to us is it.

That said, we definitely take note of recommendations from YC founders about
great people they've worked with, and we should be upfront about that.

Also, we think announcing this will help YC companies recruit, and anything we
can do to help YC companies we like to do.

~~~
sparkzilla
Hi Sam, I hope you will consider solving these perception problems by making a
more transparent and open application process, that weighs the value of each
attribute on the application. The question being, for example, how much more
does a good idea carry weight than a personal connection? Or how much more
does a good team carry more weight than a limited, but clear market focus?
This is surely something that you do internally when making your choice, and I
think there is no harm in expressing it externally. It will help you attract
more of what you want, while giving potential applicants more information
about what you want. Personally, I felt frustrated in my last YC application
that other teams with seemingly lesser abilities and project scope were
accepted over our application, and it would be good for all concerned to be
able to provide better feedback than simply, "we make mistakes sometimes'.

~~~
SamReidHughes
> these perception problems

Why should YC care about _your_ perception problems?

------
edoceo
My secret hack for getting accelerator / investor interest is...wait for
it...PAYING CUSTOMERS

------
robotresearcher
This was a strange move. Personal references are normal, useful and
understood.

But how does making a a formal policy and public announcement help YC or
applicants? It looks and smells bad from the outside. I winced when I read it.

Imagine if beloved Stanford made that announcement. They would not be so daft.

~~~
fhsdjejk
An announcement like

"If you've worked with a Stanford professor and have a positive reference from
them, we will take that into account on your application."

?

That sounds like a totally sensible (as well as totally ethical) thing do do!

~~~
blueprint
However, that's not exactly what was announced. "Extra consideration" is what
was offered in exchange for a good reference.

But what exactly constitutes, "extra consideration"?

It's the mandate of YC to find companies worth investing in and founders who
are worth having a relationship with. So it's in YC's best interest to give
all extra consideration possible to every single candidate. No?

So it sounds to me like it's a matter of giving additional preference to such
candidates.

I was invited to interview at YC a few years ago and they declined to get
involved with my venture. Indeed, I was quite a bit less experienced at that
time, and I didn't realize that YC's real mandate is to find at least one
company in each batch that will be a billion dollar company. My business model
wasn't geared for that kind of growth, so I must not have known what I was
doing when I applied to YC. However, if they had decided to provide me "extra
consideration", they might have informed me of their feedback /before/
rejecting me instead of /after/ rejecting me, and then instead judged me on
the merit of how I treated their feedback. In other words, to have judged me
based on my capacity to learn.

Well, I didn't get funded that day, but I did meet one of the founders of a
company that graduated YC the year before. He very soon after offered me a job
as their first engineering hire. I worked with that YC company for a while,
and it was there that I found out that just having gone to YC doesn't make a
company's founders into true leaders. I saw the same thing at a Tech Stars
company where I worked thereafter.

After all, genuine leadership is a function of individual truthfulness. In my
experience, such a thing is only won through hard training by learning from a
truthful person, and/or hard trials while trying to live truthfully.

However, one of the problems is that only truthful people can recognize and
understand other truthful people. Not being able to recognize others' capacity
without truthfulness, we need to be very careful about trusting our own
judgements.

In that case, is the so-called "extra consideration" really able to be "extra
consideration" of the person themselves, or is it simply the application of
favor by using the heuristic of the candidate having worked under a YC grad?

------
mhartl
In this context, it may also be worth noting that (as I think PG wrote
somewhere) YC can tell the difference between a recommendation made as a favor
to the applicant and a recommendation made as a favor to YC. Obviously, it's
much better to be in the latter category.

~~~
phamilton
I think there's actually a checkbox when submitting a recommendation as an
alum. (not kidding)

~~~
mhartl
I'm a YC alum myself. There was no such checkbox the last time I made a
recommendation, but that was a while ago, so it may have changed.

~~~
phamilton
Perhaps not a checkbox but I've heard there's a "scale or 1 - 5" question
about how well you think they will succeed. If they didn't expect founders to
recommend people they didn't want they wouldn't ask whether they are unlikely
to succeed.

------
staunch
Current top seed investors make investment decisions (in pre-traction
startups) almost entirely based on their own relatability to the founders,
because it takes so much more work to judge actual merit so early.

But top startups make their hiring decisions almost entirely based on the
skills of the candidates, because they can't afford to be at all self-
indulgent. So this probably is a good thing and serves as a merit-based
backdoor for some otherwise underestimated people.

~~~
nedwin
More than a few of the companies you might call "top startups" hire
exclusively from the alma mater of their founders. ie Stanford, Harvard. Still
hiring exceptional developers but with a slant on where they are coming from.

~~~
staunch
I'd call those "hot startups" myself and they tend not to be hot for long.

------
mildbow
That's cool.

References can't hurt. And, if you don't have a concrete next step then
working with/for like-minded people is a blast.

But, if you really want to start something, start it. There are no
gatekeepers. You don't need to build someone else's dream before you build
yours.

As an aside, do we have some numbers on how many YC employees went on to start
companies that are now in YC? Compared to say: ex-Google/facebook employees?

------
icpmacdo
This is frustrating for international applicants

~~~
ffn
Yes, if your goal is to get into YC, but I would argue that, as a startup
founder, your goal should be building your process and getting it to market.
YC, for all positive hype they get, will not help you build your product,
design your process, or give you users if you didn't have the fortitude to get
it in the first place. If building a startup is driving on the highway, then
getting into YC is driving 95 mph, while just doing it on your own is driving
55 mph; there are more risks and deadlines involved, and there is no guarantee
you will reach your destination... But if you do, it happened really quickly
and everyone else is impressed.

Doing a startup is the 21st century version of the 7th century practice of
going on a religious pilgrimage. And YC is a wealthy kingdom somewhere along
the way; it is neither your destination nor an absolutely necessary via-point
(though it is refreshing to go there). Your startup is your journey, the roads
you trailblazed is your business, and the journey itself starts with you and
it ends with you. YC might help you on your way, but it won't and can't carry
you (incidentally, the only thing that gets your through your worst moments is
blind and obstinate faith, which is surprising because this hasn't changed
despite all the centuries)

------
gyardley
This is like announcing the earth is round, no? Known quantities trump unknown
quantities.

If you're reading this post and thinking 'well, that sucks', it's important to
realize that pretty much everything everywhere works the same way.

------
cperciva
If a reference from a YC-funded employer is useful, does the same apply to a
YC-funded _customer_?

~~~
mildbow
Obviously it depends on the recommendation, but assuming both being equal,
it's an interesting question.

The former talks about getting a stamp of approval on the team while the
latter talks about a stamp of approval on the execution/product.

I would think the latter would be the one to carry a lot more weight by
default.

If this were about a16z, I would guess the latter. Since it's about YC, I
can't hazard a guess.

~~~
cperciva
Right. I'm asking this because of my experience running Tarsnap -- not that I
think I would need any help in getting into YC if I decided that I wanted to
drink the kool-aid and move to the bay area, but because I figure there must
be plenty of other small companies building products which are used within the
YC "family".

It would be a shame if YC missed out on good investments simply because their
founders were too busy successfully running their own companies to have an
opportunity to work at a YC-funded company.

------
petervandijck
And you won't believe what happened next!

------
chrisdbaldwin
There are a number of cognitive biases that would suggest this is a bad idea,
Sam. I'll leave you to decide which ones are particularly egregious.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases)

------
bcrawl
Sounds like a pitch to fill open positions at YC funded companies. Nothing
wrong with it, just the verbiage of the post -- "surprising hack". It is a
hack which feels like Sam just thought up of or made it up. Because otherwise,
there is no need to correlate working for YC as a hack to get into YC.

There were other "surprising hacks" always mentioned here, have a solid
product with good group, have a product which makes money, get a
recommendation from other YC alumni etc.

This, this just sounds like, "hey, we want you to work for our companies. In
case you ever want to start one, we will look at your app favorably then."

~~~
LukeShu
I believe the title is a joke on the spammy ads on various websites: "One
(surprising|weird|clever) (trick|secret) to ${common_desire}".

------
thaumaturgy
surprising => weird

hack => trick

Happens a bit in sama's and pg's comments too. Kind of funny, I guess nobody's
immune to writing buzzfeed posts.

~~~
sama
this was intentional buzzfeed satire :)

~~~
zb
Technically this was more of a parody rather than satire. Satire would imply
that you were making a deeper statement about Buzzfeed. In fact you were just
re-using the form in a joke-y way as a linkbait headline for something
unrelated.

Hopefully the mods will enforce the HN guidelines and rename this submission
with a non-linkbaity title :)

~~~
dang
Yes, and we'll scold sama for you too, but I actually can't think of a good
(accurate and neutral) title.

"Working at a YC startup can help you get into YC" isn't right, since what the
post says is that a recommendation _from a founder_ of a YC-funded startup
_that you 've worked at_ can help get you into YC. 80 chars, anyone?

Edit: ok, thought of one. We've changed the title from "One surprising hack to
get into YC". If anyone can suggest a better title, we're happy to change it
again.

~~~
sama
I deserve to be scolded. It's been a rough day. I was up all night. I thought
I'd try to be funny. It didn't have the intended effect.

~~~
cperciva
In case it makes you feel any better: I immediately understood the reference,
and I thought the joke was funny.

------
at-fates-hands
I actually laughed when I read this.

If I have worked at a YC company, I get extra startup cred, but no worries, if
you don't have that recommendation then we're still cool - right?
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

Announcing there's a way to getting special treatment, then completely backing
off your original statement? Brilliant.

------
benologist
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indentured_servant](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indentured_servant)

