
YC Lessons From Two Latin Americans Who Walked Into Silicon Valley - katm
https://courses.platzi.com/blog/yc-lessons-latin-american-silicon-valley-y-combinator/
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dineshp2
Great post.

Could you explain a little about the visa situation being an international
founder. There is not much information about the issues faced by international
founders and most advice comes down to "Contact a lawyer". It would be nice if
you can share your experience.

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hkmurakami
One relatively straightforward path is to apply for an E-2 visa.

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alantrrs
I believe you need to make an investment out of your own pocket to apply for
that visa. An immigration lawyer told me $200k, do you know if you can go
lower than that?

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hkmurakami
The requirement is that a majority share of the company be foreign owned (I
think it may have to be the founder's country but I don't recall the exact
details), and that "substantial operational investment has been made in the
United States". The latter represents having a office lease, having purchased
equipment and furniture, etc.

The latter also will cause you to hear sums like $200k be quoted. Our number
was higher than this when we applied (we raised our first round outside of the
States), so I do not know if there is a lower bound. This whole process is not
well defined and is very much an exercise in compelling storytelling to
convince the Visa officer that you're not committing fraud.

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freddier
I'm the author of the article. After being part of YC, I had a lot of things I
wish I knew before doing it, from common mistakes to humble reminders.
Specially being an "international founder".

Happy to answer any questions.

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frikk
I just wanted to say that I enjoyed reading your article. I wish you the best
and keep up the good work. I especially appreciated the viewpoint of a non-
american (as a non-silicon valleyian, which arguably has similar learning
curves).

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Ramiuz
Oh god it's so cool to see Platzi in HN! (I learned a lot from you guys when
it was mejorando.la).

Thanks for the post. Just wanted to say thanks for your work and how happy
made me read about you guys.

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freddier
Thank you so much for that, Ramiuz. I hope you still learn from us now that
we're Platzi.

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marak830
That's really good advice. There is a few people I'll forward this too(it
doesn't directly apply to me being in Japan but the advice in general does!).

Good luck with your project!

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freddier
Thank you. Japan is amazing.

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saganus
Do you think you could've done the YC program remotely via the Fellowship?

I've thought on applying but sometimes circumstances make it hard to been able
to move there.

If you had joined the YC Fellowship instead, what do you think could've been
different?

Also, kudos! and thanks for the advice.

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freddier
I know some YCF companies. They loved it. I wanted to move to Mountain View
and do the full three month program. But if I couldn't, YCF is a great deal.

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zarkov99
Fantastic, a whole post with useful advice from minority founders and no
mention of their (supposedly) disadvantage status. We need more of this and
less of the bullshit about how badly minorities have it in SV.

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freddier
To be fair, discrimination exists and it happened to me occasionally while
raising post Demo Day. In subtle ways.

But there's people like that everywhere so I used it as a filter for good
people.

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erikb
Can someone summarize the content, and specifically point out the lessons? The
only thing I'm getting from reading it is "we come from far away, that's why
it was harder" (true story but doesn't really help others in this situation)
and "YC is so great" (which may or may not be true, but also doesn't teach us
anything). I don't find any lessons.

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MatthewMcDonald
* If English is your second language, don't worry

* Be truthful and give the whole story

* You win with growth, good metrics (acceleration > size) and good execution.

* live close to YC

* talk to your batch mates

* listen to YC partners' advice

* learn to talk slowly

* fundraising is not a right

* be humble

* YC will continue to help after your batch is over

* pay it forward

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sytse
Thanks for the GitLab mention, so much good advice in this, I agree with all
of it.

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freddier
Of course! We did our first technical live class in English thanks to you guys
<3

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diskcat
How do you know they are lie detectors unless you tried lying to them?

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kelukelugames
Be interesting if they went into detail about what prompted this paragraph.
Anyone can state generalities.

>Lying to YC partners is a waste of time. They won't ask for the money back,
so tell them everything. All startups are chaotic shitshows. They know. They
invented the phrase.

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freddier
OK,

Most (all?) startups have broken things. Mine did and I tried to hide them at
first. But I guess YC is at a point that, after thousands of startups, they've
seen most of the patterns and just want to help you fix them. They'll help you
no matter in what shape your company is.

Also, some startups plainly lie about their metrics, but those rarely get
accepted to YC, from my limited experience.

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diskcat
Why would you lie about metrics?

That seems highly verifiable. You should only lie about things that will be
hard to find out like how many women you ever slept with.

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coolsunglasses
"How our courses work" jump link doesn't work.

s/Colaborate/Collaborate/g

Are you going to make all the courses yourself or are you considering paying
third parties to make courses?

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freddier
We're considering opening it up to certain third parties. If you're
interested, f at platzi.com

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DiversityinSV
I guess I missed the 'Fundraising' portion while being Latin American in the
'lessons' \- must be because its so easy, right?

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freddier
I didn't find any particular strong bias against me due to my race/ethnicity
compared to my batchmates. There were ocasional subtle moments of doubt from
certain people at first, nothing too obvious.

But I think fundraising was as hard for me as it is for most founders at
similar stages. The fact that our company was profitable at Demo Day helped, I
guess.

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iss
Great post!

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iKenshu
Great post, good advices.

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freethrow
Good article and I think it will be helpful for me personally as well.

