
Why Y Combinator Made All the Difference - bootload
https://bold.co/public/why-y-combinator-made-all-the-zvgxjl?t=tihkgug
======
sillysaurus3
There aren't many positive toplevel comments, and I don't think that's a
reasonable situation for such a fine piece of writing. So:

Your story is wonderfully illustrative, in-depth, and inspirational. Thank you
for taking the time to share it.

For what it's worth, I really like your writing style. I hope to see much more
of it!

~~~
good_vibes
I second this.

This article just steered me more towards SF instead of Seattle because it
answered a lot of my questions.

~~~
cindywu123
If you're curious about why I left Seattle. I wrote about it here:
[https://bold.co/public/why-i-left-seattle-
egcdih?t=j9i3e37](https://bold.co/public/why-i-left-seattle-egcdih?t=j9i3e37)

~~~
good_vibes
You had me at Pixar. I think Bay Area is where the best of hippie and techie
cultures mesh together. I know it's changed a lot in the last decade but there
is always life left in that little group of rebels that keeps humanity moving
forward.

------
good_vibes
This is a life-changing read for me. I was debating if I should move to
Seattle or Bay area to pursue my 'science project' or not. My current job is
going to give me 7 weeks of severance starting in late April and I think it
will be enough to at least make the leap and cross my fingers. What I am
working on will change the course of history if I even get close to
succeeding.

I was wondering if YC or TechStars would be more ideal for me to start, I do
not want to go to a major investment firm that will see $$$ instead of the
value my invention has for science and human progress. I know it is possible
to build a company and advance science but I have to be VERY careful about who
is involved at the early stages. I think the only place for something as
'crazy' as my project and as 'crazy' as myself to be taken seriously is SF.

~~~
aaron-lebo
I don't doubt that you might change the world, but you should temper your
expectations.

My question to you is do you really need YC or another incubator to do it? If
what you've got is so world-changing, what they can offer you does not matter.
Do you have no other alternatives than moving to one of the most expensive
work locales in the world and joining in the rat race? Can you bootstrap? Do
you have close friends you can trust? Etc.

YC seems like good people but the VC model is predicated on convincing people
they need it. There are just as many failures as successes and there are other
ways to succeed and other ways you can control your own destiny. You may even
have a better shot if you don't do what everyone else is.

~~~
good_vibes
I can't do something this ambitious alone. That's the main thing, I need more
engineers, scientists, and designers involved in order for this project to
scale and make a significant impact.

I understand your train of thought though. I left Tattooine aka Atlanta
because there were not very many people who were fit to co-found this project
with me. Moved to Utah instead of Denver to improve as a developer and deepen
my discipline in other areas of my life. I feel ready to take the leap now.

Google offered me the foobar challenge a year ago while flying to Seattle
(didn't complete in time). I'm confident that should I 'fail', I can end up
working at a very nice company that aligns with my moral compass.

I can't live with cognitive dissonance, I have to be around people and ideas
that are trying to solve our collect existential crisis.

~~~
sprafa
Good luck. And remember to read! Read read read like your life depended on it

~~~
good_vibes
Thanks. :)

Currently reading a textbook about Math for CS from MIT, written by a Googler.

Also, have a stack of books helpful to entrepreneurs/scientists that I will
bring with me.

------
tylermenezes
A few things she doesn't mention which also helped:

Cindy and Denny are probably the hardest-working and most persistent people I
know. Experiment's early history is the epitome of pg's advice in "How Not to
Die."

They're also just genuinely nice and fun people. I don't think I've ever heard
them gossip about other founders, and think I've maybe heard them say a total
of one or two bad things about others (which were justified). One time they
turned their office into an after-hours coffee shop so people could hang out
while working. ([https://www.yelp.com/biz/microryza-coffee-roasters-san-
franc...](https://www.yelp.com/biz/microryza-coffee-roasters-san-francisco))

As you might have noticed in the post, Cindy is also very strategic in solving
problems.

------
losteverything
I first read only to find out what experiment is (still don't really know) but
instead quickly got trapped wanting to read more. Like I was reading something
that was not supposed to be public.

Especially the funding process. The description was chilling for me. I am
greatful to have chosen to read this.

~~~
cindywu123
This might help:
[https://experiment.com/birthday](https://experiment.com/birthday)

------
personjerry
How can one get connected to this network outside of applying to YC?

I'm a noob engineer and I'm trying to learn more about startups. I live in SF
and I'm looking on meetup.com and the startup events listed there mostly just
seem like a lot of "founders" wasting time "networking" instead of building
their products. It seems there is this network of people who want to look like
they're building a startup, which is quite separate from the network mentioned
in the article of people actually building a startup (or involved otherwise).

I don't know a lot of people here, and I'm not sure how to get started either.
Does HN have any insight here? Or I guess if anyone here is interested, I'd
love to get a quick coffee with anyone who is building a startup.

~~~
sillysaurus3
You might have some luck if you put an email in your profile. (You have to put
it in the profile section since the email section is private.)

~~~
personjerry
Thanks! Done :)

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levthedev
Great read. I'm dissappointing that this thread has devolved to HN cliches
(arguing about Kool Aid and pg's essays) and isn't focussing on the very well
written and inter sting content of this piece. Also, I wish there was a way to
subscribe to a writer on Bold - it seems that I can't, unlike Medium.

~~~
cindywu123
for this very reason i am cross posting everything i write on medium
[https://medium.com/@cindywu/why-y-combinator-made-all-the-
di...](https://medium.com/@cindywu/why-y-combinator-made-all-the-
difference-c75ca38920b3#.3c5g04v2r)

------
johan_larson
Desperately hopeful young founders, willing to work crazy hard and live in
pitiful squalor to make their ideas happen.

Is there a similar story on the VC side? Young venture fund operators who have
secured an itty bitty bit of LP money, working crazy hard to find worthy
investments, couch-surfing and living on KD to stretch the money as far as it
will go. That would be a story worth reading.

~~~
dluan
I was making $30k a year doing university research before starting a company.
what you call pitiful, most fields outside of tech call normal.

------
tantanel
It was a wonderful read, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thanks for sharing!

This bold.co site is a bit confusing though - I can't find a place where I can
subscribe to the author's posts. Does it even have such a feature?

~~~
cindywu123
the feature doesn't exist, but i cross post everything i write on medium

------
mybrid
Well met! Reading all the rigor applied to new ideas in this article brought a
tear to my eye. If only such rigor, even just a smidgen, were applied to
internal projects within corporations...

Best of success!

------
aswanson
"Being surrounded by dreamers inspired me to dream bigger and set an example
that hard work can make your dreams come true."

------
spack
Thank you, Cindy, for the good read. Tangential, but may I ask who were the
big names/VCs/Investors you met in Seattle (even if they said no)? I'm also a
Seattleite I'm interested to know who the 'players' (and magnitude) are around
these parts?

~~~
cindywu123
I met with everyone. You name the investor, I met with them. If you have
specific questions send me some electronic mail.

------
known
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists
in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the
unreasonable man." \--George Bernard Shaw

------
koolba
> We convinced our friends in the current Y Combinator batch to let us stay in
> a closet at their East Palo Alto home office for $600 per month. If we spent
> $1,000 a month we would have 25 months of runway, which seems infinite.

I'm all for frugality and cost controls, but this is ridiculous. It's things
like this that brainwash a generation of fools into throwing their lives away
at nonsensical ideas.

I'm not saying it's never right to put it all on the line and bet on your
idea. I'm saying the _vast_ majority of the time it's a terrible idea and
doing something like this serially would make for a terrible existence.

> As we walked out we remembered the National Geographic magazines. We handed
> each of the partners their National Geographic Magazine from their birth
> month and year. I remember Denny handing PG his.

>> "PG, This is what science looked like when you were born."

> Jessica ran after us and asked, "How did you find my birthday?" It turns out
> we got her birthday month wrong and gave her the January issue. Luckily we
> came with the backup. She is a February baby.

If I were in their shoes (YC interviewers) I'd be seriously weirded out by
this. Knowing the approximate age of someone and getting an issue from that
year wouldn't be that bad. But this is just creepy.

~~~
sillysaurus3
_> We convinced our friends in the current Y Combinator batch to let us stay
in a closet at their East Palo Alto home office for $600 per month. If we
spent $1,000 a month we would have 25 months of runway, which seems infinite.

I'm all for frugality and cost controls, but this is ridiculous. It's things
like this that brainwash a generation of fools into throwing their lives away
at nonsensical ideas.

I'm not saying it's never right to put it all on the line and bet on your
idea. I'm saying the vast majority of the time it's a terrible idea and doing
something like this serially would make for a terrible existence._

Are you kidding? I would do it in a heartbeat. I'm not joking. Who wouldn't
want to work on something awesome with all their heart with their friends in
East Palo Alto for a couple years? Why not? What an incredible, amazing
experience.

Ok, I can think of a bunch of people who wouldn't want to work like that. But
for a certain type of person, that experience is more amazing than the
cushiest "normal" job could ever be.

It was my dream since 17. It never came, because I never found anyone else in
the midwest who was interested in starting anything. Everybody wants to work
for someone else, or hates the VC ecosystem instead of playing the game. And
what can you do alone? I should've moved to SF, even if it was into someone's
closet.

~~~
koolba
> Are you kidding? I would do it in a heartbeat. I'm not joking. Who wouldn't
> want to work on something awesome with all their heart with their friends in
> East Palo Alto for a couple years?

Working on something awesome with friends should not, and in most cases does
not, require living in a closet. In most cases it doesn't require being in the
same room, city, state, or even country.

> Why not? What an incredible, amazing experience.

Haha. Looks like the punch bowl is empty. Somebody make another round of kool-
aid!

> It was my dream since 17. It never came, because I never found anyone else
> in the midwest who was interested in starting anything. Everybody wants to
> work for someone else, or hates the VC ecosystem instead of playing the
> game. And what can you do alone? I should've moved to SF.

You can do plenty alone. Only way you'll know how much is if you start.

You'll also see how much easier it is for others to join you if you're already
doing something. Sitting at home feeling sorry for yourself won't find you a
co-founder, building something will.

~~~
sillysaurus3
_Haha. Looks like the punch bowl is empty. Somebody make another round of
kool-aid!_

You know, I've heard this type of irritating comment so many times over the
years. I've been on HN since day two of its public launch, back when it was
called Startup News. It was a magical time, mostly because everyone was
universally supportive. This isn't a rose-tinted view of the past, or
selective memory. It was the reason I was blown away by this internet
community.

The cynical comments would pop up on Reddit, mostly from pg's essay posts. I
couldn't understand their point of view. Were they jealous? Did they care so
much about what other people were doing with their lives that they would
choose to mock them publicly? I didn't know, but I felt lucky that HN wasn't
one of those places.

Then as HN grew, it started here. Mostly people remained supportive, but there
was this undercurrent of negativity that kept creeping in, proportional to
HN's size.

Now I wake up nearly a decade later to see many people who share your ideas,
that only fools would dare gamble their youth, that taking anything but the
safe and rational route is "drinking kool-aid," that pg's essays are
manipulative, and so on.

And so I realize that YC founders now have their own community, separate from
HN, and the electrifying experience of the early days of Startup News is no
longer present.

But I was there. I saw it, I flew to SF and met a bunch of YC co's, I saw
their optimism and courage, and you could not be more mistaken about the type
of people they are.

I'm not saying that it's all wonderful, or that they're giants, or that there
are "normal" people and "special" people interested in startups. I'm saying
that startups are started by regular people, like you and me, and that without
a supportive community, it's incredibly difficult to start anything.

I didn't even care about getting rich. I just wanted to help somehow. But I'm
just happy that their community grows and grows and becomes stronger in spite
of your negative voice, and all the negative voices across the internet. It
seems like proof that you have to not care what people think to get things
done.

~~~
koolba
I'm not saying that pursuing a startup is always a bad idea. I'm saying that
romanticizing living in somebody else's closet as part of the startup journey
is wrong.

Building something that people what is what counts. Getting customers to pay
you for it is what counts. Having profits is what counts.

Software (and startups in general) doesn't get created because you're eating
beans and rice, heated off a hot-plate, in the closet of your friends
apartment. It gets created when you sit down to do real work.

> But I was there. I saw it, I flew to SF and met a bunch of YC co's, I saw
> their optimism and courage, and you could not be more mistaken about the
> type of people they are.

There's nothing courageous about taking unnecessary risks. That's called being
foolish.

Again, I'm not saying don't take risks. To win big you have to bet big. But
it's not the risks or bets that matter, it's the pay off. That's what has to
make sense.

> But I'm just happy that their community grows and grows and becomes stronger
> in spite of your negative voice, and all the negative voices across the
> internet.

Reality always has a negative tone to it. If it didn't, we wouldn't need
idealists.

> It seems like proof that you have to not care what people think to get
> things done.

Well this I can agree on.

~~~
ruleabidinguser
This is exactly correct. Whats good about a startup is not living in a closet
or getting to talk about how cool you are for living in a closet. That is
exactly what is bad about the experience. Pretending it is good is roughly
denial or some other similarly named vice.

~~~
lutorm
Would you say the same thing about doing an Ironman, or climbing Mt Everest
when you can just get helicoptered to the top?

Part of the attraction of doing things like these lies in proving to yourself
that you can do it, and by doing this you fortify yourself mentally for the
challenges that lie ahead.

Another result is that you become a "team" precisely because you have this
shared experience. It's sort of like going through basic training in the
military.

------
parenthesis
A very interesting read.

But why do I need to turn javascript on to read a load of text?

------
chx
Did you just doxx Jessica Livingston?

------
stephancoral
> What I am working on will change the course of history if I even get close
> to succeeding.

Don't tell me...an app that lets you pay for people to stand in line at Whole
Foods for you?

~~~
good_vibes
Nope. It's rooted in computational biology.

~~~
themantalope
Do you have a website or anything that discusses your general idea? I'm a
medical student, and my background is in math/cs and my research is in comp
bio. Just curious about what you're thinking of.

~~~
good_vibes
I bought the domain and have been creating a site locally. I'll upload it
prior to applying. I don't want to show anyone what I have yet, as it's half-
baked. I know first impressions mean a lot in this community and with
science/tech in general. Trust me, I've made that mistake before and got
laughed/ridiculed to the point of almost never trying again. I'll be smarter
this time and remember this is not reddit, this is where supergeeks hang out.

------
mltoolb
I didn't read the post, but if the poster is going to live in a closet I
wonder where is going to live the next guy with a very big changing world idea

