
YC Changes - skndr
http://blog.ycombinator.com/yc-changes
======
brianchesky
One evening in early 2008, I got the opportunity to meet Michael at an Austin
hotel during SXSW. I pitched him on the idea for Airbnb, and he took us under
his wing. For the rest of the year, we would visit his office every Friday
night for hours on end. Each session, Joe and I would demo our latest site and
report on our progress. Michael taught me about fundraising, product growth,
and building the basics of a startup culture. He kept reminding us to take
just a few more steps. If we had known just how many steps there were, we may
have been discouraged, but Michael always made progress feel within reach. The
most important thing Michael did was believe in us. Had it not been for
Michael, there might not be an Airbnb today.

~~~
hueving
As I understand it, the major boom for airbnb was the switch to renting out
entire homes. Were you under the guidance of YC during that time?

~~~
kxd
FWIW, there's some good discussion around this in Sam Altman's interview with
Jessica Livingston ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFOC-
cgIWaY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFOC-cgIWaY)).

------
ncd
Michael was one of our group partners during S16, and I cannot think of a
person better suited for this position than him. He consistently demonstrated
the ability to cut through all of the nonsense founders tried to use to defend
their actions (ourselves included) and delivered fantastic insights into our
businesses to which we were blinded.

For me, the group partners were the primary value delivered by YC during the
program, and I look forward to that value being continued under Michael's
leadership. Congratulations!

~~~
mwseibel
Thanks! I really enjoyed working with you guys!

------
dhawalhs
Obligatory link to How to Start a Startup Stanford class by Sam Altman:
[http://startupclass.samaltman.com/](http://startupclass.samaltman.com/)

As the founder of a MOOC search engine, I am excited. Its good for my business
:)

P.S. You can follow the class on Class Central [1] and we will send you an
update whenever the course dates are actually announced

[1] [https://www.class-central.com/mooc/7130/startup-
school?follo...](https://www.class-central.com/mooc/7130/startup-
school?follow=true)

~~~
Dowwie
class-central is great! I follow your twitter notices to keep up with upcoming
courses

~~~
dhawalhs
Thanks! Glad to know somebody finds them useful.

------
brianliou91
I would personally seek Michael's advice when I was in the S15 batch because
of how earnest his advice was. Even for companies outside his group you could
really tell the effort he would give to provide quality guidance. One example
of how much Michael cares was in the days before our demo day, I was the first
to come in at 8AM and Michael literally had slept on the couch having stayed
up all night providing feedback the night before. He comes out of the partners
office, sits down, and has me pitch maybe 10 minutes after he probably woke up
:) Congrats!

~~~
mwseibel
Thanks Brian - when you go all in on demo day prep so do we :)

~~~
mathattack
Said just like my Dad. :-)

------
minimaxir
What didn't work with the Fellowship, exactly? In light of the dissolution,
how did the winners of the Apply HN competition
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11440627](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11440627))
work with the most recent Fellowship class?

~~~
pb
Fellowship worked really well for the most part, but our real goal is to 10x
or 100x the number of startups that we help, and Fellowship in it's current
form couldn't easily do that. The MOOC is essentially Fellowship 2.0 -- we're
taking what we learned from Fellowship and then opening it up to the whole
world so that anyone can participate.

~~~
mceoin
Do you anticipate seed funding for standout fellowship "graduates", especially
those in foreign countries?

~~~
pb
Yes, many fellowship companies have gone on to raise money or join the core YC
program. Our hope is that the same will be true of the MOOC.

~~~
mceoin
Fantastic!

------
giarc
MOOC = Massive Open Online Course

If I had to look it up, I'm sure others are in the same boat.

~~~
superplussed
I would guess that over 90% of the YC crowd know what MOOC stands for.

~~~
vxNsr
I had no idea but I didn't feel like looking it up so I appreciate giarc for
not being lazy.

~~~
Chronic9q
You are part of the 10% that didn't know. Welcome to Hacker News.

------
inputcoffee
You buried the lede: a YC MOOC!

I always felt that onemonth.com basically was the YC MOOC. (It is funded by
YC, and you see the themes of user first, user research, growth etc running
through it).

Not sure if anyone else here knows what I mean.

Will the MOOC be free?

~~~
sama
Yes, it will be free.

~~~
gordon_freeman
Thanks Sam for making it free and available to all. I am really excited about
the upcoming MOOC from YC. Can you share some more details on what kind of
content will it have? What is the target audience? etc. Would love to know
more about it.

------
dasmoth
Am I reading this correctly that the $20,000 YC fellowship is no longer
available (and therefore the only want to get any form seed funding from YC is
once again to move to the Bay Area)?

That said, the MOOC sounds interesting!

~~~
sama
Correct.

However, we may offer something like 'financial aid' for future versions of
the MOOC.

~~~
cperciva
I'm confused by this - coming from an academic background, the words
"financial aid" mean "help with subsidized tuition fees" to me, but you've
said that this is going to be free. Can you elaborate on what you're thinking
here?

~~~
sandslash
The initial thought process around financial aid in this case is to give
founders the means to be able to work on their idea, project, or company. I'd
like to think of it more as a grant. The grant will afford founders in more
disadvantaged positions an opportunity to focus on their startup.

We're still working out the details of program, but our aim is to encourage
more people to work on their ideas, and hopefully help startups be better in
the long run.

~~~
cperciva
Got it. So funding for the ideas/projects/companies, not funding for the MOOC.

I don't envy you the task of deciding who will get the grants (and I say this
as someone who routinely pores through hundreds of undergraduate student
applications for scholarships and awards). Is there any way you can structure
the MOOC to give you a cheap-but-not-trivially-gameable grade? That way you
could formulate the "startup grants" as being awards for the best performers
in the MOOC and cut down significantly on the administrative effort involved.
Of course, you might want people to be working on their projects while they
take the MOOC, in which case the timeline wouldn't work -- I don't know
whether your MOOC is aimed more at preparing people for a startup or people
currently doing a startup (this seems like a very important thing to decide
and to be clear about).

... it occurs to me now that I've written this that you've almost certainly
considered all the points I've raised already; but I figure I might as well
leave them here just in case I've pointed out anything you missed. :-)

~~~
sandslash
Yep! And I definitely appreciate your thoughtfulness and input. We are still
fleshing out all the finer details of the program, but we will have a more
detailed announcement soon.

------
btilly
Seeing
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Buchheit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Buchheit)
in the announcement is a fun coincidence. He founded gmail. One of the things
he did with gmail is gave it a command-line user interface.

I recently found out that a lot of people I would expect to know about it,
don't. If that includes you, go to the gear on the upper right of your gmail,
select that, then Settings, then turn keyboard shortcuts on and save.

Typing "?" randomly in gmail will let you know what shortcuts are there. It
takes time for your fingers to learn them, but scanning email with j k [ ] is
so much faster than a mouse. I don't even think before using / to search. :-)

~~~
parallel
These are keyboard shortcuts not a command-line.

------
huhtenberg
Does Paul (pg) have an active role in YC? Asking as a curious outsider.

~~~
sama
He normally still advises companies, but right now he's living in England for
a year.

~~~
huhtenberg
Thanks.

------
errythingisneat
What the world needs is a solution to _funding_ orders of magnitude more
startups than currently get funded.

YC is in the incredibly fortunate position of having this opportunity but
instead it looks like Sam Altman is falling into the same trap Larry Page did
with Google. He's turning it into a bit of a rich guy's playground...

On behalf of the world that wasn't born into a world of wealth and elite
connections: Please shine your massive resources on the many thousands of
deserving little startups!

~~~
snowmaker
YC would like to fund a lot more startups. We're working on this.

Also, being connected doesn't help people get into YC. We have no connection
to most of the companies we fund.

~~~
Qworg
RE: "We have no connection to most of the companies we fund."

This certainly isn't the perception on my part - the flood of posts from
previous YC companies who talk about how they had help from other YC companies
to polish their pitch makes it seem like current YC companies are definitively
connected to previous YC companies.

~~~
pb
The handful of blog posts you see here on HN are not representative of the
whole batch. The majority of companies that we fund have zero alumni
connections.

To me, this is actually one of the most important features of YC: the
application process is completely open and we fund people from around the
world regardless of background. Having graduated from college in Ohio in the
90s I moved here with zero connections and really wished for something like
YC.

~~~
Qworg
An awesome feature certainly. I appreciate the access (and the free teaching
we're getting more of soon) :)

While I can't dictate what orgs do, it'd be helpful to see some "we applied
with zero connections and got in on our strength alone" posts to balance it
out.

~~~
pb
I agree it would be good to have more blog posts with that message -- I worry
that good founders won't apply due to the mistaken impression that alumni
connections are required.

Here's one for you:
[https://twitter.com/joseluisnuno/status/770711984543244288](https://twitter.com/joseluisnuno/status/770711984543244288)

------
ghshephard
One question does YC == Y Combinator? In the TLDR, YC Core is renamed to "YC",
and YC Group now consists of Y Combinator, YC Continuity, YC Research and the
new YC MOOC. But I wasn't 100% clear whether the group Michael Seibel is the
CEO of "YC" is the same as the component in the YC Group referred to as "Y
Combinator".

It would have been a bit more clear (to me) if the group had been consistently
referred to as "YC" if that's the new branding, so I'm guessing there are a
lot of others like me who aren't certain as well.

~~~
bhaumik
It's probably just like Alphabet (YC Group) & Google (YC).

------
jlteran
Will the MOOC content be in any way different from How to Start a Startup by
Sam A. (class taught at Stanford)

~~~
sama
Yes, I have a lot of new ideas about how to improve if after teaching that
class.

I plan to talk in more detail about it near the end of this year.

~~~
projectileboy
Thank you so much for taking the time to teach this class again. The original
contained nuggets of knowledge and wisdom that are hard to find anywhere else.

------
anonymoose7191
I expect to be downvoted but my YC interview with Michael a couple summers
back left a bad taste in my mouth.

I'm not really sure he asked more than "how is this a billion dollar company?"
multiple times during the 10 minutes. I'm not sure why YC would pay $1k to fly
us to Mountain View if that question was that important and wasn't already
answered by our application.

Hope that was just a fluke though... Good luck YC!

~~~
pb
It's very difficult to truly evaluate a business without talking to the
founders. Sometimes a bad sounding business (such as air mattress rentals)
will turn out to be a really great business (such as AirBnb).

That said, I'm sorry you had a bad experience. We're working on better ways to
pre-screen startups before interviews so we can hopefully avoid as much
unnecessary travel as possible.

~~~
anonymoose7191
Thanks paul. I should elaborate: the other partners were asking other and
varied questions.

The experience was really not bad except that the persistence and insistence
of that question made it feel like an episode of Shark Tank.

Maybe we were just bitter realists but the only answer to that question is
"get really lucky."

------
baldajan
PG wasnt joking when he said:

"You could parachute [Sam] into an island full of cannibals and come back in 5
years and he'd be the king." \- PG 5.5 years ago[1]

[1]
[http://paulgraham.com/fundraising.html](http://paulgraham.com/fundraising.html)

~~~
idlewords
Let's do it.

~~~
gmarx
Agreed. Depending on what he's allowed to pack I'm betting against him

------
andkon
Missed naming opportunity: Y Combinator Combinator

~~~
Ezhik
YC, short for YC Combinator, short for Y Combinator Combinator.

------
bedros
I'm surprised they got to shutdown YC Fellowship; is it already shut down, or
they are planning on that next year.

Without YC how one could get access to YC network and get one to one advice
without moving to bayarea?

online classes are not really one to one advice.

~~~
snowmaker
The MOOC will include one to one advice.

Also, YC frequently does open office hours that are open to anyone over Skype.

~~~
zodiac
> The MOOC will include one to one advice.

How might this work at scale?

------
raldi
My understanding of a provost's role is to be as senior as possible without
having to do any administrative, managerial, or executive duties -- so they
can focus entirely on academic topics.

Is that basically what you're going for with the PB analogy, except
s/academic/startup-mentoring/ ?

~~~
pb
Yes, that's the goal :)

I like working with startups and advancing our program, but do not generally
enjoy administrative work. This change enables me to do more of what I like
and less of what I don't.

------
sethbannon
There are many great mentors in the startup world, but I've yet to meet one
with a better time in to help out ratio than Michael Seibel. Excellent choice
to lead YC.

It's also very inspiring to see YC Group tackling some of the world's most
important problems. Excited to see what comes of this.

------
maxerickson
The theme of YC Research seems to be futurology.

~~~
jonnycowboy
I would say: automation & AI:

\- automated cities & robotic workers \- HARC working on the interfaces for
the "workers" \- basic income to replace minimum wage earners' incomes

Would love to work on this path!

~~~
unclebucknasty
Earnest question: do you believe that full automation and mass displacement of
workers, combined with a basic income will lead to anything resembling a
decent quality of life for most?

Because I want to believe it, but all contemporary evidence points to an
outcome that includes an even more extreme stratification of wealth and masses
of struggling, impoverished people.

~~~
Chronic9q
This is correct. Those at the top, like myself, will continue to develop AI
and automation tools while doing our best to keep workers from "becoming
smart" through low wages/benefits/minimally satisfying regulations. You
wouldn't want your maid revolting against you, now would you?

Call me morally corrupt if you want, but there will always be morally corrupt
people in the world whether we like it or not.

------
pbreit
So is "YC Core" what we have historically thought of as YC?

What is PG's role these days?

------
baron816
I asked Sam in a live webcast he did some months ago whether YC would build a
chatbot for the fellowship to replace mentors and he said they would try. I
wonder if they actually did and it'll be included in the MOOC.

------
noodles23
I hope Paul Buchheit becoming a provost doesn't mean he won't be part of YC
going forward.

A little part of me is hoping to have him on our interview panel again to show
him how far we've come.

~~~
pb
Thanks. I'm definitely still involved, and if anything should have more time
to spend with the startups :)

------
OoTheNigerian
Michael has been everywhere when it comes promoting YC. Si it's great to see
this formalization.

Of course, the timing of this announcement is more exciting being that Michael
and Qasar will be in Nigeria in 10 days :) [1][2]

re: MOOC

Sam/Michael,

What are your thoughts on (semi)formalizing a relationship with incubators
globally as the top of the funnel for recruiting startups.

It can key into them helping adopt your MOOC curriculum. That way the
fundamentals of knowledge are taken care of at the lowest of levels and
potential YC recruits have the basics even before applying.

I was just having it as a rough idea to discuss with Michael when he visits
only to see this post pop up

[1] Lagos - [https://www.eventbrite.com/e/techcircle-presents-
building-a-...](https://www.eventbrite.com/e/techcircle-presents-building-a-
startup-a-chat-with-yc-incubators-co-tickets-27008639568)

[2] Abuja - [https://www.eventbrite.com/e/techcircle-presents-build-a-
gre...](https://www.eventbrite.com/e/techcircle-presents-build-a-great-
startup-qa-in-abuja-with-y-combinator-tickets-27078547665)

Both are oversubscribed but pop me an email (see profile) if you want to
attend and have not registered I'll get you a ticket.

------
afinlayson
So YC is the new Alphabet?

~~~
vinceguidry
My guess is that just about any organization that's using it's business as a
vehicle to push social changes is eventually going to start adopting such a
structure. You want to keep the business profitable while at the same time
making room for new efforts. If you just started opening up new departments in
the already-profitable organization you risk watering down what makes it
magical.

~~~
afinlayson
I actually think it's a great idea. So far the people who don't like it are
they smaller is better crowd. The run it like a 3 person coffee shop crowd.

------
soneca
Any hint on a more precise date for Startup School MOOC version launch? Closer
to Jan/2017 or closer to Dec/2017?

------
PascLeRasc
So is this new "YC" an acronym for YC Core? That seems a bit like the GNU's
Not Unix thing.

~~~
mintplant
Pretty sure "YC" is "Y Combinator".

------
Angostura
> *I’m going to be the President of YC Group, which includes Y Combinator, YC
> Continuity, YC Research, and our

Presumably it also includes YC (that used to be YC Core) - was including 'Y
Combinator'in the list a slip - and it should have been YC?

------
otto_ortega
I can't wait for the MOOC!!

------
jaypaulynice
Does this change mean YCombinator is going to invest in primarily mature
startups?

It feels like the research and mooc will boost early stage startups to
eventually apply to the YC core program. Is that the goal?

------
Kinnard
It's ambiguous wether the MOOC will be replacing the Fellowship the Fellowship
will be continuing along with this new component.

~~~
Kinnard
Clarified:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12490241](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12490241)

------
wslh
YC is really unique. I expect the MOOC will include a nurturing and/or funding
path beyond the courses.

------
kochb
Small correction, Socialcam was YC W12, not S12.

------
davmar
ok.

~~~
lasryaric
Every blog post should have a TLDR like this one.

TL;DR: _Michael Seibel will be the new CEO of YC Core, which we are now just
going to call "YC". _Ali Rowghani is now the CEO of the YC Continuity Fund.
_I’m going to be the President of YC Group, which includes Y Combinator, YC
Continuity, YC Research, and our new online class. We’ll add more
organizational units over time._ We’re going to replace the Fellowship with a
much larger MOOC launching next year.

~~~
gist
The use of TL;DR bothers me because the word "summary" is appropriate or even
"key points". It's not common use among all groups of people (old timers for
example who also could read a blog post) and it really doesn't serve any clear
purpose that "summary" does not.

~~~
27182818284
I try to use "summary" when I can as well.

I think few people know the full history of tl;dr. When it first started
appearing, it wasn't used by the author, but in response to the author (like
you wrote something way too long winded I'm not reading that)

~~~
gist
Agree most probably don't know the history. TL;DR is a good example of how
people can date themselves by how they communicate. They enter into something
new and start to copy something that they see because they don't understand
the nuance. Then the nuance disappears because of that new usage.

In reverse (with much older people) we have a few customers who pay by check
and send a cover letter as well attached to the check (a formal holdover from
olden times). Attaching the invoice is sufficient obviously.

