

Ask HN: Does YC have a "lowest age limit"? - LordJawsh

Does YC have a "lowest age limit"? If so, where does the boundary stand? What age is the youngest YC founder to date?<p>Any info would be really helpful, thanks!
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ligerhearted
Technically no, but IANAL and pg & co might say x age is too young, finish
school, we are not Peter Thiel, etc.

Youngest founder to date is Gross from Greplin (last winter YC cycle I
believe).

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LordJawsh
Okay thanks. If you don't mind me asking, what age do you believe x to be?

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ligerhearted
Really, you don't "need" YC to build your own startup...

This is personal, but I've been running of side projects/webapps that make
decent revenue from ads and (in one case) a freemium pricing model.

I'm all of 17 this year and have been doing this for about 4 years now...

YC is only nice because it gives you (1) Lots of investor and public interest
via TC and other blog articles. (2) Great advice, tips, and help via pg, harj,
jessica, and the rest of the gang as well as the (pretty large now) alumni
network of successful YC-funded startups.

YC admits teams that have no product yet to those with several years of
experience in their market. It's going to be a bit more competitive now that
everyone knows about them plus the whole big-money-addon deal by Yuri Milner,
but if you have the skills and believe you have a good MVP to pitch to
YC...fly on over to Silicon Valley.

Again, IANAL so there are probably plenty of stake-holders rights things to
deal with if you're not of the age of majority and other little things that
might be a barrier, but I'm waiting to hear what pg and others with more
experience have to say on the matter.

 _tl;dr 18._

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LordJawsh
I'm in pretty much the same boat as you, I have been running projects for a
while to pay my way through school and I understand that to start a startup we
don't NEED YC, the point is we WANT YC onboard.

I have (or will have in a couple of days) another two founders on the small
team working on the project and they are both significantly older than me, so
hopefully that could help towards solving a few of the legal issues, the
question is, would pg/harj/jessica and co. accept a young founder in a team of
older founders?

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bartonfink
Wouldn't you have to be 18 to enter into a contract with YC?

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LordJawsh
I didn't think of that. The age of majority over here in the UK is only 16, I
never thought to check if the US age was higher.

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joshbuckley
We're in the W11 batch, and on record as the youngest YC has accepted. I'm 18,
and my cofounder is 17 (he hasn't graduated high school yet, which Ron Conway
loved!)

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LordJawsh
Okay, thats pretty encouraging :) You're the guys running minomonsters aren't
you? Hows it going? I had a wander around the site a couple of days ago and
its looking incredible!

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runjake
You should follow the instructions listed on YC
(<http://ycombinator.com/apply.html>) and email info@ycombinator.com.

