
Ten Weeks with Y Combinator’s Startup School - vladimirpolo
https://medium.com/@VladimirPolo/ten-weeks-with-y-combinators-startup-school-an-insider-s-view-5cc3d8e5b3f
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soci
We went through Startup School program too [^1]. From what I read in your
post, it seems every mentor had its own way of conducting the Office Hours.
For example, we didn't have the feedback loop on how the office hours went you
mention.

Ian, our mentor, went through every project and asked questions that made us
make great progress. In our company's case, we went from Idea to MVP, then to
Product and Launch in 10 weeks (thanks Ian!).

Also, Office Hours are great because it gives you the accountability needed to
push forward every week.

One thing I noticed is how sharp in timing the Office Hours were. They were 1
hour length mostly all of the times. Same with Startup School lecture videos
which consistently were around 50min long.

Is this sharp control over timing something in American culture? As an
European I find surprising how you guys make things last the exact amount of
time you want even when you don't control the input (like in office hours
where 10 startups have to show their progress)

[^1] [http://www.TechLeaks.org](http://www.TechLeaks.org) -> A Glassdoor
tailored to Software Engineers.

~~~
was_boring
> Is this sharp control over timing something in American culture?

Probably. It's viewed as respecting others to make sure the time allotted
doesn't go over. It also allows other people to better plan their day. As an
American, when I run meetings they end as close to the pre-determined time as
possible, and better if earlier. If there needs to be something else said, a
follow-up is scheduled with only the interested parties.

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lettergram
Glad you got a lot out of it, I was in group 19 (guided by Brad Flora - who
was awesome BTW). I similarly did not meet 50% of the teams. Of course, my
team had morning and evening office hours and I only ever attending evening
office hours, so that's not too surprising.

This is article is pretty much the same experience I had. Albeit we launched
June 12th (pretty much, the last day of Startup School).

We built a super rough MVP during throughout the duration of Startup School.
Here's our product if anyone's interested:

[http://projectpiglet.com/](http://projectpiglet.com/)

It's basically a search engine meets your news feed. We're specifically
targeting financial advising, while keeping an eye on enterprise search.

Launching it so late, had it's draw backs, but also IMO was the right for us.
We got to see everyone else's progress, but we also did follow much of the
advise: interviewing customers, launching pre-registration, how to structure a
company / team, etc. We also got to see other teams mistakes, and successes.

I think that's what I found super valuable, not so much where people were
from, but the various stages of their startups! We had people come in with
only ideas, and watched them bring them to launch. Some people grew their
company 10x. It was fun and interesting to watch the process.

We also had several people interview for the Summer YC class, while in startup
school. I've previously interviewed, so I knew what it was like - but others
(and I to some extent) found it valuable to ask questions and understand what
they look for. Some companies in our group, I'm sure, will be looking for
funding.

Highly recommend.

~~~
raharley0
Your MVP looks interesting. Is there evidence that NPS and other such metrics
actually correlate to the price of a stock? What differentiates you from other
trend analysis stock pick sites?

~~~
lettergram
We have done quite a bit of analysis.

NPS and sentiment analysis is pretty good for elections and predicting social
events. Sentiment analysis (or what we call Expert Opinion) is slightly better
for predicting stock and crypto movement(s).

We invested last year using our stock advisor:

[http://i.imgur.com/U8qi6tm.png](http://i.imgur.com/U8qi6tm.png)

And this year into crypto currencies:

[http://imgur.com/C5CL4MH](http://imgur.com/C5CL4MH)

The real trick, is how we improve signal to noise ratio.

~~~
raharley0
Wow, impressive, if you don't get reversion to the mean of course... Begs the
question, if the advisor/algorithms are hot and you have very neat proprietary
tech, why not just go the route of Renaissance:

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-21/how-
renai...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-21/how-renaissance-
s-medallion-fund-became-finance-s-blackest-box)

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jansho
When does the application for the next cohort open?

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avarun
I assume March 2018?

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di_ry
Thank you for sharing. Always wondered what's going on there.

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vladimirpolo
Happy to share things like this on my Medium.

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dalton
Is Medium forcing sign-in to view blog posts a new thing, or have I just never
noticed it before?
[https://i.imgur.com/VreES7R.png](https://i.imgur.com/VreES7R.png)

~~~
vladimirpolo
Hm..I have never seen this message too. Maybe a new one.

