

Ask News.YC: What are the most useful things Y Combinator provides its startups? - pchristensen

Here's my list (in descending order):<p>1) exposure to investors at Demo Day (EDIT: exposure to the right people throughout the process)<p>2) guidance and mentoring (both from principals and alums)<p>3) forcing you into an intense, focused schedule<p>4) validation of your abilities and ideas<p>5) contacts and streamlining the legal/financial issues<p>6) free publicity<p>7) a few thousand dollars<p>Did I miss any?  Anyone disagree with the order?
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pg
Here's our list: <http://ycombinator.com/about.html>

I don't think Demo Day is the most important. Demo Day was a joke the first
time (we just looked at the guest list, and there were 12 people), but Reddit
and Loopt both came out of that batch. As well as Kiko, the predecessor of
Justin.TV. So it doesn't seem that Demo Day is the active ingredient.

I think the most valuable things the average startup gets from YC are product
advice, help in dealing with later stage investors, and the atmosphere/network
created by all the other YC funded startups, which now comprises about 200
people.

I suppose by now the YC brand also confers some baseline legitimacy. Pretty
much every VC firm will at least give you a meeting, every online pub write
about you if you ask them, every startup law firm give you a deferred fee
deal, etc.

~~~
ALee
Can someone elaborate more on product advice from YC (an example would be
sweet)?

We heard some advice from the Digg/flickr guys and they said that it doesn't
really matter what you write it in (just as long as code is manageable and
your interface usable), just get it out there, and then iterate and optimize
(because you'll have to change things later anyway).

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SwellJoe
#1 for me is on your list in indirect form:

The dinners with a bunch of equally intensely focused people.

Every single dinner we were exposed to something new that caused us to look at
our product differently. I can point at about a dozen features in our product
and tell you what interaction they sprung from. Google Analytics support was
written while AT a dinner in response to something someone said earlier in the
evening. Everything mobile in our product (quite a lot, at this point--alerts,
mobile access, etc.) came from discussions with the guys from Tsumobi and
Heysan. And the UI is still undergoing a massive transformation that started
last year during those dinners.

So, for me, the other founders were the most valuable part of the experience.

~~~
wave
SwellJoe, I checked your website and I like your web server administration
tool. I think you need to partner with web hosting companies. I like to see
<http://slicehost.com> offering this tool for their cutomers.

~~~
SwellJoe
We are. Joyent is currently our largest provider. RimuHosting has just agreed
to offer it (it'll show up in their shopping pages in the next couple of
weeks). GridZones offers Virtualmin. There are quite a few others.

We'd love to have SliceHost on board. Next time you're talking to them,
mention our name. It eases the conversation when we approach new hosts if
they've been hearing about us from their customers (most know us from Webmin,
but often don't grok what the difference between the two products).

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jamiequint
This is what I think matters (in this order)

1) exposure to the right people (not just investors, and not just at demo day)

2) great product advice

3) a fast schedule and competitive environment that will make you work harder
than you've ever worked before

That being said, YC mostly provides greater opportunities (and more of them),
its still up to you to make the most of that.

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sharpshoot
The belief to take on a huge market and think you can win

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ivankirigin
You missed one of the biggest: the YC alumni network.

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hooande
What's the deal with the schedule? I'm not understanding. I thought YC kind of
let you do whatever you want during the week (with goals and progress checks,
etc) and the biggest demands they placed on you were the weekly dinners and
demo day.

~~~
pg
There's no schedule in the sense of having to do specific things at specific
times. The only scheduled thing is Demo Day, and even that's optional.

I think what he meant is that everyone tends to buckle down and work really
hard. But it's the situation that makes them do that. You have a demo to
around 130 (= practically all) top startup investors coming up in 10 weeks;
you're surrounded by other people working hard; so you end up working hard
yourself.

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thingsilearned
My order:

8, 3, 4, 2, 5, 1, 6, 7

where 8 is

8) Peer network. It makes you feel pressured to work, launch, and get
investment. It also makes it seem almost normal. Like you're not crazy for
doing this.

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escopolis
While I agree with your list, I would like to add that working side by side
with professionals in the industry for which you are trying to get funding for
could be the most valuable resource available. This allows you to gain an
insight as to how a particular industry works as well as being able to network
with the right people to help move you forward. Having the right team and the
right people working along side you, can be a greater asset to any company
wanting to achieve success. Without great people, there's no great success.

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bluelu
I think the biggest useful thing Y Combinator provides is the
marketing/publicity at the start. As someone else mentioned, many online blogs
will write about you, as you are a y combinator startup. Also I see a tendency
of other yc startups promoting other startups (like justin.tv clickpass,
disqus clickpass, etc...)

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rms
Moral support

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mchristoff
pg's homecooking

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edw519
I would guess that #3 is most important. Amazing what you can do when the
pressure is on and the obstacles removed. I also like the "binaryness" of it.
Perform and leverage the other 6. Don't perform and nothing else matters.

(The irony is that you don't need YC to do #3. You can do it yourself. So if
you don't get into YC, do #3 anyway. It may not be as good as being part of
YC, but I bet it would still be a great start.)

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andr
8) free tshirt :)

~~~
Alex3917
The first t-shirt is free, but the second will cost you your soul. :-)

------
blader
The best chili I've ever had.

