

Ask YC: How do you intend to spend your YC investment? - matth

If you're accepted, what are your plans for the money invested? I think I'm a little confused. THE YC FAQ says we can spend it any way we see fit. However, the only thing I expect to spend money on are living expenses while in Mass (rent, food, bills).<p>If you're a founder, please share a little bit about your experience. Did you find it difficult to live on the investment? Did you use personal savings? Were family and friends feeding you money? How did you use the investment?
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aaroniba
We track our expenses using gnucash, which can generate cool reports like this
one:

<http://www.getdropbox.com/u/86/appjet-summer07-expenses.gif>

So that's how we (2 of us) spent most of our $15k summer funds.

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rms
$150/month for phones?

I don't know what I'm going to do when Sprint kicks me off of my old
Radioshack employee plan. $35/month with taxes for 3000 minutes, 7PM nights,
unlimited text messaging, "unlimited" EVDO and a $50/month credit towards
anything you can buy from within the phone software, like games and ringtones
and Pandora and Loopt.

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aaroniba
that includes the purchase price of 2 iPhones.

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mpc
That doesn't seem to make much sense. Does your app target the IPhone?

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danielha
The YC money is more than enough for the items you mentioned. That is, given
your bills don't include an existing mortgage or payments on your new 911
Turbo.

Btw, if you're applying for the coming session, it's in Mountain View, not
Mass.

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matth
I know, but seems my fingers don't. :) I'll leave my post as is so your
comment will still make sense.

I'm not so worried about living expenses, but rather how to answer the
relevant application question.

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socmoth
we spent it all on common living expenses. we spent our own money on random
things we wanted just because.

we made it last forever. i think 15k lasted 4 1/2 months for two people. our
rent was 1800 in a SF. and the only reason it went that quickly is we had a
month where we spent more than we realized by accident. it was really easy,
the only thing i did less was go out for restaurant food and beer less.

(socialmoth)

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henning
Hookers. Caviar. Purple bud and purple pills.

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gscott
and good medical coverage

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jamiequint
"living expenses while in Mass"

This session is in SF

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buss
My plans are to spend as little as possible on living expenses. Just need one
room and a kitchen for me and my co-founder. Food shouldn't be too much since
I love to cook (no need to buy packaged food) and I'm sure there's more than a
couple cheap farmers markets in the bay area. The more money we can put into
operating the business, the better.

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timr
Friendly advice: don't skimp on living expenses. When everything else in your
life is going to hell in a handbasket, you'll be grateful that you didn't
cheap out on your apartment.

This is the perspective of a grad student who made the mistake of living
extra-frugally for too long; I only became _productive_ once I got it through
my head that it was worth paying a little bit for a good living situation.

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nextmoveone
I'm not a founder...but...

I think we're going to put like 30-40% into living expenses, and the rest into
the company for things like:

Computers Internet Server Space Web Service Credits Advertising Press Releases
ETC ETC

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samwise
15k each in my opinion is trash, they can keep it. The best reward is the
networking aspect. Meeting people in the field and getting to know people that
can really fund your idea and help you get it off the ground.

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breck
Lottery tickets.

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rms
If you bet half on red and half on black you can't lose!

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matth
They've done studies, you know. 60% of the time it works, every time.

