
What to Expect as an International Founder at Y Combinator - craigcannon
http://themacro.com/articles/2016/09/yc-international-founder/
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pb
This is a really great summary of the yc program for everyone, international
or not! The main things I want everyone going through yc to achieve are
clarity (lesson 1), focus (lesson 2), and boundless potential (lesson 4).

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zmitri
This isn't just great for international founders, it's great for anyone in YC!

As an international founder, the two things I took away in my batch were: 1)
How to deal with visa issues - which can be gruelling + take time and money.
That being said, just being associated with YC helps you out a lot. They can
recommend great lawyers and alumni who've gone through similar experiences. 2)
If you have a non-english sounding accent, pg is likely gonna scream at you
when you try to pitch. It's kinda weird, but try not to let it get you down.

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harperlee
Scream? Could you expand on that?

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karimdag
Thank you Sondre for sharing these insights with us. My question for is: why
you think that a derivative idea isn't "cool" ?

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dkasper
I'm not Sondre obviously, but basically a derivative idea is only cool if you
can show that your variation will somehow be bigger and/or more important than
the original idea. Otherwise you're thinking too small.

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karimdag
Interesting. Thanks!

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mjewkes
Does YC still require international corporations to reincorporate in Delaware?

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xolubi
As of the W16 batch (of which I was a part), yes. Not sure it's a
"requirement" as much as it's an advice.

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meira
Only I found Sam's advice (first question) to be very näive (and buzzword)?

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gameguy43
Read the first 3 points, saw they had nothing to do with the headline, and
bounced.

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williwu
The article is just general YC advices. I was hoping to read more about visa
issues, funding issues as international founder, building teams in US and
Norway etc.

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SRasch
Great points, I might write a follow-up with that, as that is something we
certainly experienced, certainly after YC.

I'll take the gist here.

On visa. YC introduces you to a great lawyer, who has an incredibly success
rate. It costs 10kusd for one, and you get 50 % discount for 2nd person. The
two most relevant visas is the investor visa and the O1 (extraordinary
ability), as they are the ones without quote on them. We got the O1. It lasts
3 years, but is moderately simple to prolong. The process takes some time, but
isn't that much work, beyond gathering newspapers articles about yourself (you
can translate with google translate). Would recommend starting perhaps halfway
into YC if you intend to do this. For a while just travelling on estra works
well though.

Building teams in US and Norway Our company was already setup to work
remotely, since it's basically our product. That said our employees were/are
in Norway, and are only travelling here on Esta. The benefit of any non-SF
location is of course lower cost, especially of the most talented developers.
And the con is that they are outside the Bay area culture, which is much more
at the forefront of any topic. This tacit knowledge is hard to share, and is a
legitimate benefit to having your team here.

That being said, using tools like Slack, zoom and uberconference, as well as
having getaways, makes multi-location teams totally doable, at least for a
period.

