
Apply to YC for the Winter 2018 funding cycle - dotmanish
http://www.ycombinator.com/apply/
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dzink
Correct me if I'm wrong, but as a startup your metrics, learnings, and
progress grows every single day, which means that applying early puts you at a
disadvantage from your future self, let alone from competing companies, to get
into one of those 400 interview spots. YC doesn't have the time and resources
to re-review 7000 applications over and over again. If you re-submit later in
this application cycle, you may not get reviewed again (I've regretted
submitting early in the past, after our updated video with co-founders, vs
solo founder, didn't get viewed at all.) Thus even with months of application
time, it still makes sense for applicants to wait until the last moment to
submit. Again, comment if you know more.

Is rolling admissions an idea worth trying out for YC - all teams start at the
same time, but interviewing and admission decisions don't have to?

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pbreit
What if they received so many fantastic applications ahead of yours there were
few or no spots left?

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Hydraulix989
There's always spots for good startups (even at/especially at YC).

The worst thing for an investor is a missed opportunity (after all, they're
looking for that 100th portfolio item that makes up for the 99 other losses).

Meanwhile, you're just shooting yourself in the foot by giving yourself a bad
early impression from the get go (solo founder who didn't find a technical
cofounder a few weeks later, didn't close your first customer yet so you were
still pre revenue, etc.), and the difference week over week can be night-and-
day for an early stage startup.

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wand3r
YC is great and am interested to see how their investment thesis progresses.
It is an answer to Harvard/Ivy league criticism that if the teaching
methodologies were as good as the institutions claim; scaling them would be a
net good. Conversely, they are competitive because they do not scale them and
thus Ivy schools have a finite demand and the scarcity boosts the value.

I hope YC can continue to deliver value by raising batch levels and providing
support to through their satellite offering. It is difficult to replicate; or
if replication is the wrong word-- provide a service _consistent_ with their
brand and values-- via a distributed network with a remote team.

In many ways since it started, I think the Stripe Atlas program is a great way
to address this issue and I can see it evolving into an investment model. I
hope YC has the resources to scale their efforts. Scaling is hard; a mistake
hurts their brand, credibility and their companies. Success broadens their
Network, their portfolio and gives them a foothold in different markets and
verticals.

Good luck; and sincerely thanks for pioneering this. It is much more brave
than the ivy approach. YC believes-- with good reason-- in it's mission and
I'm glad they are willing to expand it's breadth with this, non profit, hard
science and funding research

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slackingoff2017
Reminds me of something I heard watching silicon valley.

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wand3r
Only saw a few episodes; mind expanding a bit?

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the_common_man
Is it considered good etiquette to keep applying to YC even if we failed in
previous attempts?

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gh1
Yes, please do it. I am not affiliated with YC, but I have heard YC Partners
mention many times that they encourage people to reapply. There was a case
when someone didn't get in 7 times but got in on the 8th attempt.

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sillysaurus3
There are also cases of people applying every cycle and never getting in. YC
seems to be looking for sustainable companies that can be accelerated. If you
weren't going to work on your company without YC, that's a point against you,
as far as I know. Not a showstopper, but the overall goal is probably to fund
people committed to their startup rather than fund people who might commit to
a startup.

The application process is valuable beyond simply getting accepted, though, so
it's worth doing.

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lettergram
Seems fairly far away from the next application cycle close

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snowmaker
Yep. We want to get better at allowing companies to apply at any time since
people start companies year round.

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philip1209
Are decisions going to become rolling? i.e. if a company applies now, rather
than the night before applications are due, ostensibly they are at a
disadvantage because they should have shown some kind of growth (even if in
just understanding of the problem) over those 4 months.

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bambax
That would be great if it worked that way. Any chance it will?

Otherwise if one applies today, will they only get an answer in early October?

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pplonski86
I was doing Startup School online this year with MLJAR
([https://mljar.com](https://mljar.com) \- it is Machine Learning as a
Service) - the progress during school was huge. I am very curious how the
acceleration after stationary YC will look like :)

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futhey
Wow, just checked this out, super interesting. Worked on something similar.
Will reach out!

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ikeboy
Now it's time for me to apply for the third time, and probably not get even an
interview, just like the first two times.

Maybe I should stop applying with just ideas, and apply for the company I have
actually been running, even though it's not a "tech" company per se.

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asenna
If I may ask, what does the company do? Some kind of a store?

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ikeboy
Pure Amazon reselling, about 300k revenue in 2016.

I would love to run a tech company, and code on the side and to some extent
code tools for my business, but I feel safer in a business that's actually
bringing in money.

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ganeshkrishnan
What do you mean "reselling"? As in selling retail goods online on Amazon?

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ikeboy
Yes, exactly. Sourcing either from retail or wholesale, selling on Amazon.

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ganeshkrishnan
That's lifestyle business, not a startup. It's a great way to live and
maintain your current lifestyle.

I am not a VC, however if I was I would be looking for businesses that can
generate 10x the investment in few years.The margins are really really thin in
your business and its hard work

We run a startup that helps sellers like you scale up and move to "Seller
fullfilled prime" because that's where the profit margin is slightly better

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ikeboy
I'm currently in the SFP trial but not too excited about it.

I absolutely want to be grossing $3 million a year in a few years and think
it's realistic. There are plenty of motivated $3 million/year sellers and I've
met a few.

But I agree there's a limit on growth. Looking at the top few companies, that
limit is about $100/million a year in gross revenue.

As revenue increases margins tend to decrease, but at my level I'm able to
make 20% net margins and I know some bigger sellers who are also at those
margins.

I guess it doesn't compare to 90% margins of software, but nothing can.

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ganeshkrishnan
20% margin? Are you sure? Have you accounted for shipping fees, cancellations,
ads and returns?

I rarely have met sellers who exceed 5-10% margin

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ikeboy
I started last year with 10k in the bank and ended with around 100k. I know I
made 30k or so from various unrelated stuff, but the 20% number is realistic.

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ganeshkrishnan
if I were you, I wouldn't apply for funding. I would just go ahead and scale
it.

For our startup funding is life or death situation. The number of users is
overloading our CPU and if we don't scale up, everyone leaves.

I would love to avoid approaching VC's and spending months talking to them,
demoing them products etc. I would rather be working and scaling up my own
product

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ikeboy
Are you profitable? Can you work smart and reduce CPU usage, cache static
info, etc?

Raise by offering yearly discount for upfront payments to subscribers?

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ganeshkrishnan
Yes I am profitable but I can't take more users and I might lose the existing
ones because the system is overloaded and the accuracy of ML algorithms are
laughable.

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blizkreeg
Does it benefit or even make sense for startups that are already at a 5-figure
MRR and on the road to profitability with a small team?

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keerthiko
We were in a similar spot, and applied and got through to interview stage
twice, once in 2013 and once again in 2015. We went to the interview in 2013
and didn't make it, and we had reasons to not follow through in 2015.

Everyone I have talked to who went to YC said it was great. They've accepted
older/mature companies in the past (Quora as an extreme example), who have
joined purely for the network and the mentorship.

We decided not to go with it for a few reasons:

* Over the years we had gathered a couple of angels in the cap table. And YC was unlikely to budge from their $120k@5m terms for us, which would have ruffled some feathers from the others.

* We'd outgrown (ie us cofounders as individuals) the "hustle or die for my startup" mentality -- being a profitable business where we make our own rules was nice and valuable and we are extremely happy with it. We don't want to live as the stars of a Silicon Valley episode, it's nice watching from the sidelines in a profitable, fun business.

* I did not have a US visa at the time and it would have been a logistical nightmare to colocate with my team in Mountain View, which is (was?) non-negotiable to YC. Americans underestimate how much of a showstopper immigration to their country can be.

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ganeshkrishnan
>* I did not have a US visa at the time and it would have been a logistical
nightmare to colocate with my team in Mountain View, which is (was?) non-
negotiable to YC. Americans underestimate how much of a showstopper
immigration to their country can be.

A very valid point that you bring up and it's not even to do with the current
political climate.

My co-founder left US and moved to Australia with me. There are plenty of
people like him (and even my wife) who are pretty adamant to not even visit
US, even for a day.

We used to live in Brooklyn and the number of times we saw/heard gun violence
is staggering.

Once you get used to the ultra-safe communities like EU/Australia/Canada you
can just wonder why would you even think about visiting US risking your life
and your families life?

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Kpourdeilami
> Once you get used to the ultra-safe communities like EU/Australia/Canada you
> can just wonder why would you even think about visiting US risking your life
> and your families life?

This is why I love Waterloo, Ontario. You can walk around the sketchiest
allies at 2 am in the morning and feel safe.

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taytus
This is my sixth time applying. "But he persisted"

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ganeshkrishnan
What kind of startup is it?

Can you share your "elevator pitch" so I can take a look?

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taytus
I don't have a website yet. But I'm working on a CMS for AMP websites. It's
also an AMP generator, you pass it an URL and it returns an AMP version of the
website.

~~~
ganeshkrishnan
very nice. I am pretty sure I would use that for my blog but then again I hate
using Google proprietary AMP

