

The YC Experience Part I: The Importance of the Class - daniel_levine
http://chart.io/?p=171

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johnrob
Getting 70 or so high caliber founders and pooling their respective strengths
is a huge advantage. Usually the press talks about the valuable advice and
connections offered by the YC partners - this is just as big though. Everyone
gets advice from the best sys admins, designers, etc, from across the batch.

The biggest successes online always seem to have some sort of marketplace for
a business model - Google, Ebay, Paypal, etc. Not surprisingly, as YC seems on
track to becoming a big hit, they have managed to find such a model. They are
becoming a market place for top founders to network and exchange ideas. This
would be very hard to recreate in an unstructured environment (like a co-op),
because trust is essential.

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daniel_levine
exactly. And the broader network effects are huge too (which I'll write about
next). There are hundreds of companies that never did YC that are another
degree of separation away.

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PedroCandeias
What you say about single founders rings true indeed. I'm one myself and,
though things are going well, am somewhat jealous of founders who have access
to such excellent peer networks. Like johnrob said, it sure looks like the
networking you get from being a YC-backed founder is even more valuable than
the money investment itself. Thanks for sharing! Very much looking forward to
the next post.

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answerly
The ongoing camaraderie and commiseration with batchmates is definitely one of
the most underrated benefits of YC. Nice post, Daniel.

