
Ask HN: What is more valuable, Y Combinator or an internship? - LukeWalsh
Note: I am not asking for my sake, I already think starting a company is much more valuable real world experience. However I am interested in the thoughts of first hand sources.<p>For those of you who do hiring&#x2F;interviews at tech companies (large and small) which would be more valuable an experience to have on a resume?<p>1. Going to Y-Combinator, starting a company, and failing miserably. Raising no funding, going back to school.<p>2. Working at a prestigious &quot;top&quot; internship.<p>Purely curious as to the theoretical opportunity cost forgone by students all other things equal.
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massappeal
Trying really hard no to be a dick here. I'm not exactly sure you understand
the nature of YC or start-ups in general, but objectively, you'll learn more
by building, or trying to build, your own company, than you will by interning
for one.

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LukeWalsh
I agree completely. I'm curious how recruiters view it because my parents
think the risk is so much that they adamantly advised me against applying to
YC (and still adamantly oppose me interviewing). I'm interested in starting a
company in its own rite because I feel like I can contribute more when I am
self directed, however it would strengthen my argument to have any evidence
showing that even if I fail it won't be a waste of time (which I know it won't
be).

~~~
massappeal
YC isn't a place you go to learn how to start a company though. You have to
apply to get in, and most successful applicants have started companies before
and many of them have gone through YC in the past. Unless you're willing to
drop out of school and redirect your entire life to your company, you're
better off spending your summers interning, soaking up all the free knowledge
you can, and then once graduated going off and do your own thing if you still
want to. Most successful start-ups though are successful because the founders
are passionate about the product they are building, rather than about building
the company itself. The company is usually a by-product or side-effect of
building the product, rather than the other way around.

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LukeWalsh
I'm aware. I've started a company in school and my team is interviewing for
this batch. The company came out of an idea for a product, and YC seems like a
way to accelerate our growth.

At the end of the day I'm going to work on this but there are two scenarios,
one where my parents approve of my life decisions and one where they don't.
Even though I might not always agree with them I think that even failed
startup founders (for reasons you mentioned) are more likely to start more
companies because they have gained valuable experience.

[edit] Thanks for the advice!

~~~
massappeal
Ok, first of all, Congrats on getting an interview! Second of all, there are a
lot of variables you should consider for this decision. If you've done any
market research, you may be able to tell whether this is the optimal time to
enter the market aggressively, or if you could bootstrap it for a couple more
years and make a more aggressive move once you're out of school. The reason
for this being, there are still a lot of valuable lessons to be gained at
school.

That said, if you feel that now is the most appropriate time for your product
to launch (there is demand, the market is educated in the sector) and delaying
that launch could/would open up room for a competitor or competitors to
saturate the market, then try not to be afraid to stand by your belief that
this is right for you, difficult though that can be.

IF all the stars have aligned, you are confident in your product and your team
and you get accepted to YC, I'd say go for it. The experience is incomparable,
and an education can always be completed later and/or elsewhere. Building your
own company is extremely education, and having Paul and Sam and the whole YC
as mentors is indescribably invaluable.

Good luck man!

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tlb
Please don't start a startup to gain a credential.

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LukeWalsh
That's not the motivation for the question at all

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massappeal
_which would be more valuable an experience to have on a resume_

kinda sounds like it is

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LukeWalsh
I'm trying to help my parents understand why Y Combinator is worthwhile even
if I fail, not only because it is more relevant to what I want to do (start a
company) but also because it would allow me to gain skills that could be
useful at a company even if I did fail. Because I very well might need to work
at a company if I failed in order to make money to try again.

~~~
logn
If you want your parents' approval, then I'm guessing you're not financially
independent. I'd become self-sufficient first and take an internship. When
you're ready to start a company with your own money or your own free-time,
then go for it. Also, there are a lot of skills to learn in
business/engineering, I don't see why you want to learn them all in the
highest pressure scenario possible. My $.02.

~~~
projectramo
He may want to have a conversation with his parents, explain something to
them, or just share his point of view without "wanting their approval"

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sharemywin
Here's is why you go to Y Comb. If your parents can't understand this then
ignore them. Sometimes "smart" skips a generation. The only internship worth
more would be a congressional one.

"Because we fund such large numbers of startups, Y Combinator has a huge
"alumni" network, and there's a strong ethos of helping out fellow YC
founders. So whatever your problem, whether you need beta testers, a place to
stay in another city, advice about a browser bug, or a connection to a
particular company, there's a good chance someone in the network can help
you."

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solomatov
I interview developers at a medium sized software company. Definitely the
second would be more valuable for me, unless the startup does something
complex, not another hipster consumer site as most of the startups do.

However, everything depends on what you want. If you want to have very
interesting work, which uses cool tech and is knowledge intensive, you should
choose companies which can afford long term investments, not small startups
which want to get profitable quickly. If you want to get rich, you probably
should choose a different path, but I don't have expertise here.

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27182818284
It depends on your age.

Going to YC too young is considered "premature optimization" by at least one
if not more of YC's founders.

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pbadger0
First of all, I feel like HN is going to give you a skewed perspective here.
As far as I've seen, the HN community is way more GOGOGO DO A STARTUP than
most, and the skill sets and life paths they value might not be the ones your
parents value.

Secondly, I've done both. I've started my own company, which got rejected from
YC and ended up in another incubator, DreamIt Ventures, and ended up crashing
and burning due to a variety of reasons. I've also spent a summer, and now the
better part of a year working at a YC company, Amicus (totally check it out,
its an amazing place to work.) I'd say I was incredibly happy with both
experiences, but I gained different things from each one.

YC, or the accelerator experience, puts you in the hands of some top start-up
gurus and mentors, creates sky high stakes, and gives you the opportunity to
build something really awesome yourself. If you have previous startup
experience, an idea truly worth the immense work, and/or a co-founder whom you
trust with your life, this might be for you. When asked if I'd do DreamIt
ventures again, I always say yes, but I warn people that its way harder than
you first expect, and if the mix is a off with your co-founder, it can be a
few months of extreme pain and constant difficulty. You learn way more about
the ins and outs of running a company, and the feeling of having your work
criticized to no end, and of failing despite everything you tried. This is a
good way to improve certain skills, but I'd argue not all skills fall under
this category.

The intern experience is more flexible. From everyone I've talked to, it seems
that most companies are looking for especially driven young people who will
try really hard before giving up and who will generally do more than their
employer asks. This means that once you have the spot, your employer probably
isn't going to put much stress on you to work incredibly hard, and while the
culture might demand that you work more than 9-5 every day, you generally can
take weekends off, or take a day off here and there. This means that if your
goal is to learn how to run a software team, as well as pick up a bunch of
different tech in your free time, this is for you. If there's a hackathon in
the city you're in, you can part-take, and if there is a tech talk that will
take an extra day, you can almost definitely get out of work to go check it
out. One of my friends at Amicus spent every weekend hacking on a side
project, and had an incredible portfolio by the end of the summer, as well as
new knowledge of how to write clean code and manage an engineering team of
more than one or two.

Now its not to say that you can slack off at work, or not take one of these
internships seriously, but at the end of the day you're either trying to 1.
Learn a lot or 2. Get a permanent position at the company you're interning at.
For the first goal, theres a lot of flexibility to put down your internship
work when you go home, and build that cool project you haven't had time for,
and for the second, a quality employer will judge you by the quality of your
work, not your hours.

Thus, you really have to think about what you want to get out of an
internship. Do you want to learn from the engineering pros, get feedback on
your work, and build side projects, or do you want to learn to pitch as well
as push code, do UX research as well as debug, and have a company in your name
instead of your name on a company. Both scenarios are amazing opportunities,
you just have to figure out which one fits you better.

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AbhishekBiswal
You're more likely to get an Internship easily, than get into YC. Just saying.

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angersock
From a hiring standpoint, I don't really care where you've interned or where
you accelerated/failed/decelerated. In rough order of importance, I care if
you get along with my team, if you can think through problems, and if you know
enough to work on things. I could give two cares if you have the Paul Graham
Seal of Approval, or if you won Palantir's Summer MVP award.

You come off here (as is pointed out by tlb and massappeal) kind of approval-
seeking. You should be in business for yourself, because _you_ think that
_you_ are better off starting a business than not.

And if your parents don't approve, you need to decide _for yourself_ whether
or not to follow their wishes: a bunch of random jerks on the 'net can't
really help you there. It's part of becoming an adult.

(Also, I've seen your Github and I've skimmed Outfitly--can you please
consider something a bit more useful to attempt as a business? Please? You
seem too smart to be chasing vapid B2C stuff).

