

Are we ready to apply for YC S11? - ajsax11

We are a team of 2 working full time on an app. We have a prototype ready, but still few weeks away from when we can have some early adopters test our app - and we can get feedback / validation. Although, we have been talking to people and they seem to like the idea of our app.<p>We are debating if we should apply for the YC next batch - the quality of YC finalists has gone up in a big way in the past one year, where the finalist startups are much beyond customer validation stage, they now have real users using and loving their product, and most of them seem very close to their beta.. some have even reached a stage where they can charge their users. We still have some time to reach that stage.<p>There are 2 point of views floating in our minds -
1.) We are not there yet, where we can compete head on with the current set of finalists.
2.) We should just apply and let the judges judge. Many times we ourselves are not the best judge of our work - as Sivers points out.
We know we should apply when <i>we</i> feel ready. However, at times it's just good to discuss it out with few others - the debate helps clear out our own thoughts.
What do you think?
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patio11
If you want to be in YC, why not let them come up with reasons why you're not
ready. Applying only takes an hour and won't ask you any questions you aren't
thinking about already.

With regards to the legit-business-ness of other YC companies: shrug. You know
what they call the guy with the lowest grades from medical school? Doctor. You
may think you'd be the worst prepared in a batch, but that isn't a bad place
to be, and even with YC's expertise at picking winners there is a wide
variance of results in every class, not necessarily replicating the variance
as of interview day.

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bkrausz
1) There is no downside to applying beyond a bit of time, as you can always
apply again.

2) AFAIK PG & co don't judge people on how far they've come but how solid the
team is and what they've been able to do with the time given. They also don't
seem to compare teams to other teams. If they happen to get 100% really solid
teams in the last day of interviews, I highly doubt they'd say "we can only
accept half of them because we don't have much space".

3) Who would you rather have: someone who took 3 years to create a product
that 10,000 people use, or someone who built a solid prototype in a few
months? Time is not always a plus.

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ajsax11
Thanks guys, we are also inclined towards giving a shot at applying.

