
What I Learned Going Through YC as a 17 Year Old - troquerre
https://tieshunroquerre.com/blog/yc-learnings
======
alehul
> East Coast VCs are much more conservative, which is ultimately bad because
> it results in less moonshots succeeding.

This is really accurate, at least from my experience as someone of a similar
age working on my first startup at the time.

With cold outreach to VCs in NYC I had zero responses, and only two meetings
with BigCos curious about us; they seemed easier to get the attention of.

When I reached out to investors on the west coast it was entirely different. I
still remember getting my first reply. It was a rejection, but a super-
detailed one from Topher Conway of SV Angel that stuck with me. Despite it
being a cold email, he offered up a lot of points that helped me adapt my
strategy and address what investors may be concerned about.

I was a kid with anxiety and never replied back to that rejection email (pains
me to this day), but I have so much appreciation for people like that, who are
aplenty in the Bay Area.

~~~
naringas
> East Coast VCs are much more conservative, which is ultimately bad because
> it results in less moonshots succeeding.

"East Coast VCs are much more conservative, which is actually better in a
longer term because it results in more stable return rates (less failure)"

~~~
alehul
I should’ve only quoted the first part of the sentence as relevant to me, but:

Better for whom?

I agree it could result in better average returns for the firm, but it likely
isn’t better for moving society forward as a whole.

~~~
roenxi
Firms that do not make a solid profit margin are a really bad sign - it means
that there is little value add by the firm.

If I buy $10 worth of paints (and equipment) then use that to create and sell
you a painting for $10, that is society signalling that I really should find
something better to do with my time. The raw materials are about as hard to
produce as the care anyone has for my work. The value created by me doing the
work was $0.

On the other hand, an artist who turns $10 worth of paint into a $100 painting
has created enormous value - that artist should be the one who gets all the
paint, and that is what the market will sort out. That artist is not wasting
time, their art is high value add over the raw materials. The time they spent
on art added $90 in value.

If firms tend to have solid profit margins, almost by magic society at large
will get more actual value out of the same amount of resources. Nothing is
good in excess, and there is plenty of intellectual room to quibble about
where the threshold and preconditions need to be for the outcome to be 'good',
but investors making a solid return is very healthy. It can move society as a
whole forward.

~~~
lkozma
By that logic, take all the paint away from Van Gogh and give it all to Jeff
Koons.

~~~
controversy
Van Gogh tried to sell his art for more than the price of parts. He was
unsuccessful in his life due to being ahead of the curve. Much like Betamax,
he died before being appreciated.

------
ian-g
I have a lot of thoughts about this. I'm glad he's seen some success! That's
great for him! I just don't know that all or even much of what he's learned is
transferable

> I was able to get a job in SF with a single cold email and zero connections

This seems like sheer dumb luck. For every one of him (or you, if you're
reading this) there's a lot of people who thrash and struggle. I went through
80+ job applications before I got one offer last search, and that's less than
I thought I would need

> You don't need experience to get started

This one seems situational. Best example I saw recently (and I can't find the
twitter thread, I'm sorry) was weirdly shaped food startups. The large point
was that there are stores for oddly shaped food, they're just ones rich people
don't normally shop at (WinCo anybody?). And there are uses for damaged food,
like juice. Sometimes you think you've found a niche, but you should still
research it a bit

> Silicon Valley doesn't care about your background

Sure it cares less than other places. It still cares a lot. It's not
everywhere people would support you that way. My silicon valley high school
wouldn't have allowed folks to try and make scheduling software for them, not
a chance.

> Failure is acceptable

This one, I somewhat like. Avoiding failure is definitely prioritized. I think
maybe we should emphasize fallback plans maybe? Some people just can't afford
to fail completely unless they have people who will support them through it

~~~
troquerre
> This seems like sheer dumb luck. For every one of him (or you, if you're
> reading this) there's a lot of people who thrash and struggle. I went
> through 80+ job applications before I got one offer last search, and that's
> less than I thought I would need Author here. There was definitely luck
> involved (the luckiest part imo was that Teespring was an incredible company
> to work at and I had no idea when I reached out), but I think cold emails
> are a surprisingly effective tool that are underutilized for some reason.

I sent two emails, one to the CEO of Teespring and one to the CEO of Y
Combinator at the time (Sam Altman). Both replied (though sama politely
declined my request to be his summer intern haha) so getting a response from
high profile entrepreneurs is definitely possible without much luck.

~~~
ian-g
That's totally fair, and congrats on that working! I don't want to take away
at all from what you've accomplished!

It's very interesting looking at how you - a successful newcomer - view
silicon valley compared to the way I see it - as somebody who grew up there
and left.

The other interesting bit is how you got here. It looks like you've been
coding and elbows deep in computers forever. I'd hazard a guess that also
helped you over folks like me who are quite a bit less certain of where we
want to go

~~~
troquerre
You’re right that’s an interesting contrast. Can you share why you ended up
leaving? I’m curious about your perspective.

I started coding when I was 13 and started wanting to build companies around
the same time so I think that focus of desire definitely benefited me. I
strongly believe finding what you want to focus on is more valuable than how
early you start. Greg Brockman (founder of OpenAI) didn’t start coding until
he went to college, and there are numerous examples of people in tech, art,
and other fields discovering their focus later in life and succeeding.

~~~
ian-g
I left twice, both times personal. Once for college, once a bit over a year
ago.

Tech permeates the area, and the expectations surrounding it can be harsh. The
expectations put on kids can be too much, and I hated it. And honestly, I
really didn't like the people I went to high school with or the people in my
hometown much. I needed something new and different, an entirely different
sort of culture to grow out of this tech and real estate focused town. So I
went to Minnesota.

After college, I came back since I couldn't find work, and I got to know a lot
of the better parts a bit outside my hometown. First Fridays in San Jose and
Del Valle park in Livermore are two. I got a tech support job I didn't like
and a bike mechanic gig on the side that I loved. What really got me to leave
was getting a job in Seattle. I was prepared to stay a few more years because
of the sheer number of jobs, but the area just wasn't one I could settle in
long-term. There were too many bad associations for me personally.

I'm not going to say Seattle is better for everybody, but it's new to me. And
I'm better equipped to find people I enjoy hanging out with, to put myself in
situations that work well for me.

------
neom
From my experience east cost VCs are mostly former wall st folks, lawyers or
family offices who are playing VC. Very few of them have any operating
experience, and if they do, it's at BigCo, not in or around startups. I don't
think they are well tuned to what non-traditional success looks like, and as a
result they have problems pattern matching.

~~~
rdlecler1
This has been exactly my experience. Even in the earliest stage startupS
they’ll be looking for the fastest line to profitability rather than
prioritizing to build something that’s big and important. It’s low conviction
investing where the financial model matters more than traditional west coast
indicators of future success.

~~~
jariel
"they’ll be looking for the fastest line to profitability rather than
prioritizing to build something that’s big and important"

First - don't assume that the 'big thing entrepreneurs are building' is in any
way 'important'.

9 times out of 10 the 'big thing' is just neat idea, a project, and may have
nothing to do with profiability.

Most 'grand visions' are that.

MS, Amazon, Snap, FB, Insta, Google - they all started pretty small, and
worked at a fairly small scale. Surely they had visions, but they were
fulfilling needs from the get-go.

I think what you are confusing is probably 'risk profile' of smaller VC funds,
who in fact, don't have the patience to worry about building large
marketplaces for example. It has to do with mentality, but also the size of
the funds, and their experience with bigger bets.

And of course, nothing compares to SoftBank in terms of a 'massive fund
looking to support global penetration'.

~~~
rdlecler1
Either you missed the point or you’d be a bad VC.

------
lordnacho
It may be true that you don't need to have worked in a white shoe firm to be
respected in SV, but I'm pretty sure there's certain characteristics that are
advantageous:

\- Got into a top university. Good grades are popular, unsurprisingly. A proxy
for intelligence and hard work.

\- Speaks English. How many YC folks don't? I'm sure there are a lot of smart
people in the world who just didn't grow up with English and so are somewhat
cut off from SV. Not insurmountable though.

\- High EQ. Helps smooth interactions with just about everyone, including
investors and employees.

~~~
ffggvv
funny hearing you say high EQ and then looking at Zuck, Elon and even bill
gates.

all of whom are bordering on the spectrum

~~~
256lie
Maybe being a Harvard dropout with low EQ appeals more to VC. Elon makes up
for it by working really work and having savior ego/massive hype that appeals
to his fans and investors.

------
c0nsumer
> ...we realized we needed to build a services business more than a technology
> business and that's not what we set out to do...

Welcome to one of the cold, hard realities of forming a company and selling
something. If you don't make something that someone wants to buy, you won't
succeed. And that something needs to be more than just a shiny or useful
object. (Those are commodities and can be replaced -- it's your service
which'll set you apart and make you worth paying.)

Even if tech is your primary focus, that needs to be bundled up in some sort
of package that makes it worth paying for.

Doubly (or more) so if you are going to have actual customers and aren't going
through the startup process in the hopes that some other company buys you out.

------
saagarjha
> In school, the experts — teachers — always knew the right answer

Now I'm wondering what school they went to where they went to, since all the
ones I have attended this hasn't been even close to being true…

~~~
Mathnerd314
The teachers present themselves as knowing the answer. They also get really
mad if you point out mistakes they make, at least in middle school / high
school.

------
blocked_again
> Silicon Valley doesn't care about your background

This is BS. You have a much higher chance of rasing money for the same idea if
you worked in FAANG than if you worked in Accenture.

Same goes to someone who went to Harvard vs someone who went to University of
Colorado.

~~~
austenallred
It may be easier if you have credentials, but it’s certainly possible without
them.

I’d argue how your business is running is 10x as important as credentials.

(I dropped out of a non-prestigious school and had work experience at one
company, have raised $120m+ in <4 yrs).

~~~
disown
> (I dropped out of a non-prestigious school and had work experience at one
> company, have raised $120m+ in <4 yrs).

In other words, you had connections? I'm guessing you weren't a poor single
mother who dropped out of school to raise her kid.

How do you drop out, have 1 job experience and raise $120m? Either you are
extremely privilege and/or extraordinarily lucky.

Stop making it sound so easy like everyone can do what you did. Most people,
who didn't even drop out, wouldn't know where to start.

~~~
exolymph
[https://twitter.com/Austen/status/997604313362034689](https://twitter.com/Austen/status/997604313362034689)

> My experience: everything I own in one suitcase, here’s my sleeping
> situation. Would shower at YMCA and work at coworking space. $300/mo
> personal burn. If you could combine the two you’d fill it 100% and make SF
> possible again.

[https://twitter.com/Austen/status/1093540469022195712](https://twitter.com/Austen/status/1093540469022195712)

> Lambda School wouldn't exist without Gumroad.

> We bootstrapped for the first several months without salaries from the
> proceeds of the book I sold there. Gave us enough runway to try the crazy
> “pay back when you’re hired” things. Thanks Sahil!

Wanna try again?

~~~
disown
> Wanna try again?

No need. Everything you linked is self proclaimed tweets. By someone obviously
very good at selling himself.

I'm sure I can link to Zuckerburg tweeting about how concerned he is about
privacy issues. Does that make it so?

I've actually lived like the guy claimed and even worse. You certainly don't
have time and energy to write a book. Certainly don't take pics. Seems more
like the guy was hipster "slumming" for cred rather than someone truly
struggling.

So a classic dropout bum who magically sells a book to start a startup? Like I
said, " Either [he is] extremely privilege and/or extraordinarily lucky."

Do you want to try again?

If his story is true, he is extremely privileged and/or extraordinarily lucky.
How about this, if every college student dropped out and lived like a bum,
what percentage of them would be able to raise $120 million?

Also, lambdaschool isn't a new idea. The idea of tech training school has been
around at least since the 90s.

~~~
bergstromm466
> lambdaschool isn't a new idea. The idea of tech training school has been
> around at least since the 90s

Yep, and the apprenticeship model even longer (which I'd argue is a category
lambdaschool falls under)

------
realmod
Would like to know how he at 16/15 years of age got a fulltime job at
teespring.

    
    
        2014 - Moved from Boston to San Francisco to work as a 
        fulltime engineer at Teespring instead of doing my 
        junior year of high school.

~~~
troquerre
I sent a cold email to Walker Williams who was the CEO of Teespring at the
time. I created a functional clone of Teespring and shared the demo with him
which got me the job.

------
jedberg
> Silicon Valley doesn't care about your background

To an extent yes, but generally it still matters a lot. Look at any big tech
company, and you'll find a significant number of Ivy League grads and Forbes
top 25 grads.

Or look at YC itself. Anecdotally I'd say at least 50% of the YC founders have
a degree from a Forbes top 25 school (it would be great if someone had the
real stats).

------
ffggvv
“silicon valley doesn’t care about your background”

>> went to MIT

~~~
emit_time
Also went to an expensive private school.

------
bt3
> But I was able to get a job in SF with a single cold email and zero
> connections.

Care to share anything more about this, purely out of intrigue? My own
experiences have shown me that folks aren't as quick to respond, especially
when you have limited value (experience) to show, even if you're just looking
for mentorship.

~~~
teachrdan
In addition to OP being a strong candidate, this line basically screams, "I
was very lucky."

------
tmpz22
As someone who had some small success early in life I want to send a message
directly to this kid that may be unpopular on Hacker News: Pace yourself, do
NOT pin your happiness on the occurrence of great wealth or success early in
your life, spend a large amount of time appreciating the great success you've
already had, take things slowly and experience as much "normal" life as
possible - get a girlfriend, try out a normal job with minimal responsibility
but strong mentorship, and appreciate that the world is filled with vast
knowledge that will not be gained instantaneously and MOST CERTAINLY is not
contained in any mono-culture such as the tech-startup scene.

To everyone else, the mid-west front-end developer making 55k who thinks he's
a failure because he hasn't had the same success as a 17 year old MIT student
and YC alum... happiness is an internal force that comes from inside you and
not from external luxuries. Its OK that you didn't go to MIT, its OK that your
company didn't go through YC. Its OK that you don't post a 200k+ salary on
levels.fyi. Many people who have had those accolades are currently MISERABLE
or have faced many hard failures since. Those hard failures are rarely
publicized. We all will face great hardships in life... its the human
condition. Instead of worrying about these things focus on finding your own
internal happiness and pride.

~~~
troquerre
Author here. I appreciate you sharing this message and I completely agree — I
think it's really important to separate happiness from being dependent on
success. So much of success comes from luck and timing that basing happiness
off it is a recipe for being unhappy most of the time.

Have you read The Courage to be Disliked or A Guide to the Good Life? These
books resonated with me and it seems like you may enjoy them too :)

------
sailfast
> In the East Coast experience and status are highly valued. Bill Gates
> created class scheduling software in high school, and I wanted to replicate
> that. I approached our school admin about doing the same when I was 16 and
> was promptly shut down because I was too young and "entire companies are
> required to create scheduling software." I wasn't even given the chance to
> fail.

I mean, when Bill Gates was in High School computers weren't really in general
use, so they probably were still doing it on paper. Why say no? They wouldn't
have to use it if he failed. Also, did he build it first, or ask for the
business first?

Whereas it sounds like this person asked his school if they would convert to
his scheduling tool before he had built it to try out? I can imagine a school
administrator saying "we'll probably stick with our enterprise contract,
thanks" in the 2010s, and it would be a reasonable answer.

I wouldn't personally recommend that one experience be the basis for your East
Coast / West Coast judgments.

------
jariel
Silicon Valley cares very much about your background.

50% of VC's are Harvard/Stanford.

FB, Insta, MS, Snapchat, Amazon, Google etc. - Ivy League or Stanford.

(Ok, Amazon and MS are not 'Valley' but ...)

So the industry is more open to 'outsiders' of the cliques than say, banking -
definitely, but it's still a clique, don't kid yourself.

------
hellofunk
> Experience is only loosely correlated with age

It’s very important to remember that just as youth is not necessarily a
disadvantage, so too is being older than the average anything to worry about.

------
lanstein
Does that mean you signed up for HN when you were 10?!? Awesome!

~~~
freeqaz
I think 14 because he mentioned being in a 2016 batch of YC

~~~
troquerre
Yeah it was around 13/14 that I found YC. I think it was through a programming
humor subreddit haha.

------
troughway
>we realized we needed to build a services business more than a technology
business and that's not what we set out to do

Wouldn't surprise me if this applies to majority of applicants.

------
tenbino
>> No one knows the right answer

Hmmmm. Be careful about this. Lots of people do know the right answer.

Youth energy and enthusiasm count for a lot, especially backin the earliest
days of computing like when bill gates got started. That was because adults
knew very little.

> Experience is only loosely correlated with age

These days age and experience count for a lot. Lots of older people have
incredibly valuable answers to common challenges in competing and business.

~~~
parasubvert
There is a pretty good book called “the Death or Expertise” that discusses the
broad trend towards people with little specialized knowledge feeling they can
learn a domain quickly and know more than experts.

So many problems we have in society seem to be caused by this mass weaponized
Dunning-Kruger effect.

~~~
derivagral
I personally view this as less DK and more just removing fences[1] until the
externalizations blow up. By then you've probably moved on or can divert some
profit to putting the fences back.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence)

------
aroundtown
What I learned from this article:

1\. Privilege opens doors not available to others.

2\. Those with privilege are often oblivious to the advantages they have.

~~~
exolymph
"Coming from a Boston suburb" was enough for you to dismiss his talent and
effort as irrelevant? Geez.

~~~
sbisker
On another part of his homepage it says he went to MIT around the same time he
did YC. As someone who interviewed for YC myself while attending MIT, I am not
even going to pretend I got the interview entirely independent of my
background and the opportunities it gave me - and indirectly, my ability and
decision to finance a very expensive education, even after financial aid.

Now, he obviously had talent to even get into a top engineering school at that
age, so there is some correlation as well as causation here. Still, unless he
wasn’t admitted yet or actively hid the fact from YC, it seems highly unlikely
it didn’t carry some weight - especially at that age, with so much less track
record to look at.

~~~
jpxw
How many people are not going to MIT because they are financially unable? I’m
curious.

~~~
dharmon
Now that I'm on the "other side" (got my PhD from an Ivy League uni), I
constantly meet people who don't even begin to grasp how far away growing up
poor puts you from things and resources they take for granted. Even stuff that
may seem obviously within reach.

I'll give you an example from my own life. My dream schools were Duke and MIT.
I applied to Duke, but didn't even apply to MIT. Want to know why? Because it
cost $40 to apply. Every school charged an application fee, so I had to be
incredibly picky about where I applied to stretch the money from my $5.50 / hr
part-time job at Chik-Fil-A. I had to narrow my list to 4, and I figured MIT
was a long-shot so it didn't make the cut (Wofford, Furman, Duke, College of
Charleston; got into all but Duke).

It wasn't until years later that I found out all you have to do is call up the
admissions office and they'll waive the fee. You can't imagine how gutted I
felt when I learned this. I wanted to cry. I was doing pretty good by then but
my mind was filled with the alternate histories that were within reach without
me even knowing it.

Somebody is probably reading this and thinking I wasn't poor, I was just
stupid. Maybe so, but it's really hard to put yourself in the position of
someone who has no resources, no perspective, and no people in their life to
guide them through basic things like this (my parents didn't go to college).
Sometimes being blessed with a good brain just isn't enough.

~~~
strikelaserclaw
Your skin color, who your parents are (educated or not), where you live have a
big impact on your life. The effect of parents and mentors (if you are lucky
enough to find even one) have an out sized impact on your choices, I've
observed this through personal experience. In high school, we had kids who i
didn't think were that exceptional by any means but they got funneled into ivy
leagues/top universities due to the fact that their parents were educated
upper middle class types that push their kids, and give them proper guidance
as to how the world really works. The talented poor kids were pushed to go to
the local state universities by the parents who though top schools were out of
reach/too expensive. The folks that went to the top schools went straight to
SV/NYC/Boston, while the talented poor kids kinda stayed in our local Midwest
cities, talk about a huge opportunity cost of being born poor.

------
jheriko
Privilege... love it.

~~~
dang
Can you please not be a jerk in HN comments? Maybe you don't owe better to
people you feel are privileged, but you owe better to this community if you're
commenting here.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful. Note that they
include:

" _Be kind. Don 't be snarky._"

" _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A
good critical comment teaches us something._"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
troughway
I wish we could take comments from threads like these and turn them into a
kind of compendium of HN, so that outsiders can know what to expect of this
site.

Need to determine if it fits under the "Race Baiting" or the "Educating
Adolescents on Privilege" category.

~~~
saagarjha
I feel like cherry-picking from a particular thread is the exact opposite of
what a "compendium" is.

