This is a really great summary of the yc program for everyone, international or not! The main things I want everyone going through yc to achieve are clarity (lesson 1), focus (lesson 2), and boundless potential (lesson 4).
This isn't just great for international founders, it's great for anyone in YC!
As an international founder, the two things I took away in my batch were: 1) How to deal with visa issues - which can be gruelling + take time and money. That being said, just being associated with YC helps you out a lot. They can recommend great lawyers and alumni who've gone through similar experiences. 2) If you have a non-english sounding accent, pg is likely gonna scream at you when you try to pitch. It's kinda weird, but try not to let it get you down.
I'm not Sondre obviously, but basically a derivative idea is only cool if you can show that your variation will somehow be bigger and/or more important than the original idea. Otherwise you're thinking too small.
It certainly is true that the first 3 points are relevant for anyone at YC. What I experienced as an international founder, however, was that the gap between my reality in my home country and YC, probably was bigger than for a US founder - certainly for a local bay area team.
As I help friends who are applying to YC with their application, it is these points I mention here that seem to be the hardest for them to grasp. Perhaps especially the one about what it means to be "visionary" and whether it is good when it comes to your product idea. Though almost equally as much what is valued at YC.
So, the text is from my perspective the most relevant parts to know about YC that you wont find easily accessible on the website for a foreign founder. In addition to some of the important practical challenges, like visa and remote teams.
The article is just general YC advices. I was hoping to read more about visa issues, funding issues as international founder, building teams in US and Norway etc.
Great points, I might write a follow-up with that, as that is something we certainly experienced, certainly after YC.
I'll take the gist here.
On visa.
YC introduces you to a great lawyer, who has an incredibly success rate. It costs 10kusd for one, and you get 50 % discount for 2nd person. The two most relevant visas is the investor visa and the O1 (extraordinary ability), as they are the ones without quote on them. We got the O1. It lasts 3 years, but is moderately simple to prolong.
The process takes some time, but isn't that much work, beyond gathering newspapers articles about yourself (you can translate with google translate). Would recommend starting perhaps halfway into YC if you intend to do this.
For a while just travelling on estra works well though.
Building teams in US and Norway
Our company was already setup to work remotely, since it's basically our product. That said our employees were/are in Norway, and are only travelling here on Esta. The benefit of any non-SF location is of course lower cost, especially of the most talented developers. And the con is that they are outside the Bay area culture, which is much more at the forefront of any topic. This tacit knowledge is hard to share, and is a legitimate benefit to having your team here.
That being said, using tools like Slack, zoom and uberconference, as well as having getaways, makes multi-location teams totally doable, at least for a period.
