I went through YC in S20. The number one question I get from those who apply is, "Is it worth it?". For me personally, 100 percent worth it. The application process alone makes you think through questions you probably haven't thought of before. It's worth it if you are building a venture scalable business. It's also worth it for the people that you get to meet. As someone who lives outside of SV, it opened a new door for me that was previously unavailable.
I feel like I've read this exact comment before on another "Apply to YC!" thread.
So I went through and applied for the first time, and honestly, I felt like a lot of the questions were very obvious? Could be because I come from a finance / business background vs. a CS background, but I was shocked that people would consider these questions non-obvious.
Hopefully this doesn't come off as arrogant. If it helps, I was rejected from YC, so perhaps I hadn't thought through the questions enough!
Yes, and in comparison to whatever your best alternative would be (i.e. max increase of success odds of giving someone else the same equity and same time commitment).
They might help a lot, but they also take a lot of equity. Let's say you alone might get the company to a 10 million valuation, if you're good. Well, the VCs will help you get it to 100 million, but they'll take 95%.
But in general, yes - VCs give something and it costs something, like almost everything else in life and certainly in business. It's your job as an entrepreneur to decide if that money is "worth it". Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. In the end, just like borrowing money, it's a tool that you have to decide on as an entrepreneur. It's a big decision, maybe one of the biggest at first, but one of many thousands of decisions you have to make every day.
Isn't that the point of the music business? They look at talent, then decide if select the "ramen profitable" ones and (try to) hyperscale their popularity with judicious A&R spending. I think people outside the music industry criminally underrate effect A&R. It is really the difference between nobody and famous.
For anyone not in the know about the music industry, "A&R" means:
> Artists and repertoire... It refers to the department of a record company that is in charge of talent scouting and the creative development of recording artists.
I'm pretty convinced that YC's alpha mostly comes from the fact that they can shine a turd into something that doesn't lose them much (or makes a modest profit) when it fails.
Many other VCs that have survived for that long have a huge IPO under their belt, like Google or Uber. The best in the YC portfolio are probably Stripe, Dropbox, and Coinbase. These are great companies and great exits, but don't support 1000+ $0 failures. They do deliver the goods if your failures have a ~0% return rather than a -100% return.
That is a good thing for you if you want to learn how to grow a company, though, because it is a great sign that YC actually works as an education opportunity.
I did some back-of-the-napkin math when I first applied to YC, and IIRC just based on their unicorn and almost-unicorn companies, and assuming any outcome below $100M was equal to zero, joining YC still gave you an expected value of about $20MM.
So I think it's a way better deal than you're representing here.
It sounds like you are attributing all of the value of the company to joining YC. Many of those companies would have been worth plenty without YC. We have no idea how many.
I would suggest to you that the top YC companies often are the ones who get the least from YC. This is also almost confirmed by the many YouTube videos that YC puts out where they say things along those lines. These companies do everything right while with YC, and they continue to do everything right well past YC (as I understand it, YC is not all that helpful past series C).
Twitch has also never been able to really stand as a company on its own. It's like YouTube: a money-losing business that drives attention to the parent company.
not every company is going to massive or in the billions. but plenty of companies in the 100m - 500m revenue range. to get there, yeah you usually need vc money.
I don't really want to waste time applying for funding though. I went through a phase where I was spending a lot of time on just trying to get feedback.
Aside from a few friends saying ohh neat, I didn't really get a response. Indie games aren't really billion dollar prospects...
I love YC and how generous they are with their knowledge and tools. Never did it and wont be applying but just wanted to say that the Dalton + Michael videos make me calm somehow. Not sure why.
the shocking thing is how few (any?) other vcs copied them on this.
- startup school
- hackernews
- safe and other legal docs
- + all the content
Then there's bookface and the internal software.
YC has the greatest business model in the world with (I'm assuming) top returns and seems like it would be so easy for any VC to copy it (write great software and give away useful things to entrepreneurs) and instead, 99% of VCs do Squarespace landing pages instead.
I think the trick is that they're not a VC at all, they're a startup accelerator. Their primary competitors are TechStars, Seedcamp, AngelPad, and Antler. They seem to be putting up a fight, despite 0 name recognition comparitively!
Does YC accept founders that aren't 22-26 years old in the Bay area and went to MIT, Berkeley, or Caltech? I've met quite a few in person and they fit a very specific archetype. Perhaps thats whose applying, but I do wonder.
Didn't know that existed. Looking through there, the answer to the question seems to be, most founders come from Top 20 Universities with heavy weighting towards Top 5.
thanks for the link, i think this is the best possible answer to the question “does yc accept $people_like_me?”. I love how open yc is about stuff like this - I just learned that 3 people from one of my UK universities were yc founders at some point! (southampton university)
They mean how people write “S23” for summer 2023 batch or “W23” for winter, since there are two seasons that start with S it would have to be abbreviated P25 or R25 or SP25 etc. instead
I applied for W22, got interviewed and was rejected.
The rejection email was quite thoughtful and helpful. I applied twice after that but didn’t get an interview. Fingers crossed for this one.
Why I’m applying?
1. Been a daily reader for HN for the last 10 years. Seen companies going from “Launch HN” to be a hugely successful within years.
2. As I’m not from the US, getting accepted would mean I will have at least warm intros to US VCs and build a good network.
3. Being through the YC school back in 2021, then bootstrapping for a year and a half, then joining another startup as a CTO, I started realizing how good YC advice is. Some people like me had to go through it practically to understand the value of YC videos.
1) I joined as cofounder. Cofounder can and do take whatever title they want. Great!
2) I joined at CTO because there are 500 engineers and it needs an office of the CTO. Let’s not call it a startup, and YC has nothing to offer you. Great!
3) I joined a small startup and they gave me the CTO title. Yikes!
Bad signal. Don’t have much confidence in the CEO after hearing that and I assume the company will fold.
Or if it succeeds—prepare to be fired. No room to hire above you. Even as a VP, a CEO could hire a CTO. But even better if no title inflation at all. No one like a demotion, so if you aren’t perfect then you are gone. And you will take a lot of (now dead) equity with you.
Not that big a deal to correct the inflation later. I joined a startup fourteen years ago as the first employee and it was initially “software architect” on my business cards; later that was revised down to senior engineer when an actual ladder was put in place.
For a management and executive position, it is a bit more perilous.
A hired CTO at a startup is often really a tech lead. Not always. Better to use a vague “head of xyz” in such cases. Vague and easily transformed.
You see second and third time founders do that.
Title inflation is fun and cheaper than cash. But not really transferable.
For example, I had a friend, which was a founder CTO and a team of 15 and wanted to be a director at Facebook.
I asked him how he would deal with leveling questions for other managers and their engineers. His company hadn’t implemented ladders yet (no need at that size) and had no idea what I was talking about.
Software engineer II, for example. It’s a title and salary range (sometimes with an adjustment for location).
A leveling question is a promotion question: you believe that you deserve to be at a different level and this a different pay range.
A additional wrinkle: When a company initially does leveling, there is a lot of jockeying for the right one, and not everyone may quite fit (a lower level than your salary implies).
how do you structure compensation and seniority -- and how do you define the skillsets and experience that are required to sit in those levels?
and then how do you hire / fire / promote / retain those people?
when you're working at the VP and CTO level of a big org that's something you think about.
especially when you're transitioning from a small startup where everyone's title is made up, to a 100-300+ body org with real structure and organization.
> Related - what can you expect in terms of credits if you're not part of YC? Whether going solo/bootstrapping or another incubator?
To follow up, in practice these credits are available for any VC-backed startup. (This is a business decision... they know you have financial means + appetite to spend big in the future.)
There are some credits available to any new startup, but much less.
Yes, I'm also interested. Will have a new baby, so while I'd like to do in-person, it wouldn't be feasible for the new few (or more?) batches. Though I still plan on grinding either way.
What’s the realistic likelihood of getting accepted as a solo founder? My potential cofounder dropped out and I’d really really like to apply for this batch.
Interviewed in 22 and rejected. Ended up joining another accellerator and ended up having the startup acquired. Looking to start something new again in the mobile app/ai space. Love to chat with anyone interested in applying together
Hello, I am completely new to this and the MFN safe/375k$ are confusing me. What if my company gets accepted into YC but never receives any further funding/investment after that?
Do I still get the 375k$ and if so, how many shares do they get for it or is it included in the 7% already? Or do I only get 125k$ initially for 7% and the 375k$ later when there is a next round?
I am a noob in the startup world, but this feels like YC could be abused to get "easy money" while in reality the founders never intend to scale the company beyond that / hope for organic growth.
I always wondered, is YC worth the try? Are there any hidden details that are usually not mentioned? I hope to get answers from individuals who went through the process.
1. If you sell dev tools or sell to startups, YC gives you a great captive market in your peer group. They are also highly motivated to make "you scratch my back, I scratch yours deals."
2. If you have no connections to VC or a spotty resume, but your team is highly motivated, YC gives you those connections and overcomes the resume.
3. If you don't care that much about your success in this particular company but want to be a serial founder, being ex-YC is good.
4. If you are not self-motivated, it may be your only hope of developing the habits you need.
Otherwise, ~10% for $500k is probably a bad deal, especially for an AI company or a company with any traction at all.
Applied late once to YC with an idea (not a great one) and got rejected, probably because of solo founding.
Going through it for my second time now, it's definitely worth it. There's an excess of smart people and it's transformational for any startup, but especially if you build in devtools like us. The network is strong and supportive and there's a strong connection even among people who never met; for example, lots of unicorn+ founders have their personal phone numbers on their profiles.
The strongest argument for YC is how few alums speak out against it. Almost all of the negative comments come from people who haven't done the program.
> The strongest argument for YC is how few alums speak out against it. Almost all of the negative comments come from people who haven't done the program.
I think YC has merit, but I'm just going to push back on this particular logic:
1. The set of people who've done X is already selected for people who were willing to do X in the first place.
2. In business, burning bridges with an influential network in which you have an in... forfeits some advantage, and probably invites a lot of downside.
(On #2, an occasional person might decide it's a matter of principle, or, less-principled, do the math and decide they can get more individual brand mileage out of saying something provocatively negative. But that seems unlikely and rare. Related dynamics we've seen might help our intuition: how Hollywood almost universally shielded abusers for so long, and how it's very rare for a student wronged by a prestigious alma mater university to go public about it.)
Maybe that applies to people going to Gawker or whatever and writing an exposé on YC, but that's not what I'm talking about. There are very few people who, at the end of the batch in a private one-on-one conversation, say that joining YC was a mistake. That certainly wouldn't risk their career (neither would critiquing YC on HN, for that matter).
Claiming that all human opinions are fake and based on self-interest is a very cynical view. Besides you could apply the same logic to big tech companies, or elite universities, or whatever, but there are plenty of Xooglers who say the company went to shit, or Harvard grads who say they regret the student debt.
> The strongest argument for YC is how few alums speak out against it.
Are you sure this is the case? Might it be that alums who speak out against YC suffer repercussions?
I praise 90% of what YC does. But I also call them out on their mistakes. https://x.com/garrytan blocks me, which is, I'm sad to report, the smallest of the repercussions they've taken against me.
I love YC, but they need to grow some thicker skin and quit hiding in their Silicon Valley bubble.
Excuse the pedantry, but there seems to be a missing qualification on what kind of business it is. Almost all of the world’s businesses raise starting capital without help from YC.
I feel like they may use like soft red flags, and don’t consider you if you have more than one. Perhaps things like solo founder (even with team), not based in US, not working on currently hot topic, something involving physical assets/hardware?
I’m not sure, it’s a feeling I got after I tried applying. Their rejection response was quite short.
Very interesting. So unless it’s purely software and the $current bandwagon, then it’s out? Better not to try then. As an engineer, all my ideas involve hardware and robotics too. Sure, software is there, but it’s definitely not the only thing.
> Are there any hidden details that are usually not mentioned?
Yes. In general there are hidden details but what those specifically are, I can't tell you.
I can speak freely since I was expelled from YC.
# Background
I did YC twice, in 2008 and 2009. YC invested ~$15,000 in both startups. I don't keep a close eye on it, but I think nowadays they give you 33.3333x as much money.
My first startup we shut down. I didn't know what I was doing. My co-founder was smarter and went on to do multiple successful companies, I think a couple funded by YC.
My second company got acqui-hired by Microsoft in 2014. YC got $0 since it was only 3 people and YC was our only investor and it wasn't worth it to do a stock acquisition, especially since the Seahawks had just won the Superbowl and the Microsoft Biz Dev folks were in a good mood.
I felt relieved I could at least "pay back" YC, but PG was aghast when I emailed him that: "You don't have to pay back YC. I'd be horrified if I thought you were even thinking about that. We expect to lose money on most of our investments. The small number of big hits compensate-- more than compensate. So don't worry about us at all. Just go work on interesting things. Good luck, --pg"
Ignore how he dresses, the guy is a class act.
# As to the Hidden Details
There's a lot of secrets with YC.
Back in the early days when I was just one of the first HackerNews users, I logged into the site and saw I had "One New Message". WTF?
HN did not have a messaging system.
Or so I thought.
In fact, HN had a secret messaging system that PG used to communicate with promising hackers.
From that point on I was a guest in YC's secret hotel, but never got invited up to the Penthouse.
YC has a lot of hidden tools. I am now on the shittier version of HackerNews that the public has access to (since I got expelled). There's a cooler version with extra features that you get access to if you're in the club.
YC has secret ratings and reviews of all investors worldwide; a huge thing called "Bookface" with all sorts of helpful tools for startups, etc.
They don't really share anything about their returns. They are not like Warren Buffet, who writes a detailed letter explaining the returns each year.
Knowledge is compartmentalized a lot of knowledge between partners, batches, LPs, favorite startups, et cetera.
Now, there are legitimate reasons for doing this.
First, it's obviously a huge competitive advantage, and IMO these tools and this information is likely worth far more than the $500K they give your startup.
Second, YC/their portfolio is _constantly_ under attack from forces all over the world. That's what happens when you are the GOAT and fund so many Unicorns. People all over the world come after you and your portfolio companies. Tom Brady is a hero in Boston and Tampa but the most vile villain in 94% of cities with NFL teams. You get paid the big bucks not to enjoy the love, but to endure the hate.
Anyway, so what specifically are the hidden details? I don't know. Like I said I was never invited up to the Penthouse. But I do know they are more than comfortable to keep secrets. Secrecy does not seem to bother them.
Don't take my word for it. Here's JL: "Some of the most useful things I've learned about startups over the years are also things I'd never share publicly." [0]
If they are holding back "the most useful things", what are they giving us? Why should we trust them?
Is it correct to say the purpose of YC is to seed fund as a lead up to an IPO?
Or is the purpose of YC to seed fund to create a blossoming privately-owned product?
I look at a software company like McNeel or Dassault that outlasts dozens of IPOS... from what I see of YC, I don't get the vibe these are even comparable.
YC was always the dream for me, and I've applied about 25 times over the last 10 years. My work has been all about startups/side projects since I was about 14 years old. I live and breathe startups. But since then I've learned there are downsides to even applying for YC, let alone actually joining.
1. People will steal some of your good ideas. I interviewed with YC back in 2021 where I discussed some unique marketing strategy that had not yet been done in my space. Very suspiciously, I was rejected, yet some large YC companies working in adjacent spaces immediately started implementing that exact specific idea over the next few months. It's possible that was a coincidence, but the timing was very suspect, especially since I was explicitly told during the interview "you have good ideas, but a large team could do this better". And so I'm pretty sure they stole my ideas and gave them to larger teams on the YC portfolio. Beware!
2. It's just a massive distraction if you can actually go it alone. Sam Altman famously said earlier this year, it's only a matter of time before there is a billion dollar company run by a single person with AI. I used to say that back in 2021 even before ChatGPT was released. For many types of SaaS companies which could effectively just be a single person, there is no need for funding, networking, or anything else except writing code and talking to customers. Everything else is just a distraction. YC advice is free on the internet. Vinod Khosla said many investors bring negative value to the companies they invest it.
3. The Silicon Valley groupthink bubble. I laugh at some of the nonsense that comes out of SV, but it doesn't matter to them because there is so much money sloshing around SV that as long as you can attract money by playing their high school popularity contest, you are validated. No matter if there is no substance to your idea. YC companies should count their actual revenue as not including money that comes from other YC companies because it is suspicious if your “product” only matters to people with VC money to splurge. For me, the ultimate test of a good idea is if people are willing to give you their OWN hard-earned money.
4. I, personally, don't do well under intense competition and social pressure. My best ideas and most productive spurts of my life have been when I don't feel pressure to grow, but I work out of a sense of enjoyment in the craft and wanting to solve people's problems that I care about. I have a feeling that YC is one intense pressure cooker, and I'd most likely die there.
My cofounder and I are thinking of applying again for www.onetake.ai (B2B AI SaaS, with growing revenue and ~3,000 paid users).
With such a surprise short deadline, we're not on the same continent at the moment. Is there any stigma attached to doing the application video remotely on eg. Zoom?
I always assumed that being together to record the video was just better.
My cofounder was in Europe when I had to put together a reapplication. No problem with doing the video remotely. I just made a screen recording on Zoom.
I had been considering applying but got turned off by gary tan's, and the rest of vc-dom's, rude aggressive politics. Luckily my startup is starting to gain traction, hopefully that will make it easier to find investors that don't turn me off.
Just applied with my marketplace nerdcrawler.com (easiest way for artists to auction their art and earn 4x more starting with comic artists). Since launching in January 2024, registered users are growing at 40% MoM; we've generated >$148K in GMV and ~$10K in revenue (>350% CMGR).
Applied twice in the past. Got 1 interview and 2 rejections. But, this is the best traction I've ever had so I hope third time's the charm.
When I came across their twitter post about this, I was a bit taken aback. I think it is AI, but I can't tell that easily. I've seen Dalton and Michael videos so the facial expressions and cadence are off, but maybe I'm just seeing things?
Anyway, no judgement on the use of AI or anything, just wondering if I'm correct.
I think it might be just a single take that they used AI to edit. The editing is jarring as is Dalton's hand gestures, but I can't see any AI artifacts as far as I can tell
Can we please have an AI::generating YC-application-Emmitter-9000 Parody Box.
EDIT:
A thing trained on all the YC applications, the posts about success and failure with a success recommender/dark-pattern/gap-areas/ideas-previously-not-possible-till-AI etc would be a really interesting data to query.
And have it spit out the recommendations for parody based on all the techno-babble encapsulated.
I applied for summer 24, and got a less-than-thoughtful response bordering on personally insulting (“TL;DR - why don’t you go back to your day job?”). I won’t be applying anymore.
Funny thing is, I didn’t even want to hear back - I just like to fill out the application as a writing exercise, to help me get a snapshot of my own thinking around what I’m building.
I guess it’s stressful reading all those applications, but why respond if all you have to say is “I don’t believe you”? Silence will do just fine; I’m aware that people don’t believe me - it’s called a startup, right?
(Anyways, nbd, apologies for the tangential rant, love the website)
So you are complaining that you filled out an application and they didn't ghost you? And actually offered some meaningful advice even though you were rejected?
> got a less-than-thoughtful response bordering on personally insulting
> I didn’t even want to hear back - I just like to fill out the application as a writing exercise
You admittedly wasted their time with an unserious application "as a writing exercise," and you're upset because they actually took it seriously and took the time to properly respond to it with honesty instead of giving you a cookie-cutter rejection?
Just because I had little expectation of hearing back doesn’t mean my application was unserious. It was a full length application, written over multiple days, about the future direction of my business, which already has revenue.
I appreciate your perspective, but I thoroughly disagree. Silence is always the worst response: it signals that you aren't even worth the courtesy to be responded to. I'll take a borderline-personally-insulting response over silence any day of the week. That gives me the ability to analyze the responder's thinking (after I'm over the hit to my ego) and see whether I believe the responder has a point or not.
I agree. I've only heard silence applying twice. Yet all the YC messaging is "apply again!" I'm curious if they ever consider the people who have heard nothing from them for a decade, when they talk about why you should apply.
That sounds so unlike the YC partners I know that I have to wonder whether you correctly interpreted the response.
The fact that you got a specific message indicates that someone at YC saw potential in your application and was hoping to help you improve it. The subtext of those messages is "help us get to yes".
In my experience they would never say things like "why don't you go back to your day job" or "I don't believe you" or anything in that ballpark. That's just not the culture of how YC treats founders—quite the opposite. Besides that, insulting applicants would obviously go against YC's own interests.
I appreciate the insider perspective; my faith in YC was exactly why I was so dumbfounded. Me and my cofounder spent quite a bit of time speculating, and wrote a substantial, thoughtful response. Ignored and rejected.
I wanna make clear again that I’m not bitter about this, it was just odd. And counterproductive.
I put a lot of effort into a YC application in 2019 and got a generic form letter rejection. If I had gotten any indication anyone had actually looked at it, I might consider applying again, but as it stands, I probably won't.
> I just like to fill out the application as a writing exercise, to help me get a snapshot of my own thinking around what I’m building.
I think that's quite rude and disrespectful in itself. People do actually need to read that, and think about it, and then maybe provide feedback on it.
Of course applying conveys no obligation to follow through and you can always change your mind, but if you never intend to do so, then you shouldn't be applying.
> I didn’t even want to hear back - I just like to fill out the application as a writing exercise, to help me get a snapshot of my own thinking around what I’m building.
When someone submits an application to YC, asking to be considered, do you think it's reasonable for YC to expect that submission to be in good faith -- that the person would like to pursue next steps if YC is interested?
Do you think they sensed that your application wasn't a genuine application, and that affected their response?
> got a less-than-thoughtful response bordering on personally insulting (“TL;DR - why don’t you go back to your day job?”)
Is that a literal quote of something someone responded to you, or is it an interpretation of the gist of the response?
how about actually quoting the email instead of summarizing? if the advice was unhelpful, or rude (as you seem to be implying), why not let the rest of judge for ourselves? And maintaining a “day job” is not a mark of shame or an insult, it’s a way of maintaining low burn rate at the expense of less time to work on the startup. Whether thats the optimal scenario depends on where you are in terms of solving the problem that you’re working on, but adding yc/vc money does not magically help you find product-market fit, it just gives your more time each week to work on it. But unless what you’re doing seems to be getting you closer to that point, why not work on it and hone your process while keeping the day job?
I think already have a handful of plucky.ai that they're seeking to entangle with. This allows more meat on the table. :-) -- and it makes their pre-selected appear "organic" (ironically in the anti-AI-generated content.)
I've been gobsmacked with how many amazing things people are doing.
I'm working on mine, but way too far away for this round.
Time is subjective. They had a couple, in fact. On the last fall 24 batch (don’t remember the century), one group (“startup” doesn’t make much sense in a post-scarcity post-human society) came up with a viable (for a Kardashev type 2) way to do time travel and this one was done on a dare.
