Forge ahead. I myself was a practicing attorney who left my job to pursue a start-up of my own. Days ago I learned about YC and HN, and as soon as I learned about YC, I found myself filling out a YCW2013 late application. I know as a non-technical, single founder, that applied late I am at a disadvantage.
Just last night I scrolled the HN jobs page and found one YC alumni who posted a non-technical job, I immediately emailed them my back story: attorney quit job to pursue start-up but I also explained that if I failed to get into YCW2013 that I have familiarized myself with their start-up/product and think I would be a great addition to their start-up team. What is important, especially with start-ups is that you are open, honest and sincere with your commitment to the position and start-up, for example the start-up I contacted would require me to relocate from Miami to Chicago.
Hopefully your start-up succeeds and you do not need it but my advice boils down to being genuine and going after what you want, in my case that is working for a cool start-up tackling an interesting problem. Never give up on your vision, best regards.
Multiple times a day I read the Google News technology articles. In the past 6 month alone I can not tell you how many times I read "______ a YC company got funding/purchased." A couple days ago it must have clicked that YC was not the parent company behind all these successful start-ups. That same day I submitted a late application to YCW2013 and embraced the entire HN community by reading submissions that caught my eye and contributing where appropriate.
Just last night I scrolled the HN jobs page and found one YC alumni who posted a non-technical job, I immediately emailed them my back story: attorney quit job to pursue start-up but I also explained that if I failed to get into YCW2013 that I have familiarized myself with their start-up/product and think I would be a great addition to their start-up team. What is important, especially with start-ups is that you are open, honest and sincere with your commitment to the position and start-up, for example the start-up I contacted would require me to relocate from Miami to Chicago.
Hopefully your start-up succeeds and you do not need it but my advice boils down to being genuine and going after what you want, in my case that is working for a cool start-up tackling an interesting problem. Never give up on your vision, best regards.