Ask HN: What is more valuable, Y Combinator or an internship?

[LukeWalsh]

Note: I am not asking for my sake, I already think starting a company is much more valuable real world experience. However I am interested in the thoughts of first hand sources.

For those of you who do hiring/interviews at tech companies (large and small) which would be more valuable an experience to have on a resume?

1. Going to Y-Combinator, starting a company, and failing miserably. Raising no funding, going back to school.

2. Working at a prestigious "top" internship.

Purely curious as to the theoretical opportunity cost forgone by students all other things equal.

[massappeal]

Trying really hard no to be a dick here. I'm not exactly sure you understand the nature of YC or start-ups in general, but objectively, you'll learn more by building, or trying to build, your own company, than you will by interning for one.

[LukeWalsh → massappeal]

I agree completely. I'm curious how recruiters view it because my parents think the risk is so much that they adamantly advised me against applying to YC (and still adamantly oppose me interviewing). I'm interested in starting a company in its own rite because I feel like I can contribute more when I am self directed, however it would strengthen my argument to have any evidence showing that even if I fail it won't be a waste of time (which I know it won't be).

[massappeal → LukeWalsh]

YC isn't a place you go to learn how to start a company though. You have to apply to get in, and most successful applicants have started companies before and many of them have gone through YC in the past. Unless you're willing to drop out of school and redirect your entire life to your company, you're better off spending your summers interning, soaking up all the free knowledge you can, and then once graduated going off and do your own thing if you still want to. Most successful start-ups though are successful because the founders are passionate about the product they are building, rather than about building the company itself. The company is usually a by-product or side-effect of building the product, rather than the other way around.

[LukeWalsh → massappeal]

I'm aware. I've started a company in school and my team is interviewing for this batch. The company came out of an idea for a product, and YC seems like a way to accelerate our growth.

At the end of the day I'm going to work on this but there are two scenarios, one where my parents approve of my life decisions and one where they don't. Even though I might not always agree with them I think that even failed startup founders (for reasons you mentioned) are more likely to start more companies because they have gained valuable experience.

[edit] Thanks for the advice!

[massappeal → LukeWalsh]

Ok, first of all, Congrats on getting an interview! Second of all, there are a lot of variables you should consider for this decision. If you've done any market research, you may be able to tell whether this is the optimal time to enter the market aggressively, or if you could bootstrap it for a couple more years and make a more aggressive move once you're out of school. The reason for this being, there are still a lot of valuable lessons to be gained at school.

That said, if you feel that now is the most appropriate time for your product to launch (there is demand, the market is educated in the sector) and delaying that launch could/would open up room for a competitor or competitors to saturate the market, then try not to be afraid to stand by your belief that this is right for you, difficult though that can be.

IF all the stars have aligned, you are confident in your product and your team and you get accepted to YC, I'd say go for it. The experience is incomparable, and an education can always be completed later and/or elsewhere. Building your own company is extremely education, and having Paul and Sam and the whole YC as mentors is indescribably invaluable.

Good luck man!

[argonaut → massappeal]

This isn't actually true. The majority of successful applicants have not started companies in the past, and the vast majority of accepted applicants have not gone through YC in the past. YC is in fact a place for learning about how to build a company, given that you already know how to build a product. You see this reflected in the fact that YC will often accept smart "hacker" types that have never run companies (or even held leadership positions at all).

[fredophile → massappeal]

You can't predict which situation will teach them more. You can safely say that they'll learn different things in each situation. Starting and running a company can teach a lot of things like budgeting, hiring, firing and interacting with employees, project planning, fundraising, bargaining, conflict resolution, sales, working with whatever tech the company uses. An internship will have less variety and more focus. If you're there to write code you'll learn more about writing code and the planning and processes that go with coding in a professional setting. You'll also be exposed to experienced developers who can show you tips and tricks they've accumulated over years. What ends up being better depends on what your long term goals are.

[tlb]

Please don't start a startup to gain a credential.

[LukeWalsh → tlb]

That's not the motivation for the question at all

[massappeal → LukeWalsh]

which would be more valuable an experience to have on a resume

kinda sounds like it is

[LukeWalsh → massappeal]

I'm trying to help my parents understand why Y Combinator is worthwhile even if I fail, not only because it is more relevant to what I want to do (start a company) but also because it would allow me to gain skills that could be useful at a company even if I did fail. Because I very well might need to work at a company if I failed in order to make money to try again.

[logn → LukeWalsh]

If you want your parents' approval, then I'm guessing you're not financially independent. I'd become self-sufficient first and take an internship. When you're ready to start a company with your own money or your own free-time, then go for it. Also, there are a lot of skills to learn in business/engineering, I don't see why you want to learn them all in the highest pressure scenario possible. My $.02.

[projectramo → logn]

He may want to have a conversation with his parents, explain something to them, or just share his point of view without "wanting their approval"

[sharemywin]

Here's is why you go to Y Comb. If your parents can't understand this then ignore them. Sometimes "smart" skips a generation. The only internship worth more would be a congressional one.

"Because we fund such large numbers of startups, Y Combinator has a huge "alumni" network, and there's a strong ethos of helping out fellow YC founders. So whatever your problem, whether you need beta testers, a place to stay in another city, advice about a browser bug, or a connection to a particular company, there's a good chance someone in the network can help you."

[solomatov]

I interview developers at a medium sized software company. Definitely the second would be more valuable for me, unless the startup does something complex, not another hipster consumer site as most of the startups do.

However, everything depends on what you want. If you want to have very interesting work, which uses cool tech and is knowledge intensive, you should choose companies which can afford long term investments, not small startups which want to get profitable quickly. If you want to get rich, you probably should choose a different path, but I don't have expertise here.

[27182818284]

It depends on your age.

Going to YC too young is considered "premature optimization" by at least one if not more of YC's founders.

[pbadger0]

First of all, I feel like HN is going to give you a skewed perspective here. As far as I've seen, the HN community is way more GOGOGO DO A STARTUP than most, and the skill sets and life paths they value might not be the ones your parents value.

Secondly, I've done both. I've started my own company, which got rejected from YC and ended up in another incubator, DreamIt Ventures, and ended up crashing and burning due to a variety of reasons. I've also spent a summer, and now the better part of a year working at a YC company, Amicus (totally check it out, its an amazing place to work.) I'd say I was incredibly happy with both experiences, but I gained different things from each one.

YC, or the accelerator experience, puts you in the hands of some top start-up gurus and mentors, creates sky high stakes, and gives you the opportunity to build something really awesome yourself. If you have previous startup experience, an idea truly worth the immense work, and/or a co-founder whom you trust with your life, this might be for you. When asked if I'd do DreamIt ventures again, I always say yes, but I warn people that its way harder than you first expect, and if the mix is a off with your co-founder, it can be a few months of extreme pain and constant difficulty. You learn way more about the ins and outs of running a company, and the feeling of having your work criticized to no end, and of failing despite everything you tried. This is a good way to improve certain skills, but I'd argue not all skills fall under this category.

The intern experience is more flexible. From everyone I've talked to, it seems that most companies are looking for especially driven young people who will try really hard before giving up and who will generally do more than their employer asks. This means that once you have the spot, your employer probably isn't going to put much stress on you to work incredibly hard, and while the culture might demand that you work more than 9-5 every day, you generally can take weekends off, or take a day off here and there. This means that if your goal is to learn how to run a software team, as well as pick up a bunch of different tech in your free time, this is for you. If there's a hackathon in the city you're in, you can part-take, and if there is a tech talk that will take an extra day, you can almost definitely get out of work to go check it out. One of my friends at Amicus spent every weekend hacking on a side project, and had an incredible portfolio by the end of the summer, as well as new knowledge of how to write clean code and manage an engineering team of more than one or two.

Now its not to say that you can slack off at work, or not take one of these internships seriously, but at the end of the day you're either trying to 1. Learn a lot or 2. Get a permanent position at the company you're interning at. For the first goal, theres a lot of flexibility to put down your internship work when you go home, and build that cool project you haven't had time for, and for the second, a quality employer will judge you by the quality of your work, not your hours.

Thus, you really have to think about what you want to get out of an internship. Do you want to learn from the engineering pros, get feedback on your work, and build side projects, or do you want to learn to pitch as well as push code, do UX research as well as debug, and have a company in your name instead of your name on a company. Both scenarios are amazing opportunities, you just have to figure out which one fits you better.

[AbhishekBiswal]

You're more likely to get an Internship easily, than get into YC. Just saying.

[angersock]

From a hiring standpoint, I don't really care where you've interned or where you accelerated/failed/decelerated. In rough order of importance, I care if you get along with my team, if you can think through problems, and if you know enough to work on things. I could give two cares if you have the Paul Graham Seal of Approval, or if you won Palantir's Summer MVP award.

You come off here (as is pointed out by tlb and massappeal) kind of approval-seeking. You should be in business for yourself, because you think that you are better off starting a business than not.

And if your parents don't approve, you need to decide for yourself whether or not to follow their wishes: a bunch of random jerks on the 'net can't really help you there. It's part of becoming an adult.

(Also, I've seen your Github and I've skimmed Outfitly--can you please consider something a bit more useful to attempt as a business? Please? You seem too smart to be chasing vapid B2C stuff).