[yuriy_zaremba]

YC Startup School became our ticket to YC. It helped us get all our ducks in the row and really focus on growth for the first time since we founded AXDRAFT. We applied to YC two times before SUS to no avail, but after we got into SUS and managed to get to 20%+ MoM growth there, we got into YC.

The software behind SUS is amazing. Even now after YC, I report our metrics to SUS software, because it keeps you accountable and shows you very clearly how you are doing.

I recommend YC SUS to all startups that ask me for advice and if you want to get into YC - start with SUS.

[dokein]

I will say this: we did not have the same good experience.

My cofounder and I are starting a healthcare B2B SaaS company and were 1-2 months in when we tried Startup School. We got paired with people for the first three weeks who were purely in the idea phase and had no product, no sales meetings, and no prior experience. We also got paired with people in the wellness rather than healthcare space, for example those that were looking to sell some random supplement (which generally have little evidence of benefit). As a result, doing the weekly meetings was more of an energy drain rather than a social-pressure-as-a-motivator service.

The forums were full of people asking for technical co-founders or for basic advice that was covered in the lectures. The software also did not give any great insights (i.e. you can replicate all the features with a simple weekly checklist of "What's your sales target / quantifiable metric?" and "Have you hit it, or what have you done to hit it?").

This doesn't invalidate all the hundreds or thousands of people who had excellent experiences. Just wanted to illustrate the other perspective.

[hstreet]

I have mixed feelings of SUS, I empathize with both of these comments. I didn't get into YC, but I was very early through SUS. I was firmly stuck in the idea validation and early build phase.

I have a more positive outlook on the group sessions though. True that sometimes they were energy draining, especially when you were having sessions with people that hadn't been able to put any work in since week 1. But that's due to life factors, etc, many of the groups had people occupied with their FT jobs, and I was slammed with my FT job for a core chunk of SUS too, where all of a sudden a week went by and I didn't really have an update.

However, the accountability was good, and I would push myself to try to have something for an update. Since then I've actually adopted this habit to publishing updates on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EoWGysmHaCM).

Another positive of the group sessions regardless of who made it there (I had some where it was just me and 1 other person), was that it formed a habit of practising your pitching. Even though pitching regularly is well championed by YC, it's hard to practically force yourself to do that unless you're pushed into that role. The group sessions had value there :)

[nl]

The most recent Startup School cohort rotated the people in weekly meetings so you had different people in each meeting. Some were pretty average but some were great.

I agree that the forums are worse-than-useless. They were mostly about "try my app" with no replies, or endless arguments between people who were setting up an "unofficial Startup School Slack" and and "unofficial Startup School Discord".

If there is one thing they should do this year differently it would be start an official Slack (and yes it should be Slack) for people who want it.

[andrew_wc_brown]

I would agree the noise is high and the pairing is poor. I've done Startup School twice and will a third time with the same company.

[xwowsersx]

I'm a bit confused. Why are you going back a third time then?

[duelingjello]

It sounds like pairing needs to be done based on closer levels of experience/progression/sophistication/resourcefulness. Also, there are opportunities to mentor teams/people into becoming more self-sufficient.

[hummel]

Same here, it was just a lonely conversation with people that only care about their idea. There was no real feedback and almost none listening to the complaints. It was a total waste of time because some of the only interesting lessons were removed arbitrarily.

[davej]

I did the very first Startup School and the most recent Startup School.

When I did the first Startup School I made a number of mistakes. The most costly was that I didn't launch early enough. When I did eventually launch my product, I launched with too many features and I found it difficult to explain to my beta testers. It was "cool" but my users found that it changed their workflow too much and they didn't want to make the investment to see if it was worthwhile. I got disheartened and gave up.

The funny thing was that I was aware that what I was doing was considered "common startup pitfalls" even as I was making the mistakes. From talking to other founders, it seems that a lot of us only learn by making the mistake for ourselves.

At the most recent Startup School, I started again with a new idea. I was determined to build something that solved a specific problem that was easy-to-explain and I wanted to launch quickly. I'm still very early-on in the journey but I have customers, revenue and growth.

I would particularly recommend solo founders to give Startup School a go. As a solo founder, the weekly updates with peers really helped keep me honest with myself.

edit:

Old (failed) Startup: https://pin.gy

New Startup: https://www.todesktop.com

edit2: If you watch one SUS video ever then watch this 16 minute video from Sam Altman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lJKucu6HJc