| Wow that story sounds familiar. I was out of school for two years working as a financial analyst before getting accepted in to YC this summer. Right out of school and six months in to my job I knew I wasn't really cut out for finance and preferred to not work for someone else. I started a business on the side and learned more in 3 months than I did all through college. Fast forward a year. A childhood friend of mine and I began collaborating on an idea I had whenever we had spare time. However, we were eventually faced with a Catch22 situation: we needed more time to work on our startup, but we also needed money to live on (my other side business was making decent money, but not enough to live off of). We were OK with this and planned on doing the startup on the side until it was making money, or at least launched. On a whim we applied to YC as we figured "why the hell not?" YC accepted us even though I was a non-technical. I'm not exactly sure why as I've never actually asked them, but I will offer some speculation: my partner is a genius and I was extremely familiar with the market we were trying to get in to. Looking back, if we would have been rejected, I would have learned to code. Even now I plan on doing so (and have already done some) once things are a little less hectic.
Obviously, YC has sped up the creation process considerably and we've gotten more done in ~1.5 months than all the previous time combined. So I guess my advice to you is this:
1. Start a business on the side if you can
2. Learn to hack
3. Follow aaronblohowiak's advice
4. Forget the mock business plans - I've run/ran 3 small to micro sized businesses and the closest thing I've done to completing a business plan is a YC Summer 08 application. At some point, you have to stop planning and start doing. Good luck and feel free to email me anytime. |