Ask PG: Applying to YC Winter 2012 as college freshmen

[grizzlylazer]

Hi PG/HN Community,

We're a team of 3 freshmen college students who: - have an exciting idea that we think is going to disrupt the e-commerce space - are in the bay area and willing to dedicate a huge chunk of our time on the idea even if rejected from YC - have already started building on product, two of us are programmers (with great UI sense)

We are eager to apply for YC, but were wondering how being in college affects the YC application process. For example, what were some successful YC applicants (I know Sam Altman of Loopt was one) who applied while still in college and what they did about their college career?

[patio11]

I'm not PG, but let me describe the trajectory of a successful firm at YC:

1) You bust butt for 3 months.

2) You continue busting butt for several years. During this time, several major life events happen to you. One of them will be signing contracts the size of a college textbook. On the signing of these contracts, one or several houses worth of money will show up in your business' checking account. You'll have plenty of things to spend the money on, like making sure the families of your employees eat on a regular basis and have access to healthcare.

Does the trajectory of a successful YC startup sound like something which is easy for you to swing when cramming for second semester sophomore finals? No? Then you should probably expect a question like "If it looks kinda likely that you have a shot at being one of our successful startups, are you all going to drop out?" If your answer to that is no, or if YC perceives that your answer to that would be no, YC is wasting time with you.

Unsolicited advice: Get the degree, come back in a few years. YC will probably still be here.

[pg]

We're reluctant to fund people who are still in college. Especially freshmen. Even if you can start a startup successfully at that age, it's not necessarily a good thing for you.

Sam had just finished his sophomore year. That's different from having only 1 semester of college.

Startups take over your life. For most people it would be a mistake to jump into one thing so completely before you even know what all the options are.

[grizzlylazer]

We knew this is what was going to be ahead of us when we started building our service.

I totally agree that it would be naive to drop out of college to start a startup, but what is your opinion on dropping out of college to grow one?

[pg]

If it's Facebook, maybe.

[OpenAlgorithm]

What about a high school student willing to take the 18 months off to work on their start-up and dependant on success leave school for good.

In Ireland its free high school and college education and if it was a failure its very easy to re-enter the education system.

I know you guys founded Collison, what do you think?

[sskates]

You guys might want to talk to Peter Thiel. He's trying to start an incubator by funding high school graduates.

http://www.thielfoundation.org/index.php?option=com_content&...

[chris_dcosta]

I just misread "frenchmen" and was thinking, "what on earth this has to do with anything?" My sitcom mind.

[larrys]

On your website http://tonychen.me/ you mention that http://www.looks.gd had "1.8 million pageviews, 560,000 unique visitors and growing". Yet the compete.com data shows trivial traffic (now) and it hasn't been updated since eoy 2010. What happened with that? As you have found with that site you can't run something and be dedicated to school at the same time. Stay in school.