[CoffeePython]

Great read Chris! I was in the S21 batch and definitely relate to a lot of the things you posted. Especially re: batchmate quality.

One big thing that YC did for me is it was an ambition multiplier. Pre-YC I thought it'd be cool to make software that could just pay my bills. A year post-batch and I find my default state is much more ambitious than before.

It's a crazy feeling seeing so many people start from 0 and the progress they can make in just 3 months. YC helped me and my company tremendously.

[bko]

>One big thing that YC did for me is it was an ambition multiplier. Pre-YC I thought it'd be cool to make software that could just pay my bills. A year post-batch and I find my default state is much more ambitious than before.

When you talk about an "ambition multiplier", do you mean personal wealth? YC is great for receiving favorable terms in the future. But you can't really take that money out of the firm, or pay yourself some stupid salary. It's just paper wealth. And a bigger valuation and more ambitious growth usually means scaling up a lot faster (fail fast), rely more on future rounds and maximize your valuation.

For a fund they'd prefer a 10% chance for $100 million valuation to 90% chance for an $11 million valuation, but personally I would prefer a 90% change for a million opposed to 10% chance of 10 million, because I can't diversify and run 10 startups simultaneously like a VC can. So I guess that's the downside of the "ambition multiplier"

[edgyquant]

I’m at my third YC company and it seems like each time what I thought my career was completely changed. I’m leading a whole company engineering team where at my last job I was a principal engineer who spent Covid working (sadly) alone.

My first I thought I’d be lucky to land a entry level gig and did so well I become the lead engineer over a couple of guys within a month (as soon as we found them.)

I would never have gotten that experience that fast. Sure looking bad I was a senior at entry level because I had practiced so much: but at a traditional corp I would have had to wait years to get to that level of experience where YC basically throws you at it and hopes you don’t fail

[personjerry]

> A year post-batch and I find my default state is much more ambitious than before.

But you no longer have a choice right? Now that you're VC funded you're expected to hit that 1000x valuation?

[chrisfrantz]

Thanks! Yeah, sounds like we shared a similar experience. YC definitely starts to make anything feel possible. They give you the tools, it’s up to you to take it from there.