[eins1234]

This is obviously based on anecdata, take it with a healthy helping of salt, but from what I've heard from a bunch of founder friends who have applied to YC with varying results, I get the sense that if you want to get in, you might be better off applying before you even start working on your startup.

Once you actually start, the bar for getting in seems to get much higher, because there's suddenly a lot more concrete data points to benchmark your startup against. Before that all they have is basically an idea and a bunch of resumes. This is of course contingent on the fact that you have impressive looking resumes and at least a plausible idea.

It's a bit of a catch 22 for B2B startups hoping to use the YC startup network as a source of early customers, but didn't apply early enough. If you're thinking of starting a B2B startup that could make good use of YC's network, my recommendation would be to apply as early as possible, before you even start working on it. Worst case scenario is you get rejected and end up having to apply again in 6 months (which is fine because you applied 6+ months earlier than you might have otherwise, and now have feedback from their rejection to make your next application better).

[bdominy]

YC does offer a free version of their program open to anyone called Startup School (https://www.startupschool.org) that can be a good way to gain validation and judge interest. Applying to YC seems to be best for idea staged founders with impressive resumes and people skills or startups that have already gained some traction. If you are in the "Trough of Sorrow" stage as Paul Graham described it, then I'm not sure where you really turn for help.

[eins1234]

Yeah that's exactly it. If you're in that "Trough of Sorrow" (and statistically speaking most startups in the world are at any given moment), YC and everybody else will not touch your startup even if you had resumes that would have been impressive enough to get your foot in the door with just the idea.

Ofc if an applicant made it past the "Trough of Sorrow" and reached PMF on their own, it's a no brainer, any decent VC would be throwing money their way at that point. For the rest of the applicants though, it just feels a bit backwards to me how YC seems to rather bet on founders with impressive resumes who have built nothing over similarly impressive founders who have proven that they can build something tangible, but need some help getting it past this infamous "Trough of Sorrow" that most successful startups are known to have gone through.

But hey what do I know. Surely they have the data internally to back that up right?

[romanhn]

The show Silicon Valley had a great bit that mirrors this advice (on why you don't want revenue): https://youtu.be/BzAdXyPYKQo

[Jgrubb]

"But if you have no revenue you can say you're pre-revenue. You're a potential pure play."

"I don't want to make a little bit of money each day. I want to make a fuckton of money all at once. ROI."

Russ Hanneman is one of the funniest characters on this really funny show.

[rl3]

>Once you actually start, the bar for getting in seems to get much higher, because there's suddenly a lot more concrete data points to benchmark your startup against.

I started in late 2013 and was rejected by YC in 2016. Haven't applied to anything since, with the exception of Apollo. Certainly was very aware of that dynamic at the time.

As a solo founder who lacks the aforementioned impressive resume, and who's nearly a decade in, I no longer have much hope for accelerators.

This was written less than a month before COVID inflicted a great deal of pain and delayed things by a little more than a year:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22429827

But hey, at least I'm at step one now.

[allisdust]

Would it not make sense for you to get user validation with a smaller scale poc than the herculean plan you outlined. Also your plan seem to focus too much on funding goals than user acquisition or product market fit. Unless you are planning to create a spacex style capital intensive company, I don't see why you need so much funding for.

[rl3]

>Would it not make sense for you to get user validation with a smaller scale poc than the herculean plan you outlined. Also your plan seem to focus too much on funding goals than user acquisition or product market fit.

I used to think in those terms. Thing is, it's a multi-dimensional problem.

Dimension one is a human resource limitation. One person pitted against a rapidly evolving technology landscape with very high technical bar. What that equates to is making one demo/MVP after another and eventually burning out. Or, compromising quality. Early on, it was possible to do it the traditional way. Things are now moving too fast.

Regardless, the reward in either scenario is funding based on whatever "product market fit," and users that require tending to. Best case, you might end up a multi-billion dollar company if you make it. One not all that different from pile after pile of technical debts that routinely waddle to their respective exits, then exist in some hellish afterlife post-exit. That's typically defined as success. I imagine one loses their soul in the process of even creating such a thing.

Point being, I view user acquisition and product market fit as poison pills. Not just for the company optimizing for it, but for society as a whole. They are a large part of what is wrong in the world.

Dimension two is expansion of scope. The more you think, the more beautiful things get. It's really hard to go back and limit scope once you've woven ideas together over the span of years in a kind of tapestry where individual concepts end up almost symbiotic. Fortunately, I inadvertently dedicated my time to this type of thinking rather than grinding out demos.

So, what you're left with is selling a vision. Absent any track record, it still necessitates a demo—but the nature of that demo becomes fundamentally different—as does its target audience. More of a living design document built to help convey that vision.

---

>Unless you are planning to create a spacex style capital intensive company, I don't see why you need so much funding for.

Well, the goal is for people to wake up one day and find out that the way they interact with computing as a whole has fundamentally changed forever.

On HN, you see people grasping with regularity at individual threads which constitute pieces of this puzzle, with no clear consensus on what should be done. There's an almost morose acceptance that pervades the current technological hellscape in which we live. Now people are looking back at dreams of what once could have been as a way out of this mess, but that alone isn't sufficient.

In any case, things get expensive at that level. I'm in my mid thirties and the core team I want to hire is probably twenty years my senior on average. Some of them probably don't even care about the money.

In all likelihood it'll go nowhere and I'll remain a nobody, but it's already been a wild ride, and hopefully I'll at least have fun and be spared the stereotypical startup/accelerator/VC grind.

Hey, perhaps somewhere along the way I'll even figure out how to not sound delusional.

[mtVessel]

If your vision is truly so all-encompassing, maybe that's the thing you should work on selling -- but not to investors; to the people you want to work with. Solve your HR problem, get some co-founders, and get going.

[rl3]

That's more or less the plan. Convince some key people, maybe raise a seed round that pays for a couple years of formal pre-production, and very delicately snowball into a dream team contingent on further funding.

Co-founders can't work since I've been at it nearly a decade, but that's more for control/singular vision reasons and not equity.

In the mean time, I'm just thankful to be alive and working a full-time job to get there.

[graderjs]

I think that's true. it's not dissimilar to an employment application. I never realized this before reading your comment but I think you frame it right: Basically they're looking for people to do the work required to build a business that they want to make them money, and to be coachable enough to take the advice of the YC folks. Just like an employee. Except it's not framed like that and the rewards can be different (but not always) it's just sort of like a higher level of risk, so the bell curve compared to employee salaries probably flattens out and broadens.

[hodgesrm]

> It's a bit of a catch 22 for B2B startups hoping to use the YC startup network as a source of early customers,

Does YC really help you get customers? Just wondering--in my experience VCs can help with intros but getting real customers requires legwork.