HN Explorer

How difficult is it for singles to get picked up by Y Combinator?

24 points by fiftyone ↗ HN
I know that you YC guys are looking for group of like 2 or 3 super cool college hackers who been chums for like years,Hackin away at the next Digg.com... but what about guys like me... married, kids, bills ... I know it is not as ideal as the super Kool college guys but I think my ideas are awesome is my being a lone ranger really going to effect my chances of getting picked up by YC?

38 comments

[ 5.7 ms ] story [ 95.9 ms ] thread
muriithi
Difficult but not impossible. This is from the YC funding application page

"The ideal company would have two or three founders. We'll consider those with four or five. We're reluctant to accept one-person companies, though we have funded a couple."

pg
Of 80 startups we've funded, about 5 had one founder at the time we funded them. Maybe a third of applications are from single founders. So from the data so far it looks like it's 5x harder to get accepted as a single founder.

That probably overestimates the difficulty, though. A significant fraction of the applications are from people with perpetual motion machines, etc. Those are invariably single founders. If you discount those, maybe it's only 2 or 3x harder as a single founder.

I would encourage you to try and find a cofounder though-- not just because it makes you more likely to be funded by YC, but because it makes your startup more likely to succeed.

cperciva
These are very interesting statistics -- is there any chance that you could provide some more? In particular, I'd be interested in knowing the age distribution of all applicants vs. successful applicants and the distribution of education (high school/some college/undergraduate degree/some graduate/graduate degree) of all applicants vs. successful applicants.

I seem to recall that you've said before that the "average" accepted YC applicant is 25 years old and has an undergraduate degree; but more information is always useful.

pmjordan
I'm not entirely sure why such stats are all that useful. Trying to be closer to the average doesn't seem very sensible to me. (neither does trying to be as far away from the average as possible as a means onto itself)
cperciva
Such statistics are useful because they give people insight as to how likely they are to be accepted, and thus whether it's worth applying. Just as the OP was wondering about his chances of being accepted as a sole founder, I can easily imagine someone thinking "gee, I'm 30 years old... there's probably no point applying... but I have a PhD and pg's statistics show that applicants with PhDs are far more likely to be accepted, so maybe I should apply after all".
dcurtis
If you have a good idea that you are committed to, why should the statistics matter? If someone says "gee, I'm 30, i shouldn't apply," that seems pretty weak of them.

Although, I think the statistics would be very interesting to read over.

cperciva
If you have a good idea that you are committed to, why should the statistics matter?

Because most good ideas which people are committed to aren't "get accepted into YC". Why shouldn't someone say "I'm not likely to get accepted into YC, so I'll spend my time working on my good idea instead of filling out the YC application form"?

kingnothing
As it is, you're not likely to get accepted, regardless of age and education statistics, due to the sheer volume of applications versus spots available.
eusman
"spots available"

they don't have a standard spots available number.

kingnothing
No, they don't, but there are orders of magnitude more applications submitted than teams accepted.
dcurtis
I seem to remember paul saying something like "we accept all the good enough ideas."
pg
We try to make the questions on the YC application form sufficiently useful that it would be worthwhile spending the time to fill it out even if you never submitted it.
anewaccountname
>Such statistics are useful because they give people insight as to how likely they are to be accepted, and thus whether it's worth applying.

Correlation does not imply causation. Repeat with me: correlation does not imply causation

cperciva
Correlation does not imply causation. Repeat with me: correlation does not imply causation

Correlation does not imply causation -- but correlation can still be useful for making predictions or decisions. The fact that the word "V!@gra" appears in an email doesn't cause the email to be spam, but it does provide a strong indication that it's probably not worth reading said email.

If (taking a wildly hypothetical example) it turned out that 50% of YC applicants were over age 30 but 0% of the accepted YC applicants were over age 30, it would a strong indication to potential applicants over age 30 that they needn't bother applying -- and this is true whether the YC management has a deliberate bias against over-30s or not.

jamiequint
From all your comments it sounds like you're trying to convince yourself not to apply!
pg
We don't have much more statistics than that. Most of the things we try to measure are not easily represented that way. What we look for is people who seem energetic, smart, and practical, regardless of things like where they went to school or how old they are.
cperciva
I realize that age and education do not cause you to select people; but there might still be interesting correlations.
treeform
i think pg said he did not want to get into statistics war with other companies and if there was a correlation i would trust pg to find it and use it because its in his interest.
DarrenStuart
Can you tell us about the perpetual motion machines type of pitches? seems like a great blog posting or something.

I bet its a bit like American Idol :p

aswanson
Oh, from reading the essays I took it as a given that there was not a snowballs chance in hell you would accept single founders. Enlightening.
ericb
From reading the application, that still looks likely. "Only founder" is in a list of apparent deal-breakers. Perhaps the 5 pg mentioned had co-founders in-waiting, some special connection, history of success, or finished app.

---------------------

Are any of the following true? (a) You are the only founder. (b) You are a student who may return to school in the fall. (c) Half or more of your group can't move to Boston for the summer. (d) One or more founders will keep their current jobs during the summer. (e) None of the founders are programmers.

bstadil
The number funded from each category has to be related to the numbers submitted from each category to make any meaningful comment on relative "hardness to get funding".
ivan
You are not alone ... and at first think if you really need to be "picked up" by VCs.
dkokelley
I think this leads into the next question, how should I go about finding a co-founder?

I'm in the same boat you are as far as co-founders go, though I'm at the younger end of the spectrum (19) and have 2 more years of college to do instead of a wife and kids to take care of.

fiftyone
well there we go! I need a co-founder you need a co-founder hehe. I'm not an old man eather im only 29. BA in Education. Married Awesome baby boy ( wife is ok too :) Born in Ohio but living in Egypt at the moment.

51ftyon3@gmail.com if there is anyone who would like to hear my ideas. Maybe we can work together?

dcurtis
I've heard some people here describe finding a cofounder as analogous to finding a wife. It's not some ho-hum thing you just do; it takes time to build a relationship that can survive a startup.
davidw
How are you going to meet people if you don't have any information about yourself in your profile.
fiftyone
That's a fantastic point! I completely forgot about that part. I put some stuff there now to fill in the white space, later on ill write something more clever :D
dcurtis
Haha. The longest bio I've ever seen on a News.YC profile, and yet no contact info!
powerflex
So we have a few entrepreneurial individuals hacking away in their spare time, but they need "co-founders" in order to increase their success odds?

Maybe an arrangement can be made. Why not form a company where each idea gets equal time and run with the one(s) that sticks. Think of a cross between an engineer board of directors and an incubator.

DarrenStuart
I have already written off YC because of pg's postings on single founders. I don't agree with it but I can see his point a load shared is a load halved.

I have taken my own route and if it works out then I will go out of my way to help single founder companies. My only constraint would be they would have to be hackers.

I am 33 and married but don't have kids yet but I am running my own business to fund my time working on my other startup work.

I'd like to know out of the single founder applications which got funding were they all hackers?

thaumaturgy
I think there's a practical consideration to the single-founder limitation.

Anecdotally, I'm running my own business now. Actually, it's running me, and that's a problem. I really wish I had a partner, not just to take some of the load off of my shoulders, but to motivate me when I get discouraged, and so that I didn't have to be the only one coming up with all the ideas.

Also, single-founderism might indicate that a person is less sociable, or difficult to deal with, or (as in my case) determined to do it alone. Those are all rather dangerous things for a startup.

DarrenStuart
or single-founderism(I like that) might indicate someone who does not have friends that are in tech or business.

I am not against starting something up with someone else and I am always open to discussions about stuff I work on I just don't have the contacts yet.

fiftyone
I don't think you should write them off completely I mean the absolute worst that can happen is you waste 20 minutes filling out the application.
DarrenStuart
good point maybe I should do the application to see if I learn something there but I just don't see the point otherwise.

I am happy to use news.YC as a resource and like to get involved in the discussions but I feel at 33 and a single founder I am not the target for YC startup.

edw519
Whether you're single or not, one of the nicest unmentioned benefits about yc is that you can "act as if" you're going to apply whether you do or not. Either way, you'll be way ahead.
fiftyone
Heres an idea for ya YC guys.

How about a sub-YC website that helps singles and other people get together. Help us, help you. I mean if we succeed you get paid and I get paid and we are all happy :)

I admit and I agree with one of the other posters, I WANT A partner It is hard as hell dealing with everything yourself.

( Since reading the replies here I am trying to recruit one of my old pals to work with me. But... )

I think it would be cool to put up a "want ad's section" something like :

MWGI seeking H for RCP ASAP. ( male with great idea seeking Hacker for Really cool Project. )

I think it's a good idea.