For context, 2% is also the acceptance rate of all YC applications.
I'm guessing that people who apply to Startup School tend to be very early in the founding process, which gives them an a priori lower chance of getting accepted (even though YC is open to super early stage), and then SS raises it.
Also, the kind of people applying to Startup School are probably not the kind of experienced founders whose application looks more promising at the very early stage.
I took the course last year but did not apply to YC. I'm assuming there are others in this situation as well, so I'd conclude the acceptance rate for SS graduates is higher than the acceptance rate for the general candidate population.
Thanks Adora. Just a suggestion: I took the 2017 course and it was great, now I think an aditional growing startup course will be complementary for companies that need to solve growing challenges.
Depending on what stage of growth you’re at, your Startup School mentor should still be able to be helpful.
Most companies in the program are in the 0-1 phase, but there were a few in my group that were 1-N. The program format is flexible, so it’s fairly easy to tailor content to your audience.
YC core has a similar dynamic, and individual companies in a batch fall along a fairly wide range in terms of stage / progress. They only break out a formal growth track once companies have >50 employees.
Hi Adora. I signed up and got a 500 Internal Server Error after registering. I didn't get a confirmation email, and when I requested a resend, I receive the same error.
We're really eager to apply, but we're just curious what it means to "complete" the course - would we need to be in Mountain View during those 10 weeks to attend the lectures in-person?
Nope, you can do it all on-line. Completing = watching all the lectures, participating in group office hours and submitting minimal updates on your company.
All the course material is relevant to any founder thinking about or currently working on any early-stage startup, including biotech. We'll also group similar startups together so that you can help each other out with industry-specifics as well.
I’m extremely interested in founding and launching a startup, but don’t necessarily have one established yet. Is there any way to audit the online course’s content?
Hi Adora, I am quitting my fulltime job to found my own startup in the fall, and I am working almost a fulltime per week on my own time to prepare the product for the future startup.
1. Can I still apply if I have a fulltime job in addition to working on my startup?
2. Must the company be established before the program starts, or can it be established a few weeks later?
3. Do you expect the product to be launched during the program, or can it be launched later this year?
2. No, it doesn't have to be established yet. In fact, we're working with Stripe Atlas, who will help you incorporate and set up your company bank account.
3. Depending on your idea, we'd likely encourage you to launch _something_ during the program. But if you're auditing, you're on your own timeline.
If I can give you one hot tip it is not to quit your fulltime job until you have something in terms of traction to ensure you're not killing your runway waiting through the 'valley of despair'.
Some employment contracts have IP clauses that make the claim that anything you create before, during or after hours while employed is theirs, so maybe it makes sense in that regards.
The content will revolve around similar topics, but we'll do deep-dives into content that we did not get a chance to last year (sales for B2C and B2B, building and managing technical teams, and design principles for example). We're looking to build upon all of the past pieces as you can see with the new Startup Library.
A question — how does setting up the group office hours timeslot work? Is there a selection or a way to mark preferred times? If it's standardized, roughly what time ranges are the hours held? (My cofounder and I will be in Asia during the program.)
Your advisor will set the times. We'll try to match you with someone who can work with your timezone. (We had people from over 140 countries last time participate.)
Sorry to ask a rather trivial question but I can't seem to reset my password from last year's account; when I type a new password (on the form one gets to, from the reset email), the system says "Please review the problems below:" but the problems aren't shown...
Is it important to keep the same account as last year or should I create a new account?
Hi Adora, I have applied for my team. I noticed that there was a field for timezone. We are a highly distributed team (SE Asia & North Africa). I will also be changing timezones significantly during the course (SE Asia & Europe). What impact will this have on how we engage with the course, mentors and our peers?
You should choose the timezone you'll be in the majority of the time. If traveling way outside it, you may have group office hours sessions at a wacky time. It won't impact the lectures since you can just watch on your own schedule, or most engagement with peers since it'll be a forum-like experience.
Can you explain if every startup is accepted or not? In the link it states "Last year, over 13,000 companies applied to participate in Startup School, and 95 YC alumni volunteered their time to advise over 2,800 of those companies participating across 141 countries." How many companies will be accepted this year? Or do all applications get accepted?
I am developing a finance tech, full stack app, solo. This would probably be fantastic, but the time/money commitment is
>Not working my 9-5 job that pays 2k/week
>Not obsessively working on my app after work 4hr/night 5 + 12hr2= 44 hours/week of not programming
Im sure its a great opportunity, but I am unsure if its the better decision. I already have a community that visits Efficiency Is Everything, I already can program, and I have a significant savings.
Business skills may be a real thing to learn, but its a risky 10 week proposal.
Anyone care to share thoughts on this decision? I would rather find out I'm wrong, than be wrong and make a bad decision.
We totally understand that founders may have other commitments that are more important than their nascent company. That's one of the main reasons we started Startup School, and kept it completely remote.
The program itself only has two requirements: that you are working on a startup (PT or FT) and that you're able to commit ~3 hours a week of to watch the lectures and attend office hours.
2) Accountability - office hours will hold you to your goals and keep you making progress
3) Mentorship - Experienced founders and office hours mates will help you make sure that you are working on the right problems in the most efficient way.
4) Community - it's inspiring and energizing to be around founders in a similar position as you. Plus, it can give you early users and customers. (Our first customers were through Startup School).
> what have you achieved after taking this course?
My co-founder and I make enough profit to live on our business while traveling full-time.
> did it help you build/finish your startup?
Yes. And, I want to participate again this year. Our 2017 problems were building the right product. Our 2018 problems are navigating product/market fit and growth.
* The content is just really good. Beyond that, I think the interactions with the other startups in our group were really valuable and some of them I still talk to today. The office hours were good, and hopefully some of the practical challenges around scheduling last year will be solved.
* We got accepted into YC after being in Startup School.
* Yes, I believe that the lessons in the course have been important for us.
I took this course last year. The lectures/coursework were very helpful (albeit freely available on youtube as well). But it was the mentorship that really makes it valuable.
You get placed in a cohort representing a wide range of business plans and industries. Some were moonshots requiring a lot of capital-raising and dealmaking, and others (including ours) were smaller SaaS products targeting particular business niches. There were participants at each stage of the startup pipeline, some without a product (or even a concrete idea), some just starting to sell to customers, and some mature companies with employees and interns and such.
We were making a lot of mistakes common to first-time founders, building things without first asking our customers about them, not experimenting with our message, etc. Meeting with our mentor helped us combat those issues and probably was the difference between having a functional company and not.
We'll probably try to do it again this year. Our challenges are different; last year we were trying to get our product built and get acceptance for our first few customers, whereas now we're trying to figure out how to scale our sales pipeline. I'd recommend it to anyone working on a startup, regardless of where they are in the process.
I took the first iteration of Startup School, and while the lectures were outstanding, the weekly calls with the mentor and classmates didn't really help.
I guess it depends on what mentor you get. I've heard of people having excellent mentors, and others that didn't even show up half the time.
But it probably also depends on your experience level as an entrepreneur. If you are just starting out with your first venture, then it can definitely be helpful if your mentor doesn't suck. If you are experienced or your mentor sucks, it's a waste of time.
If you're starting there is a huge advantage to holding yourself and others accountable. It helped push me to launch my startup and provided insights.
Perhaps more importantly you make connections. Just yesterday I was speaking to someone from my startup school group, and I did startup school over a year ago. They provided feedback and I provide them feedback, we also found synergies and can introduce one another to other teams, sales, etc.
I'd argue startup school isn't going to help you "finish" your startup. Only you can do that... You're motivation is the real premise behind the whole thing. However, they can give you the tools and connections to make it easier. It's always a cost benefit analysis - "is this worth doing?" Is something startup school helps answer, and also tips the balance (slightly) towards being a bit easier.
For reference, I'm still working on my project a year out (with some revenue):
Startup school helped me get free AWS credits (which helped significantly), helped make connections, and perhaps more importantly - helped with introspection. I should note, I didn't even launch a prototype until the last few days of startup school... It would have been more helpful had I had something at least half way through.
Thanks for the heads up, haven't really completed this website (you may see broken links too). Our prior site was https://projectpiglet.com - which was our POC. Related to introspection, we realized we had a better target market and are shifting.
Take the course because the investment is minimal and it might work for you.
I ended up wrapping up the idea I was working on. I've gone back to consultancy, still toying with other ideas looking for something else to try.
Did it help? Not really. My sticking point seemed to be that I was selling (or not as was more the issue) b2b software mostly geared to massive companies. As my mentor succinctly pointed out it's a hard game to get into because other businesses start by looking for the cloud of logos of other companies who use your software. That was the start, middle and end of his advice for me - and a fair summary of the impass I'd reached.
I've been left thinking b2b procurement is probably an area that could do with shaking up but I don't have any answers there - not surprising given I couldn't crack it at all.
Much of the course advice felt irrelevant to the actual problem I had with getting things going. But if you're targeting consumers or smaller companies, have some traction, are generally spinning a lot more plates with your business, want to move to the US and get into YC proper, it's probably far more relevant.
Hi Adora, This is awesome. I just applied for it. How many hours of lectures will we have in a week? As it’s an online course - do you recommend being in one physical location/geography?
You should expect a minimum 3-hour commitment a week: roughly 2 hours of lectures and 1 hour of group office hours. Lectures you can watch at your own leisure.
As for location/geography, as long as you have a device with internet access you can be wherever works best for you. We'll do our best to align timezones so scheduling is easier for you and your group during the course.
What does the information in the course have to offer that is different from all the other books, courses and content out there on building a startup? Seems like everything out there basically presents the same concepts just in different words.
The reason to do the course is that it's actually a program.
You'll work directly with a mentor who is a current YC founder and get to know other companies in your group.
The course seems rather no-strings-attached. For example, it mentions that the most promising companies will get $10K of "equity-free funding" as well as other goodies.
Appeals to altruism aside, what's Y Combinator's incentive here? Is the hope that companies will feel loyalty to YC, and join the core program?
Google has also a startup launchpad with provides equity free funding. I am not sure why though, but its great for founders like me who are interested.
I think that going through this program and receiving $10K of equity free funding would substantially increase the chances of a company sticking with YC.
YC already invests $1M worth of human capital to put on Startup School. Whatever their original motivation is to do it, it's worth another $1M to do it better.
I didn't take it as a true 'course' last year but incidentally watched a lot of the lectures -- heard some really genuinely novel perspectives that aren't as self-evident as a lot of startup education ~seems~ nowadays, so i'm excited to see how the course has evolved!
We wanted to create a program with content that would be helpful for any new founder/startup, regardless of where they are. It's not meant to replace the in-person YC program (that's still our core offering).
Think of it as a crash course in starting a company. Just because you can't make it to the Bay Area doesn't mean you shouldn't have access to advice and community! We just want to help startups be better startups.
It looks like the "What is your most impressive accomplishment?" question on the application has a max length of 60 characters. I can understand it needing to be short, but that seems really short. I'm having a tough time trying to slice and dice a sentence to fit.
I applied with the low character requirements; I assumed you were encouraging brevity for the sake of the reviewers. Should I reapply or will it not have a large impact on admission decisions?
Why do you care? ideas are worth little. Implementation matters most!
Last week I talked with a competitor. I detailed my plans for the next 6 months. It commits me to follow them, and may incite discussion.
There is almost 0 risk they can match the features or my timeline. I am quite productive, and there is no secret sauce. Just complexity, and interdependance. Can't have a baby in 1 month with 9 mothers. And should they do, I will be happy to copy the unique features they add.
The disclosure opened some talks however. I am ready to sell consulting or some specific parts they need to do their product, and that have not much of an impact in mine.
lol, you are being way too friendly. Business is a game of war and you must play the game to win. If you give any details of your future plans then only do it as a means of deception ;)
I submitted this anyhow I do not think business skills is something I really need, mentorship is nice but I have great mentors locally, but the issue I face right now is mostly lack of technical knowledge, so this startup school might be irrelevant to me in all honesty
I have an idea I wish to persue because it solves an actual problem I face everyday and by building it it would make a lot of other goals I have much easier to obtain.
I am mostly just interested in the case studies of how other startups do things. Mostly curiosity about how YC
My cofounder and I took this course last year. About the format of the course and efficacy:
- assigned mentor: we were assigned a former yc startup founder as mentor. the mentor had 30 minute 1-1s with us once a month and gave us useful advice on a wide range of matters.
- weekly homework: choose a single metric you'll measure through the duration of the course and report the metric and growth weekly. The metric could be DAUs, number of customers you've talked to, whatever. It's for you to figure the most important thing to focus on. We were running the startup in a bit of an ad hoc manner until startup school; weekly metric reporting helped focus our efforts in service of a single meaningful metric.
- group calls: we were lucky to be in a good peer group comprising about 30 startups of all kinds -- medical device to SaaS to consumer apps. There were weekly 1-2 hr calls chaired by the mentor. Before the meeting, the mentor sent out a questionnaire to fill out -- what's your product's value prop, what setbacks have you faced, etc. -- and startups would be randomly chosen to talk about their response to the questionnaire. Lot of time for Q&A. Our peer group is still in touch through a facebook group, where we occasionally share progress.
- Demo day: record a 2 minute video talking about our startup. This forced us come up with a concise statement to describe our startup and gave us a platform to showcase it.
If I had to summarize the benefit of startup school, it would be three things:
- quality mentorship
- diverse peer group
- forcing function for startup to hit goals
I'll venture to say it's probably one of the most valuable things an early stage startup could invest time on.
We had mandatory N to 1 meetings. Those weren't that useful for us (it felt like we were a bit further ahead than other companies) but a few companies got a lot of value out of it.
Our optional 1-1 were insanely useful. Our mentor was a yc alum saas cofounder. He was took notes and saw our homework every week. His perspective was priceless and there weren't many problems we were facing that he hadn't already seen. Like other people mentioned, you come with a problem and they help you understand how to tackle it.
Create systems by which people come to know about your site and want to visit it to solve a problem they have.
For example, SEO content marketing targets problems people search Google for and create content that helps solve that problem while advertising the product/service in some way. A good example of this is Digital Ocean's "how to set up software X on operating system Y" articles - good SEO, solves people's problems, and advertises directly to their customers/users.
There are other implementations, like more traditional display advertising and product reviews, but they all follow the same formula: create awareness and gives people solid reasons to come to your product/site/app.
It was useful for us. What we got out of the 1-1s depended on our effort preparing for it -- how we communicated our value prop, how succinctly we described the problems we're having, etc.
This sounds like an asshole question, but it's one I have always had. If someone has a truly great idea, how do they know it won't be stolen by mentors with more resources and lawyers?
While it's certainly possible, most people have their own ideas and problems they are already working on. Relationships and execution end up counting way more than ideas.
On balance, if you have a great idea, you'll be better off growing it with good mentorship compared to the small risk that it gets stolen by a mentor.
Your mentors (broadly defined) will happily tell you that your idea rounds to valueless and that all of the value created happens over years of patient execution, much like the years of execution that they spent working on their most recent adventure, and that entrepreneurs who are likely to be successful don’t sit around idle in a room lounging on stacks of money, chit chatting with lawyers, and waiting to stab a passing startup in the back.
189 comments
[ 6.8 ms ] story [ 348 ms ] threadIn other words, your chance of getting into YC by these means, is about 2%. Still might be worth, just for the information alone though.
I'm guessing that people who apply to Startup School tend to be very early in the founding process, which gives them an a priori lower chance of getting accepted (even though YC is open to super early stage), and then SS raises it.
Also, the kind of people applying to Startup School are probably not the kind of experienced founders whose application looks more promising at the very early stage.
Most companies in the program are in the 0-1 phase, but there were a few in my group that were 1-N. The program format is flexible, so it’s fairly easy to tailor content to your audience.
YC core has a similar dynamic, and individual companies in a batch fall along a fairly wide range in terms of stage / progress. They only break out a formal growth track once companies have >50 employees.
YMMV depending on your mentor of course.
We're really eager to apply, but we're just curious what it means to "complete" the course - would we need to be in Mountain View during those 10 weeks to attend the lectures in-person?
I’m extremely interested in founding and launching a startup, but don’t necessarily have one established yet. Is there any way to audit the online course’s content?
1. Can I still apply if I have a fulltime job in addition to working on my startup?
2. Must the company be established before the program starts, or can it be established a few weeks later?
3. Do you expect the product to be launched during the program, or can it be launched later this year?
Thanks
1. Yes, definitely.
2. No, it doesn't have to be established yet. In fact, we're working with Stripe Atlas, who will help you incorporate and set up your company bank account.
3. Depending on your idea, we'd likely encourage you to launch _something_ during the program. But if you're auditing, you're on your own timeline.
I have a doubt about the target audience for this initiative.
Is it the same target of YC, i.e., companies/teams with the potential to become a company worth hundreds of millions of dollars or more?
Or there is a chance for companies of more humble ambitions, a "indiehackers/bootstrapping/microconf style" company to be accepted?
Thanks!
The content will revolve around similar topics, but we'll do deep-dives into content that we did not get a chance to last year (sales for B2C and B2B, building and managing technical teams, and design principles for example). We're looking to build upon all of the past pieces as you can see with the new Startup Library.
We'll announce the final curriculum soon!
A question — how does setting up the group office hours timeslot work? Is there a selection or a way to mark preferred times? If it's standardized, roughly what time ranges are the hours held? (My cofounder and I will be in Asia during the program.)
Thank you!
Sorry to ask a rather trivial question but I can't seem to reset my password from last year's account; when I type a new password (on the form one gets to, from the reset email), the system says "Please review the problems below:" but the problems aren't shown...
Is it important to keep the same account as last year or should I create a new account?
Do you need to already have a cofounder to be accepted into the online startup school?
Thanks
Can you explain if every startup is accepted or not? In the link it states "Last year, over 13,000 companies applied to participate in Startup School, and 95 YC alumni volunteered their time to advise over 2,800 of those companies participating across 141 countries." How many companies will be accepted this year? Or do all applications get accepted?
Thank you!
>Not working my 9-5 job that pays 2k/week
>Not obsessively working on my app after work 4hr/night 5 + 12hr2= 44 hours/week of not programming
Im sure its a great opportunity, but I am unsure if its the better decision. I already have a community that visits Efficiency Is Everything, I already can program, and I have a significant savings.
Business skills may be a real thing to learn, but its a risky 10 week proposal.
Anyone care to share thoughts on this decision? I would rather find out I'm wrong, than be wrong and make a bad decision.
The program itself only has two requirements: that you are working on a startup (PT or FT) and that you're able to commit ~3 hours a week of to watch the lectures and attend office hours.
* why should we take this course?
* what have you achieved after taking this course?
* did it help you build/finish your startup?
1) Content - learn a lot from lectures
2) Accountability - office hours will hold you to your goals and keep you making progress
3) Mentorship - Experienced founders and office hours mates will help you make sure that you are working on the right problems in the most efficient way.
4) Community - it's inspiring and energizing to be around founders in a similar position as you. Plus, it can give you early users and customers. (Our first customers were through Startup School).
> what have you achieved after taking this course?
My co-founder and I make enough profit to live on our business while traveling full-time.
> did it help you build/finish your startup?
Yes. And, I want to participate again this year. Our 2017 problems were building the right product. Our 2018 problems are navigating product/market fit and growth.
* We got accepted into YC after being in Startup School.
* Yes, I believe that the lessons in the course have been important for us.
You get placed in a cohort representing a wide range of business plans and industries. Some were moonshots requiring a lot of capital-raising and dealmaking, and others (including ours) were smaller SaaS products targeting particular business niches. There were participants at each stage of the startup pipeline, some without a product (or even a concrete idea), some just starting to sell to customers, and some mature companies with employees and interns and such.
We were making a lot of mistakes common to first-time founders, building things without first asking our customers about them, not experimenting with our message, etc. Meeting with our mentor helped us combat those issues and probably was the difference between having a functional company and not.
We'll probably try to do it again this year. Our challenges are different; last year we were trying to get our product built and get acceptance for our first few customers, whereas now we're trying to figure out how to scale our sales pipeline. I'd recommend it to anyone working on a startup, regardless of where they are in the process.
I guess it depends on what mentor you get. I've heard of people having excellent mentors, and others that didn't even show up half the time.
But it probably also depends on your experience level as an entrepreneur. If you are just starting out with your first venture, then it can definitely be helpful if your mentor doesn't suck. If you are experienced or your mentor sucks, it's a waste of time.
Perhaps more importantly you make connections. Just yesterday I was speaking to someone from my startup school group, and I did startup school over a year ago. They provided feedback and I provide them feedback, we also found synergies and can introduce one another to other teams, sales, etc.
I'd argue startup school isn't going to help you "finish" your startup. Only you can do that... You're motivation is the real premise behind the whole thing. However, they can give you the tools and connections to make it easier. It's always a cost benefit analysis - "is this worth doing?" Is something startup school helps answer, and also tips the balance (slightly) towards being a bit easier.
For reference, I'm still working on my project a year out (with some revenue):
https://metacortex.me
Startup school helped me get free AWS credits (which helped significantly), helped make connections, and perhaps more importantly - helped with introspection. I should note, I didn't even launch a prototype until the last few days of startup school... It would have been more helpful had I had something at least half way through.
>Organize Your Companies Knowledge
Company's
Can I be your grammar Czar?
Thanks for the input.
I wasn't ready for releasing it, and was breaking some stuff last night. Thanks for pointing it out :)
I ended up wrapping up the idea I was working on. I've gone back to consultancy, still toying with other ideas looking for something else to try.
Did it help? Not really. My sticking point seemed to be that I was selling (or not as was more the issue) b2b software mostly geared to massive companies. As my mentor succinctly pointed out it's a hard game to get into because other businesses start by looking for the cloud of logos of other companies who use your software. That was the start, middle and end of his advice for me - and a fair summary of the impass I'd reached.
I've been left thinking b2b procurement is probably an area that could do with shaking up but I don't have any answers there - not surprising given I couldn't crack it at all.
Much of the course advice felt irrelevant to the actual problem I had with getting things going. But if you're targeting consumers or smaller companies, have some traction, are generally spinning a lot more plates with your business, want to move to the US and get into YC proper, it's probably far more relevant.
As for location/geography, as long as you have a device with internet access you can be wherever works best for you. We'll do our best to align timezones so scheduling is easier for you and your group during the course.
The reason to do the course is that it's actually a program. You'll work directly with a mentor who is a current YC founder and get to know other companies in your group.
Appeals to altruism aside, what's Y Combinator's incentive here? Is the hope that companies will feel loyalty to YC, and join the core program?
>Those companies will also receive a video interview with a YC partner later in the year for advice or aid in applying to a future YC batch.
I laughed at that comment due to how it shows how competitive it is to get into YC.
Think of it as a crash course in starting a company. Just because you can't make it to the Bay Area doesn't mean you shouldn't have access to advice and community! We just want to help startups be better startups.
Last week I talked with a competitor. I detailed my plans for the next 6 months. It commits me to follow them, and may incite discussion.
There is almost 0 risk they can match the features or my timeline. I am quite productive, and there is no secret sauce. Just complexity, and interdependance. Can't have a baby in 1 month with 9 mothers. And should they do, I will be happy to copy the unique features they add.
The disclosure opened some talks however. I am ready to sell consulting or some specific parts they need to do their product, and that have not much of an impact in mine.
I have an idea I wish to persue because it solves an actual problem I face everyday and by building it it would make a lot of other goals I have much easier to obtain.
I am mostly just interested in the case studies of how other startups do things. Mostly curiosity about how YC
- assigned mentor: we were assigned a former yc startup founder as mentor. the mentor had 30 minute 1-1s with us once a month and gave us useful advice on a wide range of matters.
- weekly homework: choose a single metric you'll measure through the duration of the course and report the metric and growth weekly. The metric could be DAUs, number of customers you've talked to, whatever. It's for you to figure the most important thing to focus on. We were running the startup in a bit of an ad hoc manner until startup school; weekly metric reporting helped focus our efforts in service of a single meaningful metric.
- group calls: we were lucky to be in a good peer group comprising about 30 startups of all kinds -- medical device to SaaS to consumer apps. There were weekly 1-2 hr calls chaired by the mentor. Before the meeting, the mentor sent out a questionnaire to fill out -- what's your product's value prop, what setbacks have you faced, etc. -- and startups would be randomly chosen to talk about their response to the questionnaire. Lot of time for Q&A. Our peer group is still in touch through a facebook group, where we occasionally share progress.
- Demo day: record a 2 minute video talking about our startup. This forced us come up with a concise statement to describe our startup and gave us a platform to showcase it.
If I had to summarize the benefit of startup school, it would be three things:
- quality mentorship
- diverse peer group
- forcing function for startup to hit goals
I'll venture to say it's probably one of the most valuable things an early stage startup could invest time on.
Was that actually useful? I can't imagine them understanding (or remembering) anything about your company in that little time.
We had mandatory N to 1 meetings. Those weren't that useful for us (it felt like we were a bit further ahead than other companies) but a few companies got a lot of value out of it.
Our optional 1-1 were insanely useful. Our mentor was a yc alum saas cofounder. He was took notes and saw our homework every week. His perspective was priceless and there weren't many problems we were facing that he hadn't already seen. Like other people mentioned, you come with a problem and they help you understand how to tackle it.
For us it went like:
* A quick status update on what we've accomplished since the last meeting, some back and forth.
* Discuss the main problem we're working on. (For example: "We're stuck on how to improve our inbound traffic")
* Talk about next steps or deliverables for the next meeting. (For example: Try to acquire 10% more users)
It was a great program and I'm excited to try again with my new project.
For example, SEO content marketing targets problems people search Google for and create content that helps solve that problem while advertising the product/service in some way. A good example of this is Digital Ocean's "how to set up software X on operating system Y" articles - good SEO, solves people's problems, and advertises directly to their customers/users.
There are other implementations, like more traditional display advertising and product reviews, but they all follow the same formula: create awareness and gives people solid reasons to come to your product/site/app.
That's unfortunate... I think that most often picking the right problem is the most important problem itself, but that requires a lot of context.
I'm glad you enjoyed it though!
On balance, if you have a great idea, you'll be better off growing it with good mentorship compared to the small risk that it gets stolen by a mentor.