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Ask HN: What did you have when you applied to YCombinator?

34 points by mrchess ↗ HN
As the new ycom round approaches I was wondering what people actually apply with. That being said, I was curious if anyone would mind sharing the following:

1. What did you have when you applied in previous rounds? Sketches? Prototype? Business plan? Just an idea?

2. Did you get accepted (optional)?

8 comments

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mrchess
I'll start.

1. I applied in Winter 2010 with a published site that had been around for 6 months already, 1500 users. Solo founder with 1 remote developer.

2. No.

justin
1. A fairly shitty AJAX prototype of a calendar website. You could drag and drop appointments and add new ones, drag to resize, and turn on and off multiple calendars. (This was 2005)

2. Yes.

peregrine
This is very helpful, it can be intimidating to apply to YC seeing all the brilliant founders and applications. Seeing this kind of feedback shows what it takes, what is possible and what you've gotta do.

Thanks in advance!

mrchess
Yup. My curiosity that led to this thread was if the ante has been stepped up now with that 150k investment and the natural evolution of the ycom program. Also it would just be nice to see in general. Hopefully some people will answer :)
otwixto
if you look at the history of those accepted, I dont think there is a formula.

Groups have been accepted with a prototype for one product and turned it into another.

Groups have been accepted with just an idea and nothing more

Group have been accepted with nothing except the group

It seems like acceptance into Y-combo is a mixture of several elements. I dont think you can rely on slick mockup or prototype just as much as you cant rely on 3 Harvard grads with nothing.

peregrine
Thats a really good point. I keep hearing it from pg but its hard not to look for a pattern.
badkins
We just applied for summer 11. We have a working product which solves the problem and is stable. It just needs an extra month or 2 of work to add scalability. No users other than beta testers.

we still have our fingers crossed for #2.

sim0n
We've (BakedCode) applied for this year's YC and we've provided a working BETA for our first product that's pretty close to being ready to launch. Hopefully we'll be lucky enough to be accepted!