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Tell HN: You can get into YC without a product

43 points by AnhTho_FR ↗ HN
Hi HN,

It's still possible to apply to W23 batch and we got loads of Qs about 'which stage is the best'.

'The best for your company', it always depends, but 'The best to get in': we know for sure you don't need a product.

All we had when we got accepted was a Figma prototype, showing what we would build, and a waiting list.

Waiting lists don't mean anything, but it showed we had hustled to get the first 1000+ signups.

Here is what our application looked like https://www.getlago.com/blog/how-we-got-into-yc

If you have any question or think we could help you decide to apply or prep for interviews, feel free to ping me on Twitter @ByAnhTho.

28 comments

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user_named
OP is a "growth hacker"
AnhTho_FR
Actually I think this term isn't doing justice to Growth teams in general, hacks are sometimes necessary but the key is more towards systems, frameworks, data, more long term than short term.
jasfi
How did you market your waiting list? 1000+ signups is a good number.

From the YC FAQ: https://www.ycombinator.com/faq#shouldI-1

"On average, 40% of the companies we fund in each batch are just an idea. Most don’t have any revenue."

AnhTho_FR
We created content (online courses - my co-founder created a course on Udemy -, blog posts with frameworks, anything that could be 'educational' and that would make people check what we were up to), and were present in the communities where the audience was (Slack channels, facebook groups, linkedin etc).
jasfi
How did you find your co-founder? It sounds like he's a good growth hacker.
AnhTho_FR
He is amazing, we worked together in our previous company. He was outstanding from day 1.
bluelightning2k
Congratulations!

Unfortunately I do not think this is typical. I've bootstrapped to a team of 6, built an incredibly sophisticated product with tonnes of customer interest including some of the best known startups in the world, and not even got an interview. Updated them with traction and didn't get a response.

Team includes a PhD in machine learning, and someone who was CMO of a 180m company by age of 23.

Product is not something you would expect to possibly build without millions in investment.

Pretty sure they didn't look at us.

NOT complaining. Simply providing some balance to help temper people's expectations to avoid a reporting bias.

bluelightning2k
I want to emphasize - OP has done brilliantly and is likely being modest about how well they did.

Indeed 1000 waitlist signups is already very impressive.

It's just good to maintain a sense of perspective. (Seeing posts like this can feel crushing to those of us who have put more work in and don't hear back. Remember you never hear about the rejections.)

AnhTho_FR
I totally agree with you. I think it's also a matter of 'stars align', maybe our application at the time (around the data engineering space) resonated with the specific partners who looked at the application, and it could have been different with other partners.

I also want to emphasize that there are: - Incredible companies that got rejected from YC (and even if it must have felt crushing at the time, in hindsight, they saved the 7% of equity that YC would have taken) - Incredible founders who had to apply several times: the founders of Algolia did - Incredible founders who got in but then shut down

So it's not an end in itself. When we got in, we thought we 'had made it', in reality, we pivoted after the batch, and this step definitely failed like a failure at the time.

bluelightning2k
I noticed the pivot! Wasn't going to bring it up (sometimes it's a sore subject or noone else's business) but it did indeed raise an eyebrow. Glad you mentioned it.
leobg
Nice. Thought it might have also helped that you, if I saw correctly, had a previous startup that was backed by Peter Thiel.
AnhTho_FR
It probably helped indeed as we were early employees there, but to be honest, we've seen early employees from unicorns being rejected and conversely!

I think any entrepreneurial experience or general proof of grit resonates.

anxiously
Likewise, you can fail to get into YC with a product. I applied with a product that has made over 2 million and has zero employees or funding and was not accepted.
patatino
Why on earth would you want to get into YC with a product like that?
xwowsersx
Many reasons. Perhaps they need guidance on how to develop the product or how to scale. Perhaps they need funding. If you're asking something like "why give up equity when you're already making money?", I get the sentiment of the question but a) you don't know if they're profitable and b) if YC can help increase the value of the company significantly, well then 100-x% equity might be worth a whole lot more than 100% if the YC investment and involvement ends up being accretive.

My point is that those basic stats don't really tell you anything about whether joining YC makes sense.

muzani
Not OP, but from experience, entrepreneurship can get lonely and it's nice to be in a cohort.

I've been in several with different startups and the low quality cohorts can be quite demotivating. There are several groups by self-made entrepreneurs and a good bunch of them are sociopaths.

I'd say YC is nice because they genuinely care about making a positive impact on the world.

joshxyz
some yc applicants already got seed funding, reasons could vary from exposure to connections etc
anxiously
I wanted the network-- not the money.
redelvis
Congrats on your approval. You application example is missing Founders part, and there's a saying that early stages is not about a product idea, but about investing in the right people.

Do you think you got in because of some pre-product traction or because you convinced YC that your team is great (which we can't see from here)?

AnhTho_FR
Thanks! I can't know for sure but I think you need to 'score' on: - the team - proof of hustle - a space that is VC fundable
serjester
"Still, we re-validated the need by formally interviewing another 100+ Growth leaders in Q4 2020, before finally deciding to build Lago full-time."

Love the hustle, how did you go about finding these 100 people?

midspectrum
Well, we got selected on our 3rd attempt. The first time we had our MVP and followed the approach of not needing the product. The second time we had a full-fledged product but not a proven PMF. The third time is where we had a decent product, 50K+ app installs without any performance marketing, 45% MoM user retention.

Our success was purely based when we ticked all three boxes: 1. Product 2. Team 3. Growth