Guide to applying to YC – from a founder who was accepted on the third try (getfluently.notion.site)
For the last year, I checked more than 100 YC applications of other founders and many of them have the same repetitive issues.
So I prepared a simple guide with examples that will help founders build successful applications and avoid common pitfalls.
I've personally applied for YC three times, and was accepted only on the third time with Fluently.
This guide is based on my personal experience and was reviewed by other YC alumni. However, I would be glad if you could share your thoughts on that too.
63 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 112 ms ] threadSo I prepared a simple guide with examples that will help founders build successful applications and avoid common pitfalls.
I've personally applied for YC three times, and was accepted only on the third time with Fluently.
This guide is based on my personal experience and was reviewed by other YC alumni. However, I would be glad if you could share your thoughts on that too.
Without looking carefully, I can't tell which ones are generative AI / boiling the oceans to bullshit you; it's possible that some of these are legit uses of machine learning, which existed before ChatGPT and will hopefully continue to exist in the future. But I bet it's all ethically questionable bullshit.
Forerunner AI jumps out as a likely ethical black hole, based on its one line description "Copilot for aerospace engineers making rockets, munitions, satellites." On top of code theft, water use, emissions, and the many other horrors of Copilot and its ilk, we can also add war profiteering.
EDIT: Prediction: YC's next batch will include a startup trying to replicate whatever the fuck this is: https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/
YCombinator is a tech investor, of course they are investing in the future. It just so happens that in this current tech cycle AI is the future.
I think the term you're looking isn't "future," it's "hype."
I just saw a realtime generative minecraft demo, your head is in the sand if you think this is hype.
Wait, that demo wasn't a joke?
The old guard have put earplugs in and wonder why everyone's dancing, they just can't hear the music. In this context it's their refusal to try anything and attempt to downplay everything. The technology will move on, with or without them, and that's the most beautiful part.
You can hate the marketing of AI, you can hate people starting startups to take advantage of this new technology, but you can not stop this technology from moving forward. They will fall into the same category as the people who denied the impact of the Microcomputer, the Graphical User Interface, and the Smartphone.
That probably played a part I. The development of CRDTs, which are straight up magic.
So no, not a requirement. OTOH if you do come with an AI idea, they won't reject you just because they already accepted a few hundred others :)
I'm sure a lot of it is pure slop, just a bunch of prompts and a CRUD app. But I wouldn't be so quick to assume that anybody talking about "AI" is just a bunch of prompts.
raising pre-seed venture capital is more similar to getting hired at an investment bank (as an entry level/post mba banker) than it is to starting a company
I literally went to the cheapest state school in rural Pennsylvania and still was accepted into YC. My co-founder didn't even finish college, at some point I think people just want to make excuses.
Also — I don't understand your second point. It's an accelerator. Capital is part and parcel when it comes to accelerating.
If you aren’t pre-vetted, it doesn’t mean you’re worse, it just means vetting you is more work and has more risk.
For example, wealthy family safety net for extended risk-taking, connections for finding customers and partners and investors, confidence of founders in asserting will over hires, and appealing to class-based beliefs of other investors.
But since most of us aren't investors, this isn't to say that fancy schools vet for, say, hires.
While I generally like and respect the people I've known who happened to attend fancy schools, I've learned not to pay much attention to what schools someone attended.
Just because it’s tiresome doesn’t make it untrue in this “era”.
This is not a bag on YC, but yesteryear’s “web store”, begot “social”, begot “blockchain”, begot “ai” and today’s private markets are more conservative for Seed and A rounds.
So the risk is $dayjob unless you’re a serial founder, the reward is the connections and money to float for a few months, while selling I think 10% of your company? The odds of your idea working out, even under the umbrella, aren’t great. Is that accurate?
YC is an enormous brand in the VC and startup industry, and as a YC startup doors open to you that would be harder to pry open otherwise. The connections, and willingness of people to "pay it forward" are a huge (probably biggest) asset.
The odds of your idea working are not great, that's correct. YC does encourage you to experiment and fail fast so you have time to adapt the idea or try another one. If all fails, having had a YC startup means it'll be easy to get into other startups (if you like the lifestyle - and you really have to like it!).
That sad, YC is what you make of it. You get encouragement and support but nobody's going to force you to take advantage of all the things they have to offer.
Watch a few episodes of https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQ-uHSnFig5Nd98Sc9I-k... If you get a feeling "omg I want to work with those guys", then you might be a fit. If you get a feeling of "dude, no", then you're probably not a fit.
You said “ My feeling is that if you think quitting the day job is risky, you probably won't fit the profile YC and VCs look for.”
And
“ The odds of your idea working are not great, that's correct.”
So it is kind of geared towards wealthy people?
Or young enough that there’s not much more to lose than a few years.
If you’re choosing between going to a masters/phd or YC, then you’re in the right place. Or if you got laid off from a FAANG and looking for something fun to do while your severance lasts, doing a YC startup will beat other things you could add to your resume during this time.
And if it works, great you’re on your way to something cool. If it doesn’t, then at least you had a fun gap quarter.
But the people who really build successful companies don’t need any of this stuff. If you’ve got traction, VCs will find you.
~15 years ago I really wanted to get into YC. Now I realize that was because I wanted to be a founder more than I wanted to build a successful business. These days I focus on making the money machine go brrr and that's been working much better for me.
500k is enough to get you by for a few years at least, even in the bay area. You might not be able to afford champagne at the club every weekend, though.
In the sense that everybody with an established career in this field is "wealthy" relative to most other working people in the economy, yes.
The partners have said on many occasions it's a major red flag for them.
Not to bag on anyone who’s in YC right now, but it seems to be going the way of many ivy leagues - still meaningful, but very much not the same proxy for extraordinary it once was.
250ish per cohort meant the partners were spread very thin, and founders could realistically connect with just a subset of batchmates.
I'm glad they're scaling back the batch size.
There is so much market up for grabs. Most companies will fail, but the ones that succeed can win really big. And the surface area is so much larger than attempting a non-AI company since the advantages are potentially huge.
> ChatGPT wrappers.
Create value. Doesn't matter how you do. Just create value.
May. Not can.
There is no evidence yet that AI is anything other than a feature.
ChatGPT isn't particularly useful.
A wrapper around ChatGPT which extracts specific entries from a PDF bill? That's incredibly useful.
The only niche so far that seems to have caught on for LLMs is code autocomplete, but that's already recording real revenues.
I do like your comment as the critique of contemporary tech entrepreneurship culture that is very hype oriented, likely at the expense of comparatively few blue ocean ideas that get crowded out.
However I do fear that's global and not something specific to YC or the valley. Here across the pond we have the same gold rush, except at minor league level.
[0] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/10/10/getting-in-ivy...
YC has lost all of the people who were there at the start. Saying something like “what ever was the ‘luster’” is akin to saying “who the heck was Steve Jobs, who cares, Apple is still the same business.”
Sheesh.
Apple does still make hugely popular products and still makes a huge amount of profit.
Plenty of institutions, from universities to businesses, have managed to continue succeeding across multiple generations, just as many have failed after losing a generation.
I've no idea how YC helps now vs. the beginning, but different people isn't proof of it being worse.
I believe the same is true for YC. The primary value is being able to claim that you’re funded by YC and you were part of a cohort. That opens doors, to both investors as well as potential partners. The education/advice is standard and freely available everywhere.
YC's huge advantage is that they have an internal network of startups who support each other with YC money as customers, which then get pushed to VCs as revenue growth numbers. VCs have learnt to get in on the gravy train early, because the brand-name still carries value downstream. For no-name startups and no-name founders with no fancy universities (who are increasingly being ignored), this is a huge disadvantage.
If you want to look at YC's actual success rate, take a look at any of their public market companies' performance. Hint, none of them have outperformed their IPO price. In fact, many of them only found their ways into exits through the SPAC frenzy of 2021.
He said that 95% of the batch are between 20 and 30, mostly AI and mostly US.
There are exceptions to the rule but let's not pretend there isn't a YC thesis.