(This is posted from a throw-away account)

For a long time, I've considered running a business (of ones own creation) to be the best possible occupation. Over the last few years, I have become very interested in the idea of starting a startup. If I had the choice of any path for the next years of my life, I would choose starting a startup with no question.

But, what if I'm not good enough? I would like to apply to YC S2012, but I don't think I have any chance at all of getting in. Firstly, I have the problem of having no idea and no co-founder. But also, personally, I'm just not good enough.

Let me go question-by-question on the YC application form to show what I mean (I'll skip background information questions).

    > Please tell us in one or two sentences about the most impressive 
    > thing that each founder has built or achieved.

I haven't achieved or build anything that impressive yet. Sure, I have played with algorithms and build cool little projects with them. I have even presented at an undergraduate research conference (NCUR - a joke, btw), but I don't have any real, useful accomplishments. None worthy of YC at any rate.

    > Please tell us about the time you, <<real HN account>>, most
    > successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage.

I really haven't done this either. I have been a play-by-the-rules type my whole life, and I haven't really interfaced with many systems (at least not to the extent to have any reason to "hack" them).

    > Please tell us about an interesting project, preferably outside 
    > of class or work, that two or more of you created together. 
    > Include urls if possible

Well, without a co-founder, the "two or more of you" part clearly is not going to work. I have a few interesting (for some value of interesting) projects up on github, but they are the sort of things that I imagine that the kind of people who are accepted into YC build in high school (I had no one to teach me how to program in high school).

    > Where do you live now, and where would the company be 
    > based after YC?

Now: A small college town in a less 'forward-thinking' part of the country. Company: Anywhere YC likes.

    > Please tell us something surprising or amusing that one of you 
    > has discovered. (The answer need not be related to your project.)

Anything that I can think to put here ("some professors are much better to learn from than others" or "no programming language has everything you want") were surprising to me when I learned it, but would not be surprising in general. I really haven't been in a position to discover surprising things.

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The university from which I am about to graduate is better known for football than for academics. The CS department is tucked in the free space between the chemistry, astronomy, and physics departments in a single building on campus. It is small enough that most all the professors know me on a first-name basis. The curriculum is really not challenging (for instance, no where is a y-combinator even mentioned), and the my fellow students are generally mediocre - not co-founder material. No one there reads HN (afaik).

I haven't had any internships or the like at any of the "cool" places (Fog Creek, Hack NY, etc), and not for lack of trying. I haven't built anything that impressive, and I haven't played with today's most popular alphabet soup yet (Reddis or Node.js or what ever it is right now).

Yes, I have read all the posts about impostor syndrome, but I don't think that that what I'm going through. I know that I am good at CS; my grades and understanding confirm this fact. I feel that, given better opportunities (perhaps having someone to teach me to program as a teen), I might have crossed some proverbial "tipping point" after which I would build more interesting things and get accepted into the cool programs, and ...