We just submitted our application and I have to admit that YC's application questions themselves are a great exercise for anyone who is starting a new business. I felt that all the questions really made us think about each and very aspect of our platform and challenged us to articulate it in simple words.
We are excited to see what comes out of it and good luck to the rest of awesome ideas!
I couldn't agree more. Filling it out the first time we applied actually led us to the full developement of our business plan, right down to the design of the GUI and the financial metrics we would use. We now know exactly what is required of us to become profitable, how much we can stretch our margins, etc etc. Granted this is not necessary for YC but it let us know exactly where we stand and how hard we have to work before we can all afford to eat again.
The application process also taught our founders a little more about eachother. The things my cofounders put as their "most impressive acheivements" blew me away.
Indeed, the application form has a few tough questions, that I assume many startups don't like to face.
It is a very worthwhile exercise to try and answer them, even if you are not going to apply, for some reason. We have shot down several ideas now because of them.
i totally agree as well, all the time spent refining you concept/idea. it also made me understand my business and idea a bit more as if i didn't already.
I find statistics about this really inspiring. Even if YC only funds 3% if the volume keeps growing that is a good sign. Combined with the previous discussion on China which pointed out that growing an economy by infusing cash alone doesn't give you the results of long term growth, only innovation does, makes me optimistic.
Sure there will be a lot of hopelessly naive applications, can't be avoided really, but there could be some real ground breakers as well.
As I read somewhere, trying to get funded by itself is a great exercise to validate your idea. Seeking external validation via funding is a great way to force you to come up with a viable business model and innovate. I think it is a win-win situation, in my perspective.
In this case, the very process of applying forces you to really think about your business model viability and that is a good sign.
I assume they only take a limited amount of start-ups. What they really need is more people sifting through the applications which you can see that they have hired lots of partners.
Is this a huge leap? or similar to previous batches. I know the applications are rising each batch but i'm interested in if this is considerably higher than previous years.
I believe someone had a blog post recently where they estimated this years total batch at around 4000 based on previous years numbers and rate of increase. So ~1600 on the last day seems like it could be in the ballpark of what was expected.
We won't get 4000; closer to half that. Also, you can't simply multiply the application rate times the length of a day, because the rate gradually increases as the deadline approaches.
:) We decided to apply early on, but wanted to have a working prototype out. Still a couple of days away from something demoable; applying in the next 2 hours.
(Node.js starts off as simple. And then as you start writing serious code, the flow control and nested callbacks begin to bite. You get back on track once you figure out various patterns of flow control (or libraries like async and Step). )
I suppose that means demand for the service is greater than supply. The question might be, do you wish you had more supply, or better quality of demand?
Maybe charge $5 application fee to weed out the worst :-D
Really nice to see true unbridled entrepreneurism alive and kicking.... Companies like Y Combinator play their part, the ecosystem is really what it is all about
Being someone who submitted an application around 11:59pm in a previous season, I wonder what makes people wait until the last minute. In our case it was the big decision of whether we should apply or not (we didn't have a site, didn't really talk it through among ourselves), which pretty much made the resulting rejection a self satisfying prophecy.
Are you ever really done with something like this? There's always something you could improve, given more time. Using all the available time makes sense.
I believe that the best time to start is right now.
PG has said, many times, that he's more interested in the team than the idea.
A solid team isn't really going to change that much over a few months, as they've probably known each other for years. Show that in the interview, and you'll have a better chance of getting at-bat with YC than a few months of polish on your startup.
On top of that, showing real progress between submitting your YC app and actually talking to YC speaks worlds about your ability to execute, far more than having a polished last-minute entry.
Good luck with the mass volume of apps pg and friends! We've been doing a lot of updates in the last couple of days, esp today (did the final re-submit), but we initially submitted quite some time ago. I hope you all find the latest version of our app.
Submitted mine last minute because I went to the ycombinator website tonight 2 hours prior to the deadline to see when the deadline actually was. I've been busy talking to my customers and creating the product. Glad I had an urge to go on today.
I was asking HN some time ago if I should wait for Y Combinator, or...
Well, i did not apply anywhere else, and it seems i waited until the very last day. I'm glad I waited, though as 7 days ago my application would contain a totally different app. :)
For us it was a battle of making the application better versus submitting earlier. We decided to make the application better and then submit yesterday, rather than being one of the crowd working up to the wire.
I apologize for this dumb question but why do I still see the "edit your application link" ? Shouldn't this link disappear after the application is submitted ? Or did I screw up my submission ?
6. Edit and resubmit as much as you want, but be sure to submit at least once before the deadline (October 10 at 8 pm PST), because you haven't applied till you do.
7. Early submissions have a significant advantage because we have more time to look at them and engage with the founders.
8. We may have questions about your application. If there is a question waiting from us, you'll see a link to it on this page and at the top of Hacker News (when you're logged in). So check HN regularly after submitting.
They allow you to submit early and resubmit if you want to word things better or if they contact you about something that's unclear to them in your application.
Unfortunately, I think that some companies are in it for the funding as opposed to the experience itself. The real value of YC has little to do with any checks you get, but the knowledge you earn. I would take a YC spot over a $5 million VC check in an instant. $5 million buys a lot of Heroku dynos, but the YC-knowledge/experience is something that can make you potentially 50x anything you could get without YC.
It could be that much more naive and ignorant people are submitting applications now than before. 99% of these applications could be hogwash and disposable. That may not be the case, but who's to say it isn't?
The quantity of applications doesn't actually indicate anything except greater name recognition and maybe more recent entrepreneurs, but even that is a stretch
They much be very excited to wade through 100s of buzzword compliant ideas with no business model attached and the plaintive cry of "it's social and location-based. We deserve some money!".
My best advice: Remember that Y Combinator is a means and not an end. The goal is NOT "to get into Y Combinator". The goal is to make something people want. And there are plenty of resources for start-ups beyond kissing PG's butt for money and introductions.
Promoting your own websites is generally seen as ok by the HN community, but you should point out that it is your own website and avoid being self-laudatory about it (i.e. "the most comprehensive")
You are trying to promote your own content in the comment section of a website that PG created - I'd say that's worse than "kissing PG's butt for money and introductions."
We are excited to see what comes out of it and good luck to the rest of awesome ideas!