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Guide to applying to YC – from a founder who was accepted on the third try (getfluently.notion.site)
76 points by rebryk 72 days ago | hide | past | favorite | 58 comments
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.




Any other founders feel like YC has lost its luster? Not only are the number of AI companies in the portfolio ridiculous, but the large class sizes seem so much less personal.

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.


Off-topic but when was the Ivy League a proxy for extraordinary? Yale selected for height until at least 1965, Harvard was super dedicated to excluding Jews in the 30s and its athletes had SAT scores that were 100 points lower on average as of 2005, etc.[0]

[0] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/10/10/getting-in-ivy...


What ever was the "luster"? It depends on what you thought YC was. Everything else it did or could do aside: if you're building a company that is going to need to raise funds for the business model to work, YC is still the most straightforward path to doing a high-dollar syndicated unpriced seed round, which is a funding model that YC more or less pioneered.


YC didn’t start as a VC firm, but it is one now. You don’t even mention pre-seed here, which is what YC was: the first pre-seed for an absolutely tiny batch of promising founders, who actually got a disproportionate advantage compared to average pre-seed rounds overall. Now, YC only gives disproportionate advantage against unfunded startups, and only a proportionate one against the average raise of equivalent size.

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.


> "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 had met someone once who made a point that the value of a Harvard MBA was not the education, but rather that you got selected/admitted to this program and could use the brand.

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.


I'd like to argue for YC in the same way as I would argue when someone brings up my alma mater (or an Ivy League uni) - it's not the uni that shines, it's the people you're studying with.

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.


Looks like YC is moving to 4 cohorts annually -- and I agree with you on the AI product density in the past few batches -- but I've heard (from two alum) that the smaller sub-cohorts (i.e., within a batch) make it feel smaller and more intimate.


Yes.

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.


Yes the sheer number of AI slop companies is so uninspiring. Where is the creativity? There are still plenty of great technology companies to be built that are not ChatGPT wrappers.


Go build one? (with or without YC support)

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.


I am building one


> AI slop companies

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.


I like your first point, hadn't thought of it that way; makes it seem just a bit more reasonable. Regarding "create value" though, that's where I think a lot of the negative sentiment comes in: the vast majority of these new AI companies offer nothing at all of value to anyone. Outside of a very small few even the ones with an attractive premise fail to live up to the experience they advertise.


The point is that the small few will become extremely popular.

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.


> but the ones that succeed can win really big

May. Not can.

There is no evidence yet that AI is anything other than a feature.


This is missing the most important requirement: Be an AI company.


I think it's likely everyone is overindexing on this, in every direction. The modal reason any startup applies to YC is to line up fundraising. Investors are obsessed with AI right now. Yes, they shouldn't be. At the same time: the CS techniques underneath "AI" are the most important thing to happen to CS in decades; it would be a little weird not to somehow intersect "AI", if only because you're working with embeddings or high-dimensional data somewhere; it would be like building an application purposefully without topological sort, or without trees. And if you're doing anything like that, it would be pretty dumb not to play up the "AI" angle in this market.

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.


I thought you were just being snarky, but I went and looked, and wow, it really is all "AI": https://www.ycombinator.com/companies?batch=F24

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/


One of the most impressive companies in my batch (W24) had nothing to do with AI, or indeed software: https://www.astromecha.co/

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 :)


maybe that's why it was impressive/memorable?


No, I do not think so. Tom accepted us 80% because of our team, not the idea.


Honestly this is the same level of snarkiness of saying, "Be a web company." in the early 2000s

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.


> 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."


No. I think we're past the point of it being hipsterism to suggest that AI techniques are "hype". Not every startup exploiting it is bona fide, but what's happening here is for real.


I second this. I just fear the hype surrounding generative AI is leading to extreme tunnel vision and neglect of other promising tech (cough crypto) and even other areas in ML and deep learning that might actually be more fruitful for Agi.


(If it helps anyone else, I'm completely dismissive of the value of crypto).


The best thing to come out of crypto hype is the attention to Markel trees.

That probably played a part I. The development of CRDTs, which are straight up magic.


I'm not sure the history of CRDTs is at all bound up in cryptocurrency, which, for instance, isn't mentioned in the INRIA paper (which paper mentions previous CRDT designs that just didn't have the name).


The ratio of hype to substance is ridiculously out of this world. But like GP said (about AI), there's something there underneath all the hype


I am sure wheelwright's felt the same way...

I just saw a realtime generative minecraft demo, your head is in the sand if you think this is hype.


So much pessimism and downright denial on the impact of this technology.

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.


I feel like that is a great example of hype. Some that looks impressive but once you watch for a bit you realize it's a shallow copy that required a million hours of footage to generate.


> I just saw a realtime generative minecraft demo

Wait, that demo wasn't a joke?


Personally, I didn’t find the Minecraft demo very impressive, aside from the speed of inference. 20fps is quite an achievement, generating Minecraft screenshots, not as much.


Yes it's a future that's not happening and would soon be past.


Great advice, but the fact that you're a former FAANG employee pitching an AI company did ~70% of the work


Late 30s, former Facebook and Google engineer. Applied thrice at the behest of my co-founder, and got rejected each time. Once before we had a product, twice after being bootstrapped and profitable. Never again.


Is this mindreading or do you have direct knowledge of this assertion?


I guess I don’t get it, and I’d like to. Y-Combinator enables connections and mentorship along with a stipend. This allows a team to work full time for a few months, having quit or taken a hiatus from their day job.

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?


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.

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.


Thank you for the explanation, that is very helpful.

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?


> 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.


It's geared towards people who want to become wealthy, and are willing to take the risk that it needs to get there.

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.


So it is kind of geared towards wealthy people?

In the sense that everybody with an established career in this field is "wealthy" relative to most other working people in the economy, yes.


Others have given good answers, but what I meant here was you got to have a certain appetite for risk, (naive?) confidence in your abilities, few family/monetary obligations, willingness to go to the extremes, and at least a bit of disdain/boredom in your current job.


If you haven't quit your job and aren't working on full-time don't apply to YC.

The partners have said on many occasions it's a major red flag for them.


So it is like a “by rich people, for rich people (or a rich safety net)” deal?


I know someone who was in a recent batch.

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.


Great advice! The other thing I'd add is to get at least 4-5 YC alum to review your application in a Google doc and do practice interviews with them if you make it to the next round. Also, if you have friends who've done YC before, get them to recommend you!


Yeah, that's good advice. I will add it to the doc. Thanks!


Go to ivy league school + ai

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


This mindset is tiresome, especially seeing it on Hacker News...

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.


I live in NYC and know a ton of founders. its just the facts. people certainly get funded outside the normal background, but probably 70% of early stage funding goes to the same types of people


It's a fairly safe bet if you're trying to minimize your risk as much as possible. Sure it lacks imagination and you probably miss out on the true outliers but most Vcs are really conservative risk averse investors no matter what they say.


Fancy schools are just a way to get pre-vetted candidates.

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.


Fancy schools might indeed, coincidentally, vet founders for the same things these particular investors are looking for.

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.


What year was your class?

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.




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