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Briefing: Y Combinator Plots $2 Billion in New Funds

Storied startup accelerator Y Combinator is targeting at least $2 billion, sources told Forbes, in its first major fundraising effort under Garry Tan.

Y Combinator Is Raising Billions In New Funding

We help startups build, deploy, and scale their open source AI stack 10x faster.

Launch YC: OpenFoundry: Developer infrastructure for open source AI 🛠️🤖 | Y Combinator

&quot;I met the Reddits before we even started Y Combinator. In fact they were one of the reasons we started it,&quot; writes PG.

The Reddits | Y Combinator

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Launch YC: Noya UI — 🪐 Universal component kit | Y Combinator

Created by Ulas Can Erguney using the source: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies

70% of Y Combinator startups in 2023 are B2B, 28% use AI | by Ulas Can Erguney | The Startup | Nov, 2023 | Medium

Press Release CIBC Innovation Banking announced today that it has provided an upsize to its growth capital financing facility with Jirav Inc. (Jirav). The company will use the financing to further accelerate product development,

CIBC Innovation Banking Provides Growth Capital Financing to Jirav Inc.

The event was graced by Sh. Priyank Mallikarjun Kharge, Minister IT/BT Karnataka, Sh. Jayant Sinha, Chairman PSC-FINANCE and Member of Parliament (MP) and Sh. Rajeev Gowda, Vice Chairman, Karnataka Policy and Planning Commission,

CoinDCX’s Unfold 2023: Shaping India’s WEB3 Leadership With 2500+ Participants and Innovation Galores

However, founders still had to contend with a prolonged funding downturn this year, save for some buzzy AI-related startups. That's led many startups to conserve cash. Layoffs have also been part of their strategies to extend their runway.

‘Large wave’ of pain looms for startups that survived 2023

Ambient.ai, the AI-powered computer vision intelligence (CVI) company transforming the physical security industry, today announced a $20 million strategic growth investment from Allegion Ventures, the corporate venture fund of Allegion plc.

Ambient.ai Raises $20M Strategic Growth Investment from Allegion Ventures

Y Combinator

ycombinator

Let's learn about via these 19 free stories. They are ordered by most time reading created on HackerNoon. Visit the to find the most read stories about any technology. Ycombinator /Learn Repo 1. How Silicon Valley Bank Went Under - And the Tech Execs Who Stepped Up As small-scale startups scrambled to make payroll while the future of the tech industry stood threatened, many of its prominent leaders looked for ways to help. 2. Mighty App: Fad or Rad? The Mighty App promises a lot and it might seem like a waste of money but, thanks to some quirks, it can be very useful when it comes to downloading at speed. 3. From Graduating College to Raising $1+ Million Dollars in 9 months I was studying Mechanical Engineering in my final year at college in the UK when I joined my roommate and his friend in building an app called Cluttr they started developing in the Summer of 2017. 4. How We Applied Twice for the Same YCombinator Batch Back in September, we were iterating on many ideas. We had come up with a 2-day invalidation process to make sure that we were not wasting too much time on bad ideas. 5. How We Pivoted 3 times In The 1st Month of YC If you ever think about joining YC, be intentional about the value you want to get from it. 6. Five Tips for Applying to YC 2021 Tips and resources for applying to Y Combinator 7. How to Prepare for your Y Combinator Interview Tick tock, it’s the day the YC interview invitation is sent out. I remember anxiously waiting for my startup’s (Cotter) invite. 8. Top 5 Podcasts for Startup Founders Top 5 Podcasts for Startup Founders in December packed with first-hand industry experience. 9. How Serverless Empowered Us to Accomplish More with Less We explore how we use Serverless at Courier, review some Serverless basics, and show how Serverless has empowered our team to accomplish more w 10. The 10 Things I’ve Learned Attending Y Combinator Startup School 2020 Y Combinator shouldn’t need any presentation, but just in case, let me give a quick intro. 11. Releaf: Evolution of African Agritech Releaf is Y-combinator African startup who are an agritech and supply chain startup. They do B2B work, digital banking, aid and geo-spatial tech for farmers. 12. How My Startup Got New Funding from Andreessen Horowitz We are very excited to announce that we have raised a new round of funding led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) with participation from Y Combinator Continuity. 13. The Top 4 Startup Accelerators: Is Y Combinator Still the Best? Where is the next Facebook, Google or Postmates coming from and why you shouldn’t choose Y Combinator? A comparison of the world’s top 4 startup accelerators 14. The Ultimate Guide to YCombinator Interview Preparation During my own preparation for Winter 2018 class interviews, I’ve reviewed every public resource on the topic and did over 20 practice interviews with Y Combinator alums. Everything I’ve learned is summarized below. This guide is my personal take and doesn’t represent an official position of YC. 15. Everything you need to know about YCombinator S19 startups It is not a secret to anyone that YCombinator is the most successful accelerator in the world. They have made well over 2,538 investments. 16. 6 Lessons From YC Startup School Delhi SMB Meetup #1 YC Startup School’s Delhi founders who work for SMBs met online to share the problems they were working on and what they learnt while building for SMBs. For the first meetup, we had mouve.app, restat.co, designforpeople.in, and Uplift Inc. 17. 10 Steps to Build a High-Value Startup with $44k Free Credits 10 steps to build a high value start up with $44k free credits and the best tools out there 18. Founders at Work: 150+ YCombinator Founders’ Stories Jessica Livingston's book "Founders at work" (2007, 32 stories) inspired thousands of founders to start their startups. 19. How Early Stage Startups Can Leverage Startup Incubators A Startup Incubator is a collaborative organisation designed to support new startups that are looking to validate their formed product vision. Thank you for checking out the 19 most read stories about Ycombinator on HackerNoon. to find the most read stories about any technology. Visit the /Learn Repo

19 Stories To Learn About Ycombinator

Founders at Work: 150+ YCombinator Founders’ Stories

Where is the next Facebook, Google or Postmates coming from and why you shouldn’t choose Y Combinator? A comparison of the world’s top 4 startup accelerators While many start-up accelerators and business incubators have paused accepting applications due to the pandemic, the world’s top four accelerators continue the search for what’s next. So, who are the top four, what they are, what are their terms and conditions, how they differentiate from each other — and most importantly, which one should you choose? Accelerators help talented entrepreneurs to grow quickly, find their market, get customers and so much more. Typically, they will take a small share of the business, or they may help at no cost at all. Sometimes, entrepreneurs are equipped with only the idea and a desire for a global scale. This is done through mentoring, to help support their current work, provide access and meetings with decision-makers of large corporations, as well as opening direct access to funding. What do the world’s top 4 accelerators look like? Accelerators are often judged by the success and valuation of companies that have been through their program. Many could become stars of IT on their own merits, however, statistics show that generally, these programs do help. For the calculations in the article, I use data from the accelerators’ own, as well as the data from well-known business media and venture resources: Inc, TechCrunch, Seed DB, CrunchBase, CB Insights, Forbes, and others. Y Combinator At least 21 unicorns (companies worth over $1 billion) grew out of companies that passed this program. This is 3.88% of firms with such a capitalization in the world. Alumni include Airbnb, Stripe, Reddit, Twitch, Instacart, and others. Y Combinator’s also includes 102 companies with valuations above $150 million. Investors in Y Combinator startups often include the most famous venture capital funds — Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures, Sequoia and Accel. all track record The total capitalization of companies that have passed the Y Combinator accelerator program is over $155 billion, up by almost 50% since the beginning of 2019. Jobs created from companies in the fund’s portfolio doubled to over 50K high-paying jobs to the economy in the same timeframe. nearly 500 Startups A mentoring session of Jordanian startups. Credit: 500 Startups With new managing partner Tony Wang coming in the last half of 2019, 500 Startups is stepping up their game and their portfolio, going from ten unicorns to 19. The most notable are: SendGrid’s email services, Twilio text message notifications, the graphic utility Canva, and the Ukrainian GitLab, where Y Combinator is also an investor. To date, the 500 Startups portfolio includes at least 85 companies with a valuation above $100 million. The strategic partners of 500 startups are the UAE-based SHUAA Capital (previously ADFG fund), in 2018. The total amount of the accelerator fund’s committed capital is $600 million according to 500 startups spokeswoman Zina Moukheiber. joined Techstars and AngelPad round out the top four in the world Techstars currently has at least 3 unicorns, including cloud service provider DigitalOcean, SendGrid and Twilio, as well as 37 “hundred millionaires” as of February 2019. The total valuation of companies in their portfolio is $29.1 billion as of September 2020 according to Techstars spokeswoman Ali Donnermeyer. The total Techstars funds available for investing in startups were $558 million as of July 2019. Until 2018, the AngelPad accelerator shared first place with Y Combinator in the MIT/Brown University Seed Accelerator several years in a row. That is the reason I added it here. The portfolio includes three unicorns  —  Postmates delivery service and co-investments in SendGrid and Twilio. In early March 2018, AngelPad raised $35 million to invest in startups to the SEC. ranking according A quick chart to compare the chances of becoming a company with a valuation of $100M Today, Y Combinator $125K for a 7% stake in the startup, down from the $150K offered in 2019. It is interesting to note that until 2013, Yuri Milner’s DST fund, together with SV Angel, automatically invested $150K in the accelerator’s graduates. The startups received an additional $15K-$20K from Y Combinator. After 2013, Milner was replaced by Khosla Ventures. offers 500 Startups young companies $150K for a 6% stake, and $37.5K is immediately deducted for participation in the educational program. The startup then receives the remaining $112.5K. give Techstars gets a 6% stake for providing graduates with a $100K convertible note. At the start of the program, the team is also given a $20K scholarship for living expenses. AngelPad offers $120K in exchange for a 7% stake in the $120K startup. Program features Techstars, 500 Startups, and AngelPad provide a physical location where startup founders, curators, and program mentors work side-by-side, claiming this as one of their advantages. With the advent of COVID-19, the programs were moved online, making this benefit null. Y Combinator already allowed teams to work from home so that nothing distracts from coding and user engagement. All acceleration programs might give their startups free credits to Amazon, DigitalOcean, and AdWords services, a value that can tally up to hundreds of thousands of dollars but is an often overlooked benefit. Acceleration program terms and conditions Dinner and office hours online at Y Combinator Y Combinator visits select universities during their YC Bio Tour. Credit: UCI The classic Y Combinator program consists of weekly lunches, office hours and a demo day. Alumni of past batches and founders of companies like Stripe or Airbnb are invited to lunches. They give motivating advice and share their experience in increasing sales, scaling the company, etc. During office hours, they discuss strategy and focus with successful graduates, employees and partners of the accelerator. This includes group meetings with colleagues and mentors to address urgent issues. Demo Day is the culmination of the program. It lasts from two to three days. Teams have one minute to get the audience interested in the results of their three months in the race. In the summer of 2019, over the course of two days, 450 investors viewed 174 alumni teams. This year’s Demo Day was held entirely online, and while 198 teams presented, the number of views and investor-participants was not shared. Beginning in winter 2020, participation in the batches and all programs fully to be online. shifted Techstars powerful mentorship programs At one of the Techstars events. Credit: Startup Weekend Blumenau At Techstars, unlike Y Combinator, the program is divided into several phases, where startups work with mentors: setting and execution of their goals, an educational program and a Demo Day. In the first month, startups receive the maximum product and market feedback from daily meetings with experts. They take part in short rounds of speed dating, meeting with numerous startups and mentors to choose the right partners and open conversations with their permanent mentors. Educational content includes lectures and masterclasses on market research, legal subtleties and other aspects related to the work of a young company. The second month is spent on product building and customer acquisition. The last month is preparation for Demo Day: presentations, raising money, growth and scaling. The audience for Demo Day is about 400 spectators, who are mostly private investors, funds, corporations, business angels. Around 30 and 50 startups are expected to take the stage and present. Since April 2020, Demo Days and other programs are virtually. held Educational programs at 500 Startups and a personal approach at AngelPad 500 Startups is structured similarly to Techstars and focuses on building up missing competencies and skills with over 200 hours of educational live content. The training is divided into weeks, each one devoted to lectures and workshops on an individual topic. AngelPad has an alternative approach. Instead of aggressively scaling the accelerator to other cities and overseas and working with hundreds of teams at the same time, the team works with a small group of up to 15 startups. AngelPad’s job is to help you individually with sales and product. Demo Day does classic show pitches — the participants immediately communicate face to face with those investors who, according to the organizers, are most suitable for each other. not include Investment volumes A comparison of the committed capital and the funding the accelerator's portfolio startups receive The number of companies invested in by Y Combinator, Techstars, 500 Startups and AngelPad is 2,000, 2,200, 2,400 and 150 companies respectively, according to the accelerators. Total funding per accelerator exceeds billion for Y Combinator, $10.4 billion for Techstars, $2.35 billion for 500 Startups and $2.2 billion for AngelPad. $38.66 Individual companies received an average of $17.9 million, $4.7 million, $3.4 million and $14 million in investments over the entire period of activity accordingly. These figures are approximate based on research on aforementioned venture capital sites such as Crunchbase and may not include undisclosed deals. The primary goal and result for a startup are to deliver revenue to investors, so it is important to include in this review the number of exits. Selling a startup to a large company or going public allows investors to sell a stake in it. Y Combinator made exits for approximately . According to public data, Techstars has exits for a total of approximately . For 500 Startups, the number of exits was , while AngelPad boasts 72 exits of its alums. 757 $6 billion 583 $4.75 billion 803 Funding after Demo Day Residents of AngelPad during their spare time. Credit: angelpad.com After Demo Day, startups at Y Combinator and 500 Startups raise an average of $1.5 million-$2 million, and for Techstars that number is about $1 million. No data is available for AngelPad. According to , co-investor of more than 60 Y Combinator alumni, 90–95% of the participants in each set of this accelerator receive investments. This proves that being accepted not only gives startups new connections, but also a boost in perception, serving as a positive indicator for investors that a young company has great potential. Terrence Yang What are the selection criteria and which program to choose? For the initial selection, you must have an excellent-to-fluent command of the English language. Your questionnaire should be specific, no a copy-paste answers here, of course, you need an idea and an understanding of its implementation. Citizenship and other parameters do not matter. These accelerators are also held by companies that have founders from all over the world. For example, Y Combinator alumni come from countries, and 500 Startups’ come from 75 countries. 53 focuses on fanatical geeks with a vision, self-learning on the fly, non-trivial problem solving, and acquiring and engaging users with the product or service. Y Combinator A strong benefit of is that they boost startups with access to a team of experts to build a viable idea, for companies that have a desire to conquer the American market and no experience setting up a company in the United States. 500 Startups For those whose business is concentrated outside of Silicon Valley, the regional programs are most suitable. If you’re looking for quality, focused work with a qualified mentor, AngelPad is your go-to. Techstars Statistics show that receives 4,000 applications annually. And according to unconfirmed reports, Y Combinator receives 27,000 applications, Techstars gets 12,000, and 500 Startups a total of 18,000 applications. Less than 1% of applicants are accepted into the programs. AngelPad These four startup programs don’t always make sense for everyone. Some accelerators provide free participation or do not require a share. Before embarking on a long journey, research what’s best for you and your idea by watching lectures from the founders of Y Combinator, the creator of Gmail and others, available on YouTube. All data is current as of September 20, 2020 unless otherwise indicated. #startups #accelerator #funding #fundraising #entrepreneurship #500startups #ycombinator #angelpad #techstars #yc #investment Also published at https://medium.com/@yuriy.yatsiv/where-is-the-next-facebook-google-or-postmates-coming-from-and-why-you-shouldnt-choose-y-7052bfed7f85

The Top 4 Startup Accelerators: Is Y Combinator Still the Best?

Tick tock, it’s the day the YC interview invitation is sent out. I remember anxiously waiting for my startup’s ( ) invite. Cotter I read from HN and Reddit that the invite was supposed to be sent out around 9 PM - 12 AM PT. We got ours at 9:16 PM and immediately booked a slot for the interview. If you got the invite, congratulations! But as Kobe said, “Job’s not finished”. So start preparing ASAP! Here’s how the Cotter team prepared. Perfect Your 1-Liner As expected, that was the first question that we got during our interview. To craft a good 1-liner, you need to be able to explain what your company does and who you are serving using plain English. If you can use existing companies to describe your business go for it. Here are a few examples: If you are replicating an existing business model for a different country go for "We are building Robinhood for Country X".If your product does something similar to an existing product go for "We are building Shopify for online schools". If you can't or you're building something entirely new, don't force it. Try to construct your 1-liner using this template "We are building X (what does your company do) for Y (who does your product serve)". After you construct your 1-liner, go ask YC founders for feedback. Feel free to DM me on Twitter @ . itsKevinChandra Educate Them YC partners aren't always knowledgable in what you do; you are the expert. The questions that they ask will revolve around them wanting to learn more from you. So, like your 1-liner, make sure that your answers are informative, concise, and short. Keep in mind that every YC interview is going to be different. It depends on your industry, what stage you are in, where you are doing business, and lots more! You will never be able to control what the partners ask. Some of the questions from templates like will appear. However, here's a more realistic expectation. this If you haven't launched your product then prepare to educate them about: 1. The barrier to entry and how you are uniquely positioned to break through that barrier. 2. What the market looks like and how your product uniquely solves a problem for that market. 3. Why your team is the winning team. If you have launched your product and it has traction then prepare your market insights like: 1. How did you get your users? Who are they? Where are they? 2. How are they using your product? Are they hacking your product to do more? 3. How much have you improved your users' lives? Why Your Team is the Chosen One Remember that the founders matter more than the idea and YC knows that. So explain to them why your team is the Chosen One. There are numerous YC success stories to back this such as the classic and most recently Segment. AirBnB story A lot of startups fail because of conflict between the co-founders, tell them why your team will stick together through thick and thin. Have you worked together previously? Tell them why each member is critical to the founding team. Why do you have 2/3/4/5 founders in the team? What are their roles? What makes your team uniquely positioned to win? Do you have relevant experience? Do you have patents? Do you hold a license in a regulated industry? Practice and Enjoy the Experience! I would really advise doing mock interviews with YC founders if you get the chance. To start, you can DM me @ . itsKevinChandra If not, compile a document comprised of questions that you think you will be asked and make sure you have informative, concise, and short answers. If you run out, answer . these questions To keep your mind at peace, they wouldn't ask questions that you shouldn't already know the answers to. Lastly, good luck from the Cotter team! Schedule a Mock Interview DM me @ itsKevinChandra #ShamelessPlug If you want to have a passwordless auth for your app come check out or have any questions about authentication reach out to us here: Cotter Email: team@cotter.app Twitter: @ cotterapp Slack: https://join.slack.com/t/askcotter/shared_invite/zt-dxzf311g-5Mp3~odZNB2DwYaxIJ1dJA

How to Prepare for your Y Combinator Interview

Back in September, we were iterating on many ideas. We had come up with a to make sure that we were not wasting too much time on bad ideas. 2-day invalidation process Finally, we had an idea that we couldn’t invalidate after 2 days. The idea was the following: that would be free (we would make our money through the interchange fees of our credit card). an integrated banking, accounting and tax service for the workers of the gig economy The market size was huge, with 57 million independent workers in the US. The issue we saw was that the market was scattered across a lot of verticals, and it would be hard to have consistent messaging across all of them. We decided to start with drivers (Uber, Lyft, Amazon, Postmates, etc.), as there was a big opportunity in tax cuts through the mileage deductions, and there are a LOT of drivers to address. Our first YC application After a full week of trying intentionally to disqualify the idea, we decided to apply to YC, as it was the end of September, and it was the deadline for YC application. We continued our invalidation process, taking some Ubers and Lyft rides to ask drivers about how they did things. At that point, we were offered a YC interview. We started talking with people from the industry, too, and one day we received 2 disheartening pieces of information from two different sources — an Uber insider and a Lyft insider — on the same day. Both were working on similar fintech products for their drivers and were planning to release them for free as well, with the exact same business model we had planned. With this information, we faced a decision whether to continue with this idea. We tried to find some other verticals that would have made as much sense, but couldn’t. So we decided to withdraw our YC application 3 days before our interview. Our second YC application At that point, we were back to square one. So we continued to iterate on our ideas, trying to invalidate them. One idea led to another. We finally had one idea that we couldn’t disqualify. We wanted to take on all the operational complexity involved in any data exchange between two parties. We were targeting dataset exchanges between a data provider and a data consumer. After three weeks, we decided to apply again; we got invited for the interview the next week and got accepted. Note that we got accepted into YC with a completely different idea than too :). Dataline Why would YC let you do that? YC calls companies that don’t have a product yet “pre-idea projects”. By that, they mean that there is a very high chance that your idea will evolve during YC. Essentially, you might pivot a few times during the three months of YC. We were definitely one of those who did. And there were many of us in the batch. Why would YC accept projects with a high chance of pivoting in their batches? Our understanding is that they don’t really care about the idea you apply with per se, but more about: the team (experience, ability to build the product in an autonomous way)how we think; if we tend to have uncommon insightshow we iterate and learn fast In our case, applying twice wasn’t actually a bad sign; we were showing our perseverance and our ability to iterate fast. Plus, in the second YC application, we wrote a few of the ideas we iterated upon. That’s actually why they ask this question in their application: “ If you had any other ideas you considered applying with, please list them. One may be something we’ve been waiting for. Often when we fund people it’s to do something they list here and not in the main application”. If you’re very early stage, this is an important question. And it could show the velocity of your team. We’ve seen teams that were pivoting all along the batch — even in the first week, because their partners told them they thought that their team could do better in terms of project potential. So don’t despair about YC. You can get in with a three-week-old idea, but you need a good team that has the skills to implement the said idea and is convincing enough with their abilities that they will want to bet on them. Originally published at https://dataline.io on March 27, 2020.

How We Applied Twice for the Same YCombinator Batch

shouldn’t need any presentation, but just in case, let me give a quick intro. Y Combinator Y Combinator is an American seed accelerator launched in March 2005. It has been used to launch over 2,000 companies including Stripe, Airbnb, Twitch, DoorDash, Coinbase, Instacart, and Dropbox, to name a few. The combined valuation of the top was over $155 billion as of October, 2019. YC companies While nowadays Y Combinator includes mentors and coaches coming from the gotha of the startup elite, the mind behind the company is , a very well known tech-guru that I would credit for the contribution he made to language and for the launch of , among all his other achievements. Paul Graham Lisp Hacker News I was tracking down Y Combinator Startup School (YCSS) for a couple of years, and well, this time was the right one. The 8-week online course for startups is totally free, and from 2019 it’s held twice a year, so it’s not so hard to get a spot. All you need is to send some information about yourself and your project and grant some commitment. There aren’t specific milestones to pass, like exams or things like that but you need to attend a number of peer reviews to graduate. In the end, the value of this course it’s mostly up to yourself: if you’re willing to study the lectures, take parte in the forums and AMA sesh, interact with other students and attend the video lessons, it’s definitely worth your time. Otherwise, it’s no more useful than scrolling a  Reddit thread ( ). /r/startups The YCSS is structured in an eight-week time frame. Each week you have to submit your goals for the week and the main challenges you are facing. This is the base for the bi-weekly peer review. Then there are the lectures, videos and live sessions with the coaches. Y Combinator even created a dashboard where you can handle the totality of the course, with links to forums, special deals, Telegram group chat, video lessons, Q&A, and more. A video conference room is integrated as well, so you don't need any other tool than a laptop with an internet connection. I liked the YCSS pretty much, considering that it’s a free program. It also provides a good insight over Y Combinator method and the approach of their mentors. I was positively impressed by diversity within the classes: participants were from Indonesia, Thailand, India, North Africa, Russia, of course a lot were from the US West Coast (be ready to attend video confo at wee hours of the morning). And no matter what part of the world you come from, what background you have, what project you are working on: for better or worse we are all facing the same problems, with the same difficulties and constraints. As a side comment, I would not have minded to have a little bit of challenges here and there. A sort of final examination is something that is missing at the moment. But let’s jump back to the purpose of this post. What the hell did I learn during this process? I had many A-HA moments, but let me sum up my 10 most important takes. 1. Talk to your users: Talking to your users is essential. Perhaps the most important thing you should do. You would never ever make a product that nobody wants. Worst, to spend billions of marketing to push it down the customers’ throat. As you may know, having no market is still the first reason startups fail, accounting for more than 40% of the deaths. YCSS program is stressing a lot on that point, even asking you how many surveys you made and what feedback you got from your customers on a weekly basis. You have to become a problem seeker. You need to understand people's real problems. Don’t look for loonshot solutions addressing nobody issues. “Make something people want.” If this list would had to be a single bullet point, it would have been this one. 2. It’s not your customers’ job to give you solutions: A common mistake I see almost everyday it’s asking people what they want, instead of asking them which problems they have. “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses”, as Henry Ford said. It's not up to your users to tell you what they want, they just have to tell you their problems. Then it’s your job to find solutions for them. You are the product owner, not them. 3. No problem is too big to be a show-stopper: No problem is too big to have no workaround around it. During the peer reviews sessions, we discussed very different problems and issues each one of us was having at the time. And believe me, there were some hella big problems coming out. But the mood was always very good and positive. Bigger problems just need bigger workarounds. And that’s good. Let’s keep it going. 4. MVP everything: Don’t even think about spending half a year to develop a finite product. MVP, Minimum Viable Products, is your to-go word. Start small, test, develop, implement, repeat. Don’t waste away your money and your time to work on a product nobody wants or that would take so long to develop that, once it gets to the market, it would be already obsolete. 5. ABS - Always be Shipping Ship early, ship often, ship no-f*ckin-matter what. Design short product sprints, with frequent deploy. If it takes you six months to get to your first deployment in the production environment, your startup is probably going to be dead before you  get another chance to launch. 6. Forget about that “it doesn’t scale” thing: Y Combinator mentors told us this little story: it was rather common to find post-MBA folks who used to discard every single startup pitch they were evaluating by commenting “well, it doesn’t scale”. As a startup in its early stage, please, don’t deal with that. Ok your idea doesn't scale. Fine with that. It’s the starting point for everybody. First validate the concept, then worry about scaling your business. Some of the most valuable, and, well, scalable, startups on the market, started by doing things by hands or mimicking features they still had not. Who cares about that. In a world where the most ground-breaking tech is just next door, there's plenty of room to get your products to scale later on. 7. “Good product instincts” is a trap: Get rid of the  “I’m trusting my guts” BS asap. Nobody has it, and Steve Jobs is dead. Measure all your experiments and don’t rely on “instinct”, “guts”, or “good taste”. You may be surprised by the results, discovering that the ugly-looking template is converting way more than the polished, trendy one, because, well, the former has a better CTA. 8. Build a solid Company Culture: Company culture is often ignored by startups. The mood is like, “money first, culture later”. But well, there is no “later”. You have to set up culture in the very early stage of your company. It’s easy to share a culture statement among ten people, but then try to do it when the company grows to one hundred employees. Culture should work as a de-facto guideline: this is how we behave when there aren't further rules around. And culture should guide you in hiring your first employee, getting your first customer, dealing with product issues, and so on. Remember how much the simple “don’t be evil” quote meant to Google employees, driving their business and growth strategies for almost a decade. So don’t forget about culture and settle it down as soon as possible. 9. Leaders don't brag. You can’t say “I am a good leader”. That's something other people have to say. Do you want to find who’s a true leader? Ask the people around them, who they work with, but also their friends, the bartender where they have their coffee, their neighbors. Leadership is not something you turn on or off when you enter the office. And, by the same means, be careful when someone is claiming out loud their leadership skills. 10. Don’t get sad: This was from YC President Geoff Ralston’s parting advice, during the last lesson of the course. I loved that one. I never bought into the “creating startups is the coolest thing in the world” adage. Creating a biz from scratches is hard, it’s often painful. Things can go disastrously wrong in a startup and the founders feel sadder and sadder. And sadness leads to inaction. It leads to apathy. It leads to depression.  Don't do that. Don't get sad. Go, do, write code. Talk to users. Make your  product better. Always make forward progress in spite of sadness, anger, frustration. In the end it’s not the best that succeed, but the more resilient and prone to rise up failure after failure. And help others, too. If you see someone in trouble, another entrepreneur in distress, reach out to them. We live in an open ecosystem, let it thrive. End notes: "Keep it going" . Well, that’s it. Hopefully you found some inspiration and hint in my story. At least now you know a little bit better what this YCSS is about and around which pillars the course is built. If there’s something you’d like to discuss further, write me in the comments! Get back to work now. And don’t quit!

The 10 Things I’ve Learned Attending Y Combinator Startup School 2020

It is not a secret to anyone that YCombinator is the most successful accelerator in the world. They have made well over . 2,538 investments YCombinator runs two programs annually: during the summer and winter, named accordingly. The latest Summer 2019 batch of startups has graduated just under 2 weeks ago. YCombinator is also, not only the most well-known accelerator, but by far the most profitable one. According to the : 15 YC alumni's are valued at over $1B and over 70 YC alumni's are valued at over $100M. statistics back in 2018 Many YC alumni companies become trendsetters. They are known to form new product segments and dominate them. With my “live curious” attitude in life, I decided to dive deeper into the most recent S19 batch of the chosen ones. Interestingly, that 197 companies were accepted into the program, but only 166 made it to the demo day. By the way, here is a good short description of companies by TechCrunch: companies presented during and companies presented during . day one day two The level of variousness of the information on 166 different companies is quite high, so I started to look for a service or a tool that would give me the possibility to structure and view the statistics in a more detailed way. There are many great services which can help you to learn more about YC alumni. For instance: - has a very cool Top 100 company list features. YCBD - allows you to query on the companies for more information on the social media or current company status. Golden - tracks dead and flourishing companies. YClist The problem with all of them is that none of them has enough information on the latest batch. Besides, I was more interested in the trend analytics, rather than predicting the future of the startups. So I made some research on my own and tried to accumulate interesting and fun facts about all S19 YCombinator startups. The document is open and available to everyone. If you need this data for your research, please go ahead and use it. . Here is the doc You can make your own copy (if you'd like so). During my research on every of 166 companies, I started seeing clear trends. For instance, 4 companies clearly stood out, due to having no accessible information on their founders. None. Zero. Of course, you can always make an extra mile and inquire on the company incorporation documents, or even reach out to YCombinator itself. But to me, there are 4 antisocial companies on the list. 77 companies out of 166 were incorporated by first-time founders. It means that, 89 companies on the list have at least one of the founders with a prior founding experience. Out of 166 companies, only 55 have their domain extensions, which are not “.com”. So “.com” is still a go-ahead choice. 83 companies were founded in 2019. It means that exactly 50% of the companies are more than 1 year old. There are 31 companies with only 1 founder. 94 companies with 2 founders, 27 companies with 3 founders, and only 9 companies with 4 founders. In terms of the founders' origin. Of course, the US dominates with 102 companies, whose founders are from the States themselves. However, we can see that YCombinator is supporting diversity efforts. In S19 batch 27 countries were being presented by the founders. The most popular country after the US is Canada - with 9 companies being in the batch. 72% (119) companies claim that there are generating revenue now. The fun question is: what is the most trendy color scheme? Is there one? Well, 30% of the companies have more than 1 color in their color scheme. But corporate blue is still the most popular or safe choice, as 37 companies chose to use it. The least popular main color is yellow, with only two companies using it extensively. What can any of these statistics tell us? Besides the obvious thought: if they could do it, you can do it. I’d say just one: no one knows if a startup will be successful or not. Many factors can minimize the risk, but once again, nobody knows for sure. That is why Y Combinator experiments with the selection of best in their diversity and diversity of their founders experience.

Everything you need to know about YCombinator S19 startups

During my own preparation for Winter 2018 class interviews, I’ve reviewed every public resource on the topic and did over 20 practice interviews with Y Combinator alums. Everything I’ve learned is summarized below. This guide is my personal take and doesn’t represent an official position of YC. Along with this guide, you can also read and reuse our YC interview answers . To get more help, join a chat community of startups applying to YC . Answers development The core of your preparation process is writing a document with all anticipated questions and your answers to them. Start with the items below, then expand by adding answers to new questions asked at your practice interviews. Answers document. Your first sentence in the interview is either a solution description or value proposition. It should be 4–8 words long and pass the “mom’s test”, i.e. your parents should be able to repeat it back to you. Opening description. Define 3 core strength points in advance. Steer conversation to hit them all, sometimes even regardless of questions.Types of strength: revenue/growth/traction, domain expertise/done this before, insight aka “a-ha moment”, market size.Consider repeating or rephrasing your top three points when you aren’t sure they landed well the first time.Test your strength points: Will someone be excited about your company if she/he only hears the one-line description and three strength points? Strength points. Those are anecdotes, quotes, or factoids that receive consistent “a-ha” and “hmm.. interesting” reactions during your practice runs. Insights. Know your 2–3 key weakness areas and prepare short, crisp answers to most common concerns.For every question that you don’t answer with a strength point or an insight, limit yourself to one sentence. You want to maximize the time for strength discussion, not secondary issues. If you use the second sentence, it should go back to strengths or insights. Defense. How to write strong answers Use a lot of factoids and numbers. Your answers document should have at least 20–30 answers with numbers. Whenever possible, eliminate verbs from answers. E.g. “What’s your go-to-market?” — “A, then B, then C”.Use simple words and examples, avoid buzzwords or abstract concepts. For questions on weakness areas, acknowledge or defend it in one sentence, then go back to strengths in the second. Use examples and facts over forward-looking plans. “In the past, we’ve solved it by X with results Y”.Explain implications: “if we achieve X (hard, but possible technical achievement), then we will get Y (major business win)”. Whenever possible, use primary data from customers instead of analogies. Generally, YCombinator doesn’t see analogy-based arguments as reliable or strong.Avoid top-down market sizing. Either do bottom-up or close comparables. “Sell your co-founder”, be ready to tell why your partner is great. Practice runs Schedule at least 10–20 practice runs. For mock interviews, ask investors and founders you already know, YC alums from your city / country / university, YC alums in your industry or with a similar business model, and YC alums who volunteer to do practice interviews on Twitter. You don’t need an intro. Ask early, at least 7–10 days before your interview day. Take notes and rewrite your answers after each practice run. Do a debrief with each mock interviewer. Ask which answers were clear and strong, and which ones were not. Discuss how to improve your individual answers. Iterate on your top strength points, unique insights/anecdotes, and defense answers. Additionally, watch YC’s public office hours (links below) to get a feel of YC interview format. Interview day Arrive early, identify your room and learn who is on your panel, research panel partners in the remaining time. Make new friends with fellow applicants. Have the demo ready on the laptop with all important screens in multiple tabs. Don’t rely on YC WiFi.Assume that YC partners have no prior knowledge. Review partner’s bios in advance, identify partners who can become supporters due to their personal interest in your space. From YC’s standpoint, the purpose of the interview is to extract as much info as possible in 10min. At least one of YC partners will look closely for body language and nonverbal signals. Expect 40–80 questions in 10 minutes, 8–12 seconds per question-and-answer round. Be ready for constant interruptions (even after the first 2–3 words of response). Be ready for unique questions outside of your list. Be ready for parallel interview with multiple co-founders (not very common). Be ready for a narrow and deep drill on a single question, most likely related to your biggest weakness. Logistics and expectations. Talk fast, but not super fast. Feel happy, high-energy, and excited to pursue the opportunity. Be casual and friendly, maintain eye contact. Be confident, yet humble. Confident and concise = formidable. A few weak answers are ok. A long weak answer is much worse than a short acknowledgment like “I don’t know” or “we plan to work on this”. Don’t be too defensive, show coachability. Consider repeating or rephrasing your top three points, if they weren’t well received the first time. Most answers should be one sentence, some can be two sentences. Limit yourself to only 2–3 longer replies throughout the interview. Don’t interrupt each other, don’t argue on unexpected questions. Instead, say “yes and …” or “and I’ll add to this…” to continue after your co-founder. When disagreeing with YC partner’s statement, either give counter-facts or accept it as a hypothesis to test. Don’t make straight deflections. Answer the question asked, before changing direction. When challenged on critical hypotheses for your business, be ready to push back with crisp defense and facts. When the conversation goes sideways, try to steer it back to strengths, e.g. “and I want to make sure you hear this…”. Interview time. Interesting problem. Ideally, unique or novel. Otherwise, a new insight or approach. Compelling value proposition. Clear and concise solution description. Clarity on how the hard parts of the solution work. Inspiring mission. Market size and dynamics. A small but rapidly growing market is always compelling. Insightful ideas for overcoming market-specific concerns. Activation of “spidey sense” i.e. “hmm… something interesting should happen in this space” feeling. Team with deep relevant expertise and domain knowledge. Strong communication skills: crisp, short, clear answers. Competitive landscape fluency. Proven rapid pace of making progress. Energy and resourcefulness, “get things done” attitude. Coachability, being good at taking feedback constructively. Determined, yet flexible. Original thinking and learning ability. Unconventional points of view and insights directly from customers. Positive team dynamics, no interruptions or arguing, alignment on vision. Low chance of founder conflict. Good English and easy-to-understand accent, no language barriers in communication. Ability to inspire and recruit star team. Make YC partners want to work for you. Can grow into “forces of nature”. Direct path to building momentum by the end of YC program aka “become a hot seed deal”. Direct path to hitting high revenue in 2–3 years aka “getting big”. Expected YC evaluation criteria. Y Combinator Interview Resources , , , , . Official resources: list of partners preparation advice preparation advice video old advice Michael Seibel’s 7 points , , , , , , , , , , , , . Advice from alums: Quora thread Kwindla Hultman Kramer Henrik Zillmer Tristan Zier Barak Ben Ezer Scott Wheeler David Rusenko Sumon Sadhu Robby Walker Natalie Bartlett Fabrizio Buzeto GetAccept Gareth MacLeod , , , , . Question collections: PG Simulator Aptible Brad Flora TechCrunch QZ , , , , , , , , , . Public office hours: SS 2011 SS 2013 SS 2014 SS 2014 NYC TNW 2014 SS 2016 SS 2016 SC17–1 SC17–2 SC17–3 Acknowledgments I am forever grateful to everyone who helped us through the process: Hrachik Adjamian, Daniel Ahmadizadeh, Andrew Arruda, Delian Asparouhov, Chas Ballew, Kirill Belov, Eva Breitenbach, Matt Brezina, Tom Broderick, Levon Brutyan, Jeremy Cai, Dan Carroll, Deepak Chhugani, Nick DeMonner, Dmitry Dumik, Evan Farrell, Herbie Fu, Jim Gibbs, Anton Gladkoborodov, Allan Grant, Vlad Gurgov, Chetan Jhaveri, Ryan Johnson, Dave Kim, Alexander Kim, Kwindla Hultman Kramer, Sam Lang, Clarence Leung, Bowen Lu, Max Musing, Ivan Novikov, Thomas Pun, Roberto Riccio, Wen Sang, Boris Silver, Preston Silverman, Zac Townsend, Brett Van Zuiden, James Vaughan, Praveen Venkatesan, Tracy Young, Diana Zink. Good luck! To get more help, join a . I am frequently there to help with any preparation questions you might have. chat community of startups applying to YCombinator

The Ultimate Guide to YCombinator Interview Preparation

Late last year, my team participated in the much talked-about Y Combinator Startup School on behalf of our startup, Affine Finance. We were assigned a great mentor (former C-level executive at Zynga and a startup advisor at multiple other prominent accelerators). It was a 10-week program, with weekly live sessions conducted both in-person and online (since I was close to YC’s Mountain View offices, I ended up attending most of the sessions in-person). The live sessions touched upon a broad range of topics — everything from legal matters to design and product development. YC had grouped the startups that were a part of the program into teams of 10–15 companies. In order to “graduate”, the teams were required to: Do weekly mentor office hours (a 2-hour group call with our mentor with all startups in our group) Provide weekly company updates reporting our week-over-week growth for a self-selected metric We were incredibly lucky to be assigned a great mentor for our startup as well as a highly engaged peer group. We consistently heard stories of mentors going MIA, peers who had stopped participating etc. which took away from their overall program experience. In effect, ! while the program was well-designed by the YC team, the execution of it largely fell upon the mentors and the startups themselves The overall learnings from the program far exceeded my expectations. By the time we joined, we had been “hacking away” at our ideas for almost a year and I didn’t expect to learn anything new besides the conventional wisdom / talking points, but I was proven wrong by the YC folks very early on! The live sessions were great, but what made the program truly effective was combining them with the mentoring session, and the peer group community. For the latter, the internal YC forums were OK but the Slack groups (formed by the startups directly) were even better and provided great value. Case in point: the Bay Area group still organizes monthly BBQ meetups for the YC SS startups — few months after the official YC program ended! Below I have highlighted seven key takeaways for our team, which are largely based on our own experience of the program and the stage of our company when we went through it. I’m sure other founders would have had different takeaways based on their own experience. I. “Make something people want”: you need to live and breathe the YC motto Startups mostly fail because they work on building products that no one wants. Within the insanity of Silicon Valley, it’s often easy for founders to lose their way (which we were also guilty of at Affine) by prioritizing the wrong things — such as fundraising, over-building products/features, attacking “white spaces” without verifying the real market needs (working on ideas that only seem good on paper) — and not being laser focused on the end customers. : Do you have the right team? Right mix of expertise, camaraderie, experience, passion for the industry, passion for solving problems, passion for starting a company. Make Do they really want this? Continuous market validation, customer feedback, asking the right questions (“will you pay $x for this” vs “would you try this / like to use this”) to the right people. Something people want: II. Launch now!! Launching fast was something the YC team and the mentors stressed on a lot. The importance of launching early cannot be overstated — you cannot truly figure out what your customers want until you launch and get in front of them. But… my product is almost ready but I still need to add some features! …You should have launched a long time ago! Launch now and include those features in the next update! But… my product is not yet finished!! …Launch limited pilots with customers whose needs are so great that they are willing to work with a broken or incomplete product — this will help guide you on what to add/modify, and what features you can drop from your product roadmap. This could save you 100s of hours and potentially result in early revenue and other valuable customer feedback. But… I haven’t even started building my product yet!! …You have a lot of options here: Build a product outline or wireframes, and use those to get feedback from potential customers on specific needs / features; or try to get a potential customer to finance your product development with an “agency approach” where you build their solution but retain the IP; or try to pre-sell product licenses at a discount prior to building your product to test your customers’ ability to pay, and their urgency to solve the problem. While this advice may not be applicable to a very small number of startups, for most startups there is no excuse not to launch today. III. Product-Market Fit — the definition is in the eye of the beholder (or the investor!) A lot of the guest speakers were asked when they found “Product-Market Fit” (PMF) and everyone had their own variation of the answer (interestingly, none of them answered they haven’t found it yet IIRC). The answer to “How do I know when I have PMF?” is highly complicated and depends on each startup’s business model and unique circumstances. Many startups find PMF early on, and many never find it during their company life cycle (including the “successful startups” with successful exits). Some early-stage investors only invest in startups after they have found their PMF, some specifically claim to fund startups to help them find their PMF, with no consistent definition on what PMF really is. After listening to multiple definitions and views, our thoughts on PMF loosely reflect those of the YC team: you have found Product-Market Fit if i. you are making what people want (from takeaway #1 above; your customers would be VERY upset/miserable if your product didn’t exist), and ii. your demand is outstripping supply such that you can’t seem to hire/build/ship fast enough (you are struggling to keep up with customer demand), and iii. new customers are finding you organically and/or through referrals from existing customers Point (ii) is what really stood out to me personally. This is also the point where you may likely need additional capital to hire and meet customer demand — making it a great time to go fundraising at favorable terms during your potential “hockey stick” turning point. Again, this definition would depend from company to company, business model to business model. Right after launching, it’s worth spending time thinking about what it would mean for your startup to attain PMF — that is the point you’d strive to get to from then on. IV. Value of your time as an entrepreneur One of the best pieces of advice I got before cofounding Affine was from a friend who founded a digital health startup a few years ago — to do as much work as possible upfront as I’d have no time once I “officially start”. I didn’t fully appreciate that advice until after I “officially started” my own entrepreneurial journey. Think of everything on your plate as a founder: Forming your team, building your product, finding early customers (i.e. persistently following up with 1000s of potential customer leads just to get initial feedback and potentially a pilot), creating content, fundraising, strategizing, day-to-day project management — and all of these are just the basic requirements to launch something. And not to forget family time and personal time to exercise, eat and sleep. Do you really have time to attend that flashy startup conference? What will you really get out of it? Do you have the 4 hours (+ the recovery time) for that happy hour? Is it worth spending countless hours chasing investors before you have initial customer interest? Would it make sense for you to spend X hours on design / social media posts at this stage of your project? While only you can answer these questions and figure out your own priorities, consciously monitoring your time (and your team’s) at the early stages and appropriately allocating time could directly mean a much higher chance of success — with more time allocated to building your product and listening to customers instead of doing other pointless activities. One of the YC speakers highlighted that a good way to think about whether something is worth spending time on is by assigning a dollar value to your time. You’d assign an annual value to your time, and then break it down to your “hourly rate”. This is not your market earning rate — . For example, if your newly launched startup has 3 cofounders, and you expect your startup to be valued at $6m by the end of the year, each of the cofounders is adding $2m in annual value to the company. If you expect to work 100 hours per week for 52 weeks per year on your startup, you’d be working a total of 5,200 hours this year, and your hourly rate would be $400 ($2m / 5200; rounded up). this is the value you are adding to your startup So, if you want to attend TechCrunch Disrupt for 2 days for 6 hours/day, that would cost you 12 hours or $4,800 in time — which is in addition to the conference tickets and other direct expenses. V. Tracking weekly growth for one main performance metric We had to report our weekly growth metrics to the YC team; the growth of all startups in our team was also discussed on our weekly group office hours. YC has always placed heavy weight on tracking and improving weekly growth rates. The best metric to track would be net revenue — it’s the direct measure or your growth and performance. However, since many early stage startups are pre-revenue or don’t have significant revenue, they picked other relevant metrics such as number of users, weeks to launch (not a great metric!) etc. Startups can and often do change their core metrics regularly as they grow. We picked “booked revenue” to track our weekly growth — with a definition that was applicable to our business model. It was very humbling to see real growth rates typed out and discussed on a weekly basis — and really gave us a new sense of focus. . While I have read and heard arguments against this tracking methodology, living through it for 10 weeks during the program convinced us on the effectiveness and importance of it. There are numerous theories and concepts on tracking metrics / measuring what matters (OKRs) and we will likely dive into those if/when appropriate — for now, the simple practice of establishing and tracking one metric worked well for us, and is a great habit we took away from YC SS. After all the noise was stripped away, optimizing that single metric is all that mattered “A good growth rate during YC is 5–7% a week. If you can hit 10% a week you’re doing exceptionally well. If you can only manage 1%, it’s a sign you haven’t yet figured out what you’re doing.” — Paul Graham, Y Combinator Cofounder VI. Not all startups are venture backable, and not all will be / want to be unicorns Another thing I’d chalk up to Silicon Valley insanity is only considering “unicorn” ideas and disregarding everything else. Founders are generally sold on chasing investors early on in today’s environment, which may not often be in the best interest. You can make something people want, and still not be venture backable — if your market isn’t big enough, if your market isn’t growing fast enough, if you don’t have sufficient defensibility — you can still build a great business, but chasing investors may be a waste of time in that case. It is perfectly OK to build a “non-venture backable” business — you should worry about your customers and making something people want, not about being a VC target. This was surprising advice from a startup accelerator that is the top hunting ground for Silicon Valley funds. Exploring all sources of capital is crucial — even if you fall under the VC target market. VCs are in the business of investing, and hence incentivized on promoting the idea of venture funding to founders. While capital is a great tool to have to beat out your competition, you must determine if your company really needs that capital, what sources work best for you, and what partners (investors) work best for you. Fundraising too much too fast has led to the downfall of many companies, and while it may seem a “good problem to have”, your time is truly better spent building your company than chasing investors if you don’t need to. The good investors realize this too and are generally quick to commit when they are interested, and work in the best interest of founders and the companies. At a very high level, some questions to consider when you are determining if you are “VC backable”: - Is your target market large enough? (This must be a bottom-up number i.e. price of your product * total number of potential buyers). Your valuation will depend on your business model, among other things. If you are (a) a SaaS business, you may only need to have $150–200m in ARR to reach a $1bn valuation, but if you (b) sell one-time products, you may need $1bn in sales to reach a $1bn valuation (assuming growth and other factors are also favorable). Calculating backwards, if you estimate capturing 1% of your target market at exit, for (a) you’d need a target market of $15–20bn, but for (b) you’d need a target market of $100bn. - Is your target market growing meaningfully year over year? - What are the competitive dynamics in your target market? - What is your defensibility? Do you have significant IP or differentiation? VII. Prioritizing self-care to win in the long-term One of the best sessions of the program focused on self-care for founders. You can’t build a company if you are not mentally and physically in good shape. Establishing basic routines for sleeping, exercising and taking time off, along with good dietary habits, can go a long way in keeping your spirits up and maintaining your balance during the frequent lows during the entrepreneurial journey. While this concept may feel like common sense, . founders often fail to prioritize self-care, thereby doing a disservice to not only themselves but also their team and all their company’s stakeholders Aptly titled “How to Win”, the session by Daniel Gross was cited as the best session of the entire program by many participants (if I had to recommend watching just one YC SS video, I’d recommend this one): There were numerous other great takeaways on hiring, product design and more — but the above seven were the most meaningful for my team and me. You can watch all the 2018 Startup School session videos here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzVbFeiEbds&list=PLQ-uHSnFig5NVnJ_cLWM7dLuMQRDeekoX The next YC Startup School program will be held in July — you can join their waitlist here: https://www.startupschool.org

Seven Key Takeaways from Our Journey Through Y Combinator’s Startup School

, a free 10-week online course organized by , just graduated its second annual class. In my opinion, it’s the perfect program for early-stage startups. The lessons and accountability make the time investment well worth it. Startup School Y Combinator In this post, I’ll dive into exactly why I found the program so valuable, including my top takeaways. What is Startup School? Think of Startup School as “YC light.” In many ways, it’s like the full YC program, minus relocating to Silicon Valley and a $150,000 equity investment. What was included this year: Weekly group mentorship sessions Several per week video lectures A forum for mutual support and accountability Goal tracking Deals from service providers (e.g. Microsoft Azure and Stripe Atlas) An opportunity for 100 companies to a receive an equity-free $10,000 grant The video lectures—from some of the brightest minds in Silicon Valley—are to watch. available for anyone YC accidentally sent acceptance emails to more companies than it had allocated space for. They by deciding to accept all startups that applied (more than 15,000!) into the program. turned a mistake into an opportunity It’s great to see YC taking a taste of their own medicine and scaling their insights far beyond the startups they invest in. Before Startup School Before I get into my top insights from Startup School, I think it makes sense to put my startup journey into context. My company, SimpleBulb, is addressing the problem of unhealthy light. Our first product, , is a low-blue light bulb for healthy sleep. Bedtime Bulb is used in the evening to reduce sleep interruption from artificial light. Bedtime Bulb Our MVP, Bedtime Bulb The idea for Bedtime Bulb did not come out of left field. It was preceded by a lifelong obsession with light and multiple attempts to solve the issue of nighttime blue light. You can learn more about the backstory . in this post When Startup School began at the end of August, I had a product and a few dozen pre-orders in hand. Early users loved the product, which I am grateful for because it can be difficult and expensive to iterate on hardware. The metric I decided to track was the weekly number of units sold. I was planning a Kickstarter launch at the time, but I was daunted by the challenge. Historical data showed that most of the top campaigns were fully funded within the first two days and then “rode the wave” of media promotion and other follow-on effects. Because Kickstarter is not the best platform for organic discovery, I would have to drive massive amounts of traffic to the campaign—this can be incredibly costly and challenging. Just go sell! During the first group office hours session, I introduced my startup and what I planned to do during the program. Our group mentor, , a YC alum (Founder of testmunk, YC S12), was very kind but asked challenging questions. Just hearing myself explain the pre-order program and Kickstarter plan out loud made it sound really complicated, and I realized I had to do something much simpler. Martin Poschenrieder YC core tenet #1: launch early One of YC’s is that you should launch before you think you are ready, even if you are embarrassed about the product’s state. I had a product that worked well that early users loved—well beyond the stage of embarrassment—so what was I waiting for by delaying the official launch? core tenets The group convinced me to just go sell, and within two weeks the product was in stock . It turned out to be a great move, as we’ve sold hundreds of units to date with a weekly average growth rate of 28%. on Amazon The lesson to go sell was so simple and obvious, yet I had tried to overcomplicate it. By choosing to sell, I am able to get more customer feedback, prove demand, and iterate more quickly. The startup habit That first office hours session was so immensely valuable, I could have stopped there and been in an excellent position. It’s not to say the rest of the program wasn’t helpful—it was by far. But showing up for office hours with an open mind, tracking metrics, and watching lectures for 10 weeks helped me in a way that is perhaps a little less obvious. Some literature says that it takes , on average, to form a new habit. Startup School lasted 10 weeks, or approximately 70 days. Perhaps this is no coincidence. 66 days Coming out of Startup School, I feel so much more motivated to continue pushing for weekly growth. I know the roller coaster ride is far from over, but I feel I have more of an open mind to take whatever comes our way. I’ve created a startup habit. After Startup School Startup School is over, but I’m taking with me new friendships, new ideas, and a lot more motivation to work on my startup. Bedtime Bulb has now launched in the and . In ten weeks, we’ve scaled to the point that we might sell out before the next factory shipment arrives. We’re actively working on future offerings and refining our messaging. And we’re about to launch our seed fundraising round so that we can scale the product line, build a diverse team, and ultimately change the world through healthy light. U.S. Canada Different startups are bound to get something different than we got out of Startup School. But if you show up every week with an open mind, you are bound to have a positive experience and to form your own startup habit. Interested in what we’re up to with ? Check out or . Bedtime Bulb our blog reach out directly

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