Getting into Y Combinator Is Tougher Than It’s Ever Been

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-08-10/y-combinator-applications-show-access-is-the-toughest-ever

by mfiguiere • 3 years ago

25 16 3 years ago

bloomberg.com

skilled• 3 years ago

https://archive.is/XXj2h

joewhale• 3 years ago

You just need to come from an elite school and a faang and use the two letters “ai” in your pitch deck.

tmpz22• 3 years ago

This but unironically.

YC wants companies with huge upside that are of the size and timing they have experience and ability to assist in.

After that they pick founders and engineers that they deem to have a higher chance of success - which are usually FANNG engineers or tenured founders.

If you want to get in outside this clique you need to offer something compelling - and most applicants will not have something more compelling then FANNG experience.

ren_engineer2• 3 years ago

does FAANG even mean much anymore? The hiring standards at those companies dropped massively in the last 5 years and the majority are just leetcode grinders who would make terrible founders in most cases

techdragon2• 3 years ago

Wow that’s disheartening, almost makes me think it’s not worth applying… I’m outside the USA doing a hard tech problem involving a difficult industry with high capital costs… I think my chances are basically zero, why would YCombinator think some random company from Australia can revolutionise space construction…

Really disheartening when you add the fact they added a special early AI around to deal with the thousands of AI startups ( most of which are probably just built on ChatGPT and don’t have a lot of long term value proposition as the real value is coming from OpenAI’s APIs and then adding a thin layer of prompt engineering, a dash of industry specific knowledge, and a bunch of marketing, doesn’t really seem like something that companies won’t be able to easily replicate )

jackling2• 3 years ago

Your company sounds really interesting. What part of space construction are you trying to revolutionize?

techdragon2• 3 years ago

We’re trying to revolutionise most of it… because at the moment everything we use in space has to be built on earth and launched in one piece on a rocket big enough to launch it one piece… and made tough enough to be launched on a violently shaking rocket… and everything has to be made bulletproof because once it’s up there it’s impossible to repair… all of which makes basically any space construction project extremely expensive to engineer… the only shortcuts are mass production of identical disposable units like planet labs doves or spacex starlink… which are kind of wasteful but work if you have a cheap enough ride into space…

But building anything in space is a massive set of challenges of its own … a space station module requires skilled welding of a pressure vessel, fitting a satellite requires careful cable management and manipulation of sensitive components… low earth orbit is practically a low density oxygen plasma compared to higher orbits (and oxygen plasma will oxidise just about anything given enough time) …

We analysed a lot of options and ended up designing (and are slowly building due to limited budget) a modular system of robotic spacecraft designed to work together in teams like a construction or assembly team, able to work on larger projects like space station modules or simple things like assembling a cubesat from a bin of parts… and designed to handle both construction and maintenance so that we can provide value to the massive amount of existing assets already in space, and because it’s a multi element system capable of maintenance and repair work, each robot can be more low cost and straightforward, like a Bobcat you can fit a bucket or dozer blade or jackhammer or claw to… they can swap tools on each other just like when you use one bobcat to lift a heavy tool up off the ground for attachment to another bobcat, and when one breaks the others can open it up and replace what’s broken…

It seems a lot more complicated when it’s described out in terms of capabilities, but fundamentally there’s a small number of modular components and a handful of support systems that are much simpler than the primary robot platform units are.

The website doesn’t have a lot of PR material at the moment since most of the effort is still on engineering design and prototyping work, but the website https://www.tetraorbital.com will have more information when we have stuff to show, it also has contact info for more specific enquires, and the mailing list is a zero fluff no spam future announcement only list (we’ve literally not sent a single message to it yet since there’s no PR or announcement material to share yet)

fakedang3• 3 years ago

Honestly, talking from experience, your best bet is to network with folks in the space industry and then get in touch with folks in the American space sector through them. Eventually you will 100% have to have a major American presence, even if you have some functions in Australia. Just shifting ops from the UK to the US gave us a significant bump in cred when working with some major American aerospace players.

Alternatively, you could also work with other countries' space sectors, with the most accessible being the EU's industry, which is mostly dominated by French companies. The Eurosatory summit is often a good place to network with some of the mid-upper level leadership of these EU companies.

Good luck!

Getting into Y Combinator Is Tougher Than It’s Ever Been

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