Applications open for winter 2010 YC funding

http://ycombinator.com/2010changes.html

by pg • 17 years ago

110 52 17 years ago

ycombinator.com

vegashacker2• 17 years ago

4 founders should get $23k, right?

cperciva5• 17 years ago

No: "we're going to invest $11k + $3k per founder, for up to 3 founders"

vegashacker2• 17 years ago

Whoops! Thanks. I think I was distracted because at first I thought "k" was the variable representing # of founders, and then when I figured that out... ah, forget it. I'm an idiot.

palsecam• 17 years ago

"Starting in winter 2010, we're going to invest $11k + $3k per founder, for up to 3 founders. So now 1 founder will get $14k, 2 $17k, 3 $20k, and 4 $20k."

csomar2• 17 years ago

If I understood well, 4 = 3 because the costs of 4 persons are near to the costs of 3 (in YC point of view)

cperciva5• 17 years ago

we may ask some YC alumni to help us review applications

Why limit this to YC alumni? Obviously you don't want to fully "crowdsource" the process (both for reasons of quality and for reasons of confidentiality); and YC alumni presumably have an advantage of knowing what being in YC is like -- but conversely, using YC alumni has the disadvantages that (a) they're liable to be busy running startups, and (b) there's a good chance that they would fall into the people-like-us trap.

Can't you think of any smart and trustworthy non-YC-alumni?

catch23• 17 years ago

Shouldn't big name VCs like Sequoia do the same? I think confidentiality is probably the biggest reason. Who else would YC trust better than their previously funded startups?

csomar2• 17 years ago

not 1 alumni review 5 applications, but 5 alumni review 1 application. There gonna be much opinions, which is better.

dbul2• 17 years ago

We haven't decided for sure, but we have to change something, because reading all the applications is becoming overwhelming.

Why not have someone create a simple, private site which makes salient application information: a screenshot which may lead to the site's demo, video of founders, answers to questions. Then certain trusted people, partners or alumni, can rate the applicants over time. Instead of going days without shaving and being exhausted, you could spend a few minutes each day flipping through applications. Surely over time those you are interested in for an interview will be apparent. I'm pretty sure there was a reason not to use this approach, but it may be worth it to bring it up again.

msg2• 17 years ago

Maybe the site could run news.yc. YC alumni get accounts and vote up good applications. The cream rises to the top.

cperciva5• 17 years ago

I don't think voting would be a good way to do this. Now, YC applications are different from scholarship applications or honourary degree nominations (which are the areas where I have the most experience judging); but if they're not too different, there are going to be some very good applications which most people don't immediately recognize as good. I often find that out of a large committee, some of the best applications are only noticed by one person -- but when he/she says "seriously, I think this one is really worth looking at", everybody else will look closely enough to recognize the application's merits. Simply having everybody vote yea/nay will result in obscure applications being lost when people default to nay.

Everest• 17 years ago

I don't think that this system necessarily would require a strict yes / no vote. I would imagine interesting commentary and feedback springing up around each idea. This system would give the entrepreneur a chance to defend his/her idea or iterate on some of the shortcomings others address. PG et al are betting on this iterative process occurring during YC anyway, why not accelerate it by making it part of the application process?

newacc• 17 years ago

Pg and team can use online web-app tool such as "Decide Already" - it makes easy for organizations and groups to come to a decision about anything.

http://www.decidealready.com/

richesh• 17 years ago

Maybe they can use http://alpha.crowdmind.com to facilitate the application review process. Going to release private group collaboration functionality soon, this could help when comparing the applications.

pg4• 17 years ago

Half the groups who apply only do it in the last day or two before the deadline.

dbul2• 17 years ago

Eliminate an explicit deadline. It may affect the applicant pool at first, but subsequent iterations should be normalized.

kirubakaran3• 17 years ago

The amount is more solo-founder friendly than before. Has YC become more solo-founder friendly than before?

dannyr• 17 years ago

I wonder how many solo founders are there in YC. Anybody know any of them?

cperciva5• 17 years ago

I don't know any examples, people have asked on several occasions how many single-founder companies YC funds, and IIRC pg said it was roughly 5% of the companies.

listic• 17 years ago

I think they just don't want to financially incentivize bringing on unnecessary people as founders.

pg4• 17 years ago

Nothing has changed in that respect. We rarely accept single founders and when we do we usually encourage them to get a cofounder before YC starts. So the $14k for a single founder is more of theoretical possibility.

kwamenum86• 17 years ago

Is it me or is this application coming out much sooner than it has in the past? Not complaining though- this is always a welcome YC submission.

pg4• 17 years ago

We've been getting lots of people asking about it. Maybe it was the Inc article.

sutro• 17 years ago

PG, just outsource the entire selection process to Mechanical Turk. It could be an experiment similar to that proposed in the finance classic "A Random Walk Down Wall Street" in which a blindfolded monkey throwing darts at a stock page out-invests stock-picking experts. If Mechanical Turk picks a more successful crop of startups than the YCombinator average, you will have succeeded in making yourself completely redundant -- a worthy goal of any enlightened manager.

byrneseyeview• 17 years ago

That only works until enough people start doing it. If you think that blind faith in quantitative factors beats a qualitative analysis of the effects of such faith, I can probably rustle up a few CDOs to sell you.

kirubakaran3• 17 years ago

If the applicants have a demo-ready B2C product, MTs [1] might even be consistently better at picking winners than YC, as the ultimate success depends on what MTs think, since MTs[2] approx= common people approx= customers.

[1] Given enough MTs

[2] Provided you restrict allowed MT demographic to match your target market

bigbang• 17 years ago

Except that I believe (from YC terms) founders(and thier ability to persevere) are more important than thier ideas.

vaksel2• 17 years ago

why not just hire someone to help out? Pay them by charging a small($10) application fee to filter out the bs applications.

wheels2• 17 years ago

Because the sort of people that would work for $10 aren't the ones you want reviewing funding applications.

vaksel2• 17 years ago

I'm not saying that the person would review all the apps at $10/pop. Just the extra that pg can't manage.

+ its not like it'd be peanuts. Let's say YC gets 1,000 applications this summer. That'd be $10-20-$100K(depending on how much they'd charge) to go towards the extra person to review the app.

I dunno about you, but 10-20-100K for a month's worth of work is hardly peanuts. If you use the $100 price point, that's $200K/yr just to review funding apps for 2 months. Plenty of cash to "hire" some angel investor as a "consultant", who'd be able to do this and still have the time to do his regular "job", the other 10 months out of the year.

+ talk about synergy, the angel investor would be able to get in on the ground floor, to fund the program graduates at show and tell, and if pg passes on some project that the angel thinks has merit, he can fund them outside of YC.

joez2• 17 years ago

Any tips for the application? (Other than the obligatory, don't ask on HN)

We have a solid business plan, plenty of lines of code and are looking forward to applying.

pg4• 17 years ago

I'm going to write something about how to apply. I've been meaning to for years.

rms• 17 years ago

Make the questions look easy.

joez2• 17 years ago

You made my question look easy!

I had to think about it but I do get what you mean. Let me see if I can summarize. If one can make difficult questions seem trivial, then it shows potential.

Thanks.

zackattack• 17 years ago

Will you read every application all the way through?

pclark• 17 years ago

are startups allowed to reapply? we didn't get in last time, but we're still making awesome progress ...

Ardit20• 17 years ago

I have been on this site for like a long time, but could someone explain thoroughly what is it that they are funding, how it really works, do they get any percentage of the company in return and why would anyone want to be funded by Mr. Graham?

mshafrir• 17 years ago

http://ycombinator.com/about.html

bjnortier• 17 years ago

The Application Form link (http://news.ycombinator.com/apply) still results in:

"Sorry, but applications for summer 2009 are now closed. Check back in a few months for the application form for winter 2010."

lsb• 17 years ago

Perhaps that how they're going to reduce the number of applications to read.

Applications open for winter 2010 YC funding

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