Founder recommendation after working at a YC startup can help get you into YC

http://blog.ycombinator.com/one-surprising-hack-to-get-into-yc

by BIackSwan • 11 years ago

38 48 11 years ago

blog.ycombinator.com

icpmacdo• 11 years ago

This is frustrating for international applicants

baristaGeek• 11 years ago

We can always work remotely or as overseas contractors

ffn• 11 years ago

Yes, if your goal is to get into YC, but I would argue that, as a startup founder, your goal should be building your process and getting it to market. YC, for all positive hype they get, will not help you build your product, design your process, or give you users if you didn't have the fortitude to get it in the first place. If building a startup is driving on the highway, then getting into YC is driving 95 mph, while just doing it on your own is driving 55 mph; there are more risks and deadlines involved, and there is no guarantee you will reach your destination... But if you do, it happened really quickly and everyone else is impressed.

Doing a startup is the 21st century version of the 7th century practice of going on a religious pilgrimage. And YC is a wealthy kingdom somewhere along the way; it is neither your destination nor an absolutely necessary via-point (though it is refreshing to go there). Your startup is your journey, the roads you trailblazed is your business, and the journey itself starts with you and it ends with you. YC might help you on your way, but it won't and can't carry you (incidentally, the only thing that gets your through your worst moments is blind and obstinate faith, which is surprising because this hasn't changed despite all the centuries)

mildbow6• 11 years ago

That's cool.

References can't hurt. And, if you don't have a concrete next step then working with/for like-minded people is a blast.

But, if you really want to start something, start it. There are no gatekeepers. You don't need to build someone else's dream before you build yours.

As an aside, do we have some numbers on how many YC employees went on to start companies that are now in YC? Compared to say: ex-Google/facebook employees?

mhartl2• 11 years ago

In this context, it may also be worth noting that (as I think PG wrote somewhere) YC can tell the difference between a recommendation made as a favor to the applicant and a recommendation made as a favor to YC. Obviously, it's much better to be in the latter category.

phamilton2• 11 years ago

I think there's actually a checkbox when submitting a recommendation as an alum. (not kidding)

mhartl2• 11 years ago

I'm a YC alum myself. There was no such checkbox the last time I made a recommendation, but that was a while ago, so it may have changed.

soneca• 11 years ago

No doubt a step in the direction of the Ivy League style of biased selection. Sure, you can say (and mean) that non related people still have a chance to get in, but this action spoke louder than the words.

I not saying YC is elitist, because the since-the-beginning action of actually reading ALL applications, no matter from who, says a lot about the meaning to accept people with no connection at all to YC ecossystem.

But, said that, this announced action is a step on the opposite direction. I would appreciate another step in the direction of "we give a fair chance to not well connected people". Maybe some active recruiting actions on other places outside Silicon Valley.

As a double counter-example, 500startups do a lot of active recruiting outside USA. But, at least in Brazil, to have a real chance on getting in, you need the personal approval of a particular individual (Beddy Yang) to endorse your application. Having an application from Brazil, with no endorsement from this person, is as good as not applying at all. So solve one problem, but creating another to the openness of the selection process.

mildbow6• 11 years ago

Well. YC is elitist. At some point, just based on volume you have to be selective in a way that's perceived as being elitist.

You have 5 applicants. They all look great/same. One of them has a reference you can trust. OF COURSE you weigh that. Why wouldn't you use a signal if you thought it might make a difference?

The fix from the applicants side isn't to try to put that in your resume (it's just a nice to have, hardly worth the X years it will take out of you life).

The fix is to differentiate yourself in terms of product and traction because that's the only way completely within your control.

ps: I agree with the general gist of your comment though :)

sama3• 11 years ago

The great majority of people we fund have no connection to us whatsoever.

YC partners do dozens of events every year in the US and dozens more in the rest of the world to reach out to people we don't have any connection to.

A great idea, product, market, traction, etc. will always carry more weight than anything else. As much as there is any single secret to YC's success (other than not having a coworking space), being willing to talk to people with no connection to us is it.

That said, we definitely take note of recommendations from YC founders about great people they've worked with, and we should be upfront about that.

Also, we think announcing this will help YC companies recruit, and anything we can do to help YC companies we like to do.

sparkzilla• 11 years ago

Hi Sam, I hope you will consider solving these perception problems by making a more transparent and open application process, that weighs the value of each attribute on the application. The question being, for example, how much more does a good idea carry weight than a personal connection? Or how much more does a good team carry more weight than a limited, but clear market focus? This is surely something that you do internally when making your choice, and I think there is no harm in expressing it externally. It will help you attract more of what you want, while giving potential applicants more information about what you want. Personally, I felt frustrated in my last YC application that other teams with seemingly lesser abilities and project scope were accepted over our application, and it would be good for all concerned to be able to provide better feedback than simply, "we make mistakes sometimes'.

fiatmoney• 11 years ago

Ironically, the Ivy League has been fantastically successful as an ongoing financial concern (see, eg, the growth of Harvard's endowment over time).

thaumaturgy2• 11 years ago

surprising => weird

hack => trick

Happens a bit in sama's and pg's comments too. Kind of funny, I guess nobody's immune to writing buzzfeed posts.

sama3• 11 years ago

this was intentional buzzfeed satire :)

angersock• 11 years ago

"midwestern investors hate this guy"

zb2• 11 years ago

Technically this was more of a parody rather than satire. Satire would imply that you were making a deeper statement about Buzzfeed. In fact you were just re-using the form in a joke-y way as a linkbait headline for something unrelated.

Hopefully the mods will enforce the HN guidelines and rename this submission with a non-linkbaity title :)

mildbow6• 11 years ago

"hack"?

That's supposed to be a way to get around the system. Even "trick" implies some form of short-circuiting.

This, however, says "work a few years and we might look at your application a little more closely" so you can get into the system.

Lols.

at-fates-hands• 11 years ago

I actually laughed when I read this.

If I have worked at a YC company, I get extra startup cred, but no worries, if you don't have that recommendation then we're still cool - right? Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

Announcing there's a way to getting special treatment, then completely backing off your original statement? Brilliant.

staunch2• 11 years ago

Current top seed investors make investment decisions (in pre-traction startups) almost entirely based on their own relatability to the founders, because it takes so much more work to judge actual merit so early.

But top startups make their hiring decisions almost entirely based on the skills of the candidates, because they can't afford to be at all self-indulgent. So this probably is a good thing and serves as a merit-based backdoor for some otherwise underestimated people.

nedwin• 11 years ago

More than a few of the companies you might call "top startups" hire exclusively from the alma mater of their founders. ie Stanford, Harvard. Still hiring exceptional developers but with a slant on where they are coming from.

staunch2• 11 years ago

I'd call those "hot startups" myself and they tend not to be hot for long.

robotresearcher2• 11 years ago

This was a strange move. Personal references are normal, useful and understood.

But how does making a a formal policy and public announcement help YC or applicants? It looks and smells bad from the outside. I winced when I read it.

Imagine if beloved Stanford made that announcement. They would not be so daft.

fhsdjejk• 11 years ago

An announcement like

"If you've worked with a Stanford professor and have a positive reference from them, we will take that into account on your application."

That sounds like a totally sensible (as well as totally ethical) thing do do!

blueprint• 11 years ago

However, that's not exactly what was announced. "Extra consideration" is what was offered in exchange for a good reference.

But what exactly constitutes, "extra consideration"?

It's the mandate of YC to find companies worth investing in and founders who are worth having a relationship with. So it's in YC's best interest to give all extra consideration possible to every single candidate. No?

So it sounds to me like it's a matter of giving additional preference to such candidates.

I was invited to interview at YC a few years ago and they declined to get involved with my venture. Indeed, I was quite a bit less experienced at that time, and I didn't realize that YC's real mandate is to find at least one company in each batch that will be a billion dollar company. My business model wasn't geared for that kind of growth, so I must not have known what I was doing when I applied to YC. However, if they had decided to provide me "extra consideration", they might have informed me of their feedback /before/ rejecting me instead of /after/ rejecting me, and then instead judged me on the merit of how I treated their feedback. In other words, to have judged me based on my capacity to learn.

Well, I didn't get funded that day, but I did meet one of the founders of a company that graduated YC the year before. He very soon after offered me a job as their first engineering hire. I worked with that YC company for a while, and it was there that I found out that just having gone to YC doesn't make a company's founders into true leaders. I saw the same thing at a Tech Stars company where I worked thereafter.

After all, genuine leadership is a function of individual truthfulness. In my experience, such a thing is only won through hard training by learning from a truthful person, and/or hard trials while trying to live truthfully.

However, one of the problems is that only truthful people can recognize and understand other truthful people. Not being able to recognize others' capacity without truthfulness, we need to be very careful about trusting our own judgements.

In that case, is the so-called "extra consideration" really able to be "extra consideration" of the person themselves, or is it simply the application of favor by using the heuristic of the candidate having worked under a YC grad?

robotresearcher2• 11 years ago

1) Can you find such an announcement or formal policy?

2) 'take into account' is not 'give your YC application extra consideration'. The former is neutral with regard to resource usage, the latter is not.

mildbow6• 11 years ago

It helps them recruit young/naive devs for their portfolio companies.

That's it.

But it also hurts YC. They are selling out the value of "we will look at your application regardless of your network" which will mean lots of founders without SV networks will self-select out of applying. It compounds the problem YC has with getting experienced people to apply.

Also, everything I've heard about sama indicates he networks amazingly well. So, it probably makes sense for him to give advice that promotes other people to do the same as a way to success.

bcrawl• 11 years ago

Sounds like a pitch to fill open positions at YC funded companies. Nothing wrong with it, just the verbiage of the post -- "surprising hack". It is a hack which feels like Sam just thought up of or made it up. Because otherwise, there is no need to correlate working for YC as a hack to get into YC.

There were other "surprising hacks" always mentioned here, have a solid product with good group, have a product which makes money, get a recommendation from other YC alumni etc.

This, this just sounds like, "hey, we want you to work for our companies. In case you ever want to start one, we will look at your app favorably then."

LukeShu• 11 years ago

I believe the title is a joke on the spammy ads on various websites: "One (surprising|weird|clever) (trick|secret) to ${common_desire}".

benologist• 11 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indentured_servant

cperciva3• 11 years ago

If a reference from a YC-funded employer is useful, does the same apply to a YC-funded customer?

mildbow6• 11 years ago

Obviously it depends on the recommendation, but assuming both being equal, it's an interesting question.

The former talks about getting a stamp of approval on the team while the latter talks about a stamp of approval on the execution/product.

I would think the latter would be the one to carry a lot more weight by default.

If this were about a16z, I would guess the latter. Since it's about YC, I can't hazard a guess.

cperciva3• 11 years ago

Right. I'm asking this because of my experience running Tarsnap -- not that I think I would need any help in getting into YC if I decided that I wanted to drink the kool-aid and move to the bay area, but because I figure there must be plenty of other small companies building products which are used within the YC "family".

It would be a shame if YC missed out on good investments simply because their founders were too busy successfully running their own companies to have an opportunity to work at a YC-funded company.

edoceo• 11 years ago

My secret hack for getting accelerator / investor interest is...wait for it...PAYING CUSTOMERS

chrisdbaldwin• 11 years ago

There are a number of cognitive biases that would suggest this is a bad idea, Sam. I'll leave you to decide which ones are particularly egregious.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

gyardley• 11 years ago

This is like announcing the earth is round, no? Known quantities trump unknown quantities.

If you're reading this post and thinking 'well, that sucks', it's important to realize that pretty much everything everywhere works the same way.

petervandijck• 11 years ago

And you won't believe what happened next!

Founder recommendation after working at a YC startup can help get you into YC

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