Guide to applying to YC – from a founder who was accepted on the third try

[rebryk]

For the last year, I checked more than 100 YC applications of other founders and many of them have the same repetitive issues.

So I prepared a simple guide with examples that will help founders build successful applications and avoid common pitfalls.

I've personally applied for YC three times, and was accepted only on the third time with Fluently.

This guide is based on my personal experience and was reviewed by other YC alumni. However, I would be glad if you could share your thoughts on that too.

[carlgreene]

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

Not to bag on anyone who’s in YC right now, but it seems to be going the way of many ivy leagues - still meaningful, but very much not the same proxy for extraordinary it once was.

[setgree]

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

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

[tptacek]

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

[yumraj]

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

I believe the same is true for YC. The primary value is being able to claim that you’re funded by YC and you were part of a cohort. That opens doors, to both investors as well as potential partners. The education/advice is standard and freely available everywhere.

[fakedang]

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

YC's huge advantage is that they have an internal network of startups who support each other with YC money as customers, which then get pushed to VCs as revenue growth numbers. VCs have learnt to get in on the gravy train early, because the brand-name still carries value downstream. For no-name startups and no-name founders with no fancy universities (who are increasingly being ignored), this is a huge disadvantage.

If you want to look at YC's actual success rate, take a look at any of their public market companies' performance. Hint, none of them have outperformed their IPO price. In fact, many of them only found their ways into exits through the SPAC frenzy of 2021.

[LanceJones]

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

[dbbk]

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

[preommr]

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

[tptacek]

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

I'm sure a lot of it is pure slop, just a bunch of prompts and a CRUD app. But I wouldn't be so quick to assume that anybody talking about "AI" is just a bunch of prompts.

[skyfaller]

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

Without looking carefully, I can't tell which ones are generative AI / boiling the oceans to bullshit you; it's possible that some of these are legit uses of machine learning, which existed before ChatGPT and will hopefully continue to exist in the future. But I bet it's all ethically questionable bullshit.

Forerunner AI jumps out as a likely ethical black hole, based on its one line description "Copilot for aerospace engineers making rockets, munitions, satellites." On top of code theft, water use, emissions, and the many other horrors of Copilot and its ilk, we can also add war profiteering.

EDIT: Prediction: YC's next batch will include a startup trying to replicate whatever the fuck this is: https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/

[senko]

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

So no, not a requirement. OTOH if you do come with an AI idea, they won't reject you just because they already accepted a few hundred others :)

[rebryk]

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

[burcs]

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

YCombinator is a tech investor, of course they are investing in the future. It just so happens that in this current tech cycle AI is the future.

[atleastoptimal]

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

[woadwarrior01]

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

[tomcam]

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

[dgfitz]

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

So the risk is $dayjob unless you’re a serial founder, the reward is the connections and money to float for a few months, while selling I think 10% of your company? The odds of your idea working out, even under the umbrella, aren’t great. Is that accurate?

[senko]

My feeling is that if you think quitting the day job is risky, you probably won't fit the profile YC and VCs look for.

YC is an enormous brand in the VC and startup industry, and as a YC startup doors open to you that would be harder to pry open otherwise. The connections, and willingness of people to "pay it forward" are a huge (probably biggest) asset.

The odds of your idea working are not great, that's correct. YC does encourage you to experiment and fail fast so you have time to adapt the idea or try another one. If all fails, having had a YC startup means it'll be easy to get into other startups (if you like the lifestyle - and you really have to like it!).

That sad, YC is what you make of it. You get encouragement and support but nobody's going to force you to take advantage of all the things they have to offer.

Watch a few episodes of https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQ-uHSnFig5Nd98Sc9I-k... If you get a feeling "omg I want to work with those guys", then you might be a fit. If you get a feeling of "dude, no", then you're probably not a fit.

[threeseed]

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

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

[threeseed]

I know someone who was in a recent batch.

He said that 95% of the batch are between 20 and 30, mostly AI and mostly US.

There are exceptions to the rule but let's not pretend there isn't a YC thesis.

[mdolon]

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

[rebryk]

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

[ldjkfkdsjnv]

Go to ivy league school + ai

raising pre-seed venture capital is more similar to getting hired at an investment bank (as an entry level/post mba banker) than it is to starting a company

[burcs]

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

I literally went to the cheapest state school in rural Pennsylvania and still was accepted into YC. My co-founder didn't even finish college, at some point I think people just want to make excuses.

Also — I don't understand your second point. It's an accelerator. Capital is part and parcel when it comes to accelerating.