Do YC after you graduate: Early decision for students

[snowmaker]

We announced something today at YC called Early Decision, specifically for students. It's a relatively small change, but we thought people might be interested to hear the thinking behind it, even if you don't happen to be a student graduating this year.

A year ago, YC went from running 2 batches / year to 4 batches / year. We did this because we wanted to give founders more flexibility to do YC at the right time for them. It seems to have worked - a lot of founders have told us that they were only able to do YC because the new schedule fit their timeline.

Early Decision was driven by the same motivation. We talked to a lot of college students, and we learned that most graduating seniors interview for their after-graduation job in the fall of their senior year. For the ones who are interested in doing their own startup, this creates a bit of a dilemma. If they don't interview for jobs in the fall in order to apply to YC later, they're risking that they might be left without any options.

We created Early Decision so that they can apply to YC at the same time they're doing recruiting for regular jobs, the fall of their senior year. If they get into YC, they can confidently turn down their other job offers without worrying they'll be left without anything.

Note: this isn't really a new idea. We've quietly done this from time to time since 2018, but we didn't create a dedicated flow in the application software for it, so most people didn't realize it was an option. Hopefully by productizing and popularizing it, we'll make it easier for college seniors to start companies.

[FinnLobsien]

I think everyone criticizing this is comparing it to the wrong thing. Many ambitious students:

-graduate and work 100 hour+ weeks as investment banking associates.

-join other people's startups where they work crazy hours

-work hellish hours in PhDs/med school/law school

Yes, being a founder is hard and can be absolute hell at times. But so are some of the "normal" things ambitious students already do post-graduation.

It's not like YC is saying you either do an internship with free lunches, corporate yoga classes and kombucha on tap or you dive into the trenches of being a YC founder.

[snowmaker]

Yes, this is an excellent point.

[3pt14159]

I'm sorry but only at my most very dedicated periods of work did I work 100 hour weeks, and that was like 3 or 4 weeks tops. I highly doubt that anyone sustains a 100 hour work week for much longer. Eighty hour work weeks? Sure, that is doable, but sleeping at the job site because you are pulling a 100 hour work week is just not sustainable.

[doctorpangloss]

speaking only for recent graduates I know personally well: ambitious students also want to be writers, for example. If only it were so easy as writing more makes you a better writer! So if you have to sit around and get life experiences that are interesting to write about (a good way to be a good writer), do you want to do that while working for Stripe, drinking kombucha and getting free lunches and being able to live in New York? Yes. You don’t want to do that while being an investment banker or a doctor or a YC founder.

The thing is those kids still have massive cognitive gifts - I’m not going to use a loaded word like talented or whatever - and have worked very hard in the past. It’s just that the journey to the thing they want to do no longer rewards hours.

Paul Graham is like the Mr. Beast of seed investing. He wants to make the best SEED STAGE INVESTMENTS in the world, to mock a Mr. Beast PowerPoint. He doesn’t want to get the kids with the highest potential, or the kids who work the hardest. They are very sincere and supportive - I mean, who the hell in your life is willing to risk $525,000 on an idea with no traction?? - but they are not out to anoint a category of kids as the “ambitious” ones versus the unambitious ones. You can be ambitious about being a writer and find success and wind up writing very little!

[neilv]

If the funding is available immediately (not just an immediate commitment for funding once they start a batch), would it address the following problem I've run into a few times?

In the last year alone, I've had to bow out of co-founding two promising startups with good biz co-founders, because first-year MBA students wanted to finish their degree before they sought funding.

Two ways funding could help:

1. I couldn't afford to work over a year as a technical cofounder, executing in full-time startup mode like usually needs to be done, with no income. While they were part-time, and getting an MBA and networking out of it during this period. Even ramen lifestyle funding would've made this closer to an equitable balance of contribution and risk among the cofounders.

2. There's also the concern that MBA programs seem to push students to have a hypothetical startup, so there's always a chance that the MBA student won't be fully committed to actually do the startup once they graduate. Maybe accepted funding could make this a firmer commitment. (Even if there's no contractual obligation to pursue the startup, I'd guess that new MBA graduates don't want to burn bridges in the small world of investors, so would take the commitment fairly seriously.)

[snowmaker]

Yes, I think it would.

[aetherspawn]

Being able to burn away at a startup while you are studying would be great. Uni was the most productive time in my whole life due to all the free time.

[android521]

if one of the founders is an MBA graduate, your chance of success just drop 50%.

[yaacov]

If your cofounder isn’t full time, that’s not your cofounder. That’s a part time contractor who owns 50% of your company.

[guywithahat]

I've interviewed at a few YC companies, and the issue with really young companies is that they don't know anything about running a company. Experienced people don't want to work for a 27 year old, and so it's a bunch of people who don't know what they're doing, making promises out of ignorance and not delivering.

I'm tempted to think that YC knows better than I do here, but my experience suggests this is a bad idea. The worst managers I've had were inexperienced, and someone who's 22 won't know when they need someone experienced, or how to talk to customers. Many of them may be too nervous to act, and since they can apply under the safety of also applying for jobs they may not be as motivated. I suspect this is just a ploy to get more Stanford grads to apply but I'm not sure it's the best way to go about it.

[omosubi]

I don't know why there's so much negativity. I see this as a big win for students interested in it.

1. it's a short commitment - only 3 months. more time-bound opportunities should be available to kids coming out of school. too many people go straight to big finance/law/tech/etc and get stuck because they don't want to give up the salary or safety.

2. get access to a network that is very difficult to get access to otherwis

3. better status boost than most other things you could be doing. There are likely better status signals about someone's abilities/intellect than YC, but i'm guessing they are few for people in the valley.

4. Get to work on something you are interested in

5. learn a lot very quickly.

6. gives you a lot of optionality

yes, YC is trying to make money but they do seem intent on developing talent and this is a good avenue for that.

[snowmaker]

This is a good way of thinking about it!

[Illniyar]

Seems like a good thing for founders, doesn't force them to quit school to start a funded startup. Especially for under-privileged youths who might not be able to miss a high paying job opportunity or have no income for months.

Seems like a bad signal for YC though - if you aren't committed enough to quit school or at the very least reject job offers and do your startup anyway - feels like you might not be committed enough to do what it takes?

But if anyone does, YC knows how to pick founders with the right mindset.

[snowmaker]

I think there is some risk of that. But commitment isn't static. A lot of incredible companies started with founders who were just toying with an idea and weren't committed at all, then they became more committed over time as things started to work.

[solumos]

You should consider placing them into a 1 or 2 year “on the job training” program at another YC company before sticking them in a batch.

Maybe you could offer that as a “waitlist” option.

[dang]

YC has done that over the years and I believe is planning another such program. Not every prospective founder wants to do that, though, so there's a need for both options.

[cosmic_quanta]

I like that suggestion. Work experience at a startup is eye opening.

[umutisik]

It does make me uneasy that founding companies is becoming another tracked thing that people feel they can apply high-IQ pattern-matching to. Especially when startups are where first-principles thinking is the most valuable.

That being said, I can see this being useful to a lot of kids. Certainly beats going to grad school for someone who wants to start a company. Keep in mind that a 500K SAFE doesn't force a founder to go big or zero-out.

[evilfred]

Gotta catch em while they're young, naive, and malleable.

[cassonmars]

Does YC ever intend to revisit doing remote batches again?

There's many founders in the country who are just as driven and motivated, but have real-world situations that cannot allow uprooting themselves for several months, two very common ones:

- new parents

- disabled family members, or are themselves physically disabled

The discourse on Hacker News has frequently chastised companies demanding RTO, and some of the companies in your portfolio are remote-first (or remote-only), why does YC make the same kind of RTO demand with batches?

[snowmaker]

We might, and I'm sure you're right that there are many great founders not applying to do YC because they don't want to move here.

But I think it would be a better analogy to compare YC to a university, rather than to a company. It's true that many companies operate remotely very effectively. But essentially zero universities have stayed remote since the early days of the pandemic.

[solumos]

Because San Francisco is a truly singular place that drastically increases your odds of success in starting a venture-backed company by simply existing there (even temporarily).

[Maro]

There's also people who are driven, don't have a real-world situation that pins them to their location, but don't believe that they need to move to SF to do a startup, because they shouldn't have to..

[morpheuskafka]

To be fair, it is a 3mo batch. The better analogy would be a long business trip or on site project, not a remote vs. in office job.

Moreover, for better or worse, the all day every day work culture typical of venture-backed startups isn't really compatible with being a new parent etc. anyway.

[_--__--__]

People in those situations can and should start companies without an accelerator (or at least without this one). The joke around the SF scene is that even a founder with a boy/girlfriend is a sign of a startup doomed to fail, and YC doesn't seem particularly invested in changing that culture.

[paxys]

It’s a form of self selection. YC (and silicon valley at large) isn't interested in founders with pesky things like real life responsibilities or anything else that will prevent them from focusing on their startup 24x7.

[arjunven]

Check out https://tinyseed.com/

[westurner]

From "Ask HN: How to Price a Product" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41180492#41220971 :

> Asset Value = Equities + Liabilities

> /? startupschool pricing: https://www.google.com/search?q=startupschool+pricing

/? site:startupschool.org pricing: https://www.google.com/search?q=site:startupschool.org+prici...

> Startup School > Curriculum > Ctrl-F pricing: https://www.startupschool.org/curriculum

YC Library: https://www.ycombinator.com/library

/? YC Library : pricing: https://www.ycombinator.com/library/search?query=Pricing

[asimpleusecase]

There is so much online to help jumpstart a young entrepreneur- they can have some small sense of what they are in for. As far as start a company vs get a job, just being told that is an option can be super empowering. I agree that burning up a few years in a failed company as a young entrepreneur does not have a good monetary outcome, but it does help them gain a ton of real world experience that can serve them well their whole life.

[shipitto]

This is great in principle. A word of advice:

Life is short. Play long term games with long term people. While a batch bakes in a season, a cap table rests like a boulder in a hillside. If you’re smart there are better ways to find a lever with which to move the world.

Consider incentives. Don’t accept a hammer when you need a bulldozer. Don’t ask which paths exist: find where you want to be, ask what needs to be done. Do it.

[nenenejej]

This is a bit riddly. Have a concrete example?

[tossandthrow]

I bought into the idea of startups after college. And did It despite having an offer from a good large Corp.

I regret that decision.

Truth is that it is incredibly difficult to build startup without any good industry knowledge.

[ramon156]

Fun fact, not every startup needs funding. Seems like post paul doesn't really talk about this anymore.

[dang]

YC gives founders a lot more than funding.

[skeeter2020]

AP (After Paul) is much more concerned with traditional VC exits; YC is just another firm now, but because they invented the space get to trade on their name a while longer.

[laidoffamazon]

This pattern of extending the peripheral aspects of elite undergrad into high school and after actual undergrad seems…wrong. I disliked the Google cultural tendency of trying to mirror grad school but this seems worse.

[throwaw12]

My advice to 20 year olds, don't go to startups, go to big tech while it still pays good salary, build up your wealth, network and how things work at such corporations.

Then at mid 30s get hired as Dir/VP of engineering in smaller Series A startup.

You will have higher chance to retire early and/or afford yourself to work on things you like later on.

[joshdavham]

Relevant blog post: https://www.gayle.com/blog/2011/10/29/why-coders-shouldnt-jo...

Something ironic I found when I was on my last job search (and applying to some YC startups) was that, despite startups often being critical of big tech, when describing their past experience, the founders (and their teams) never failed to ‘name drop’ the brand-name companies they’ve worked for.

Additionally, I think the reason a lot of founders threw my resume in the trash was because they couldn’t recognize the no-name startups I’ve worked at… Luckily I’m at a household name company now and even non-tech people recognize the company I work at.

[boringg]

Doesn't part of your soul die when you start working for big tech? All that youthful energy and hope to push a potentially meaningless product. Such a sad thing to watch potential and idealism get crushed.

I understand its provocative statement - your play is the risk free life route - perfect for many many people but not everyone. Certainly not people who want to build things that go into the wild.

[throwaw12]

Don't forget why YC wants more young people to work for startups, they benefit from couple of successes and their metric is to increase number of companies they want to invest, which requires more number of cheap engineers/interns giving their life.

Your chances of success is lower than YC's chances of success because they invest to many companies in parallel, but you can only work for 1 company

[barbarr]

To what extent is YC's current strategy a form of "cookie-licking"? I.e. capture a small fraction of every plausible startup created by the next generation of students?

[cde-v]

100% at this point. The industry's leading AI for start-up ideas has run out of AI for _____ suggestions. It was pretty obvious they were scraping the bottom of the barrel a month ago when I made this list from their current batch:

Acrely — AI for HVAC administration

Aden — AI for ERP operations

AgentHub — AI for agent simulation and evaluation

Agentin AI — AI for enterprise agents

AgentMail — AI for agent email infrastructure

AlphaWatch AI — AI for financial search

Alter — AI for secure agent workflow access control

Altur — AI for debt collection voice agents

Ambral — AI for account management

Anytrace — AI for support engineering

April — AI for voice executive assistants

AutoComputer — AI for robotic desktop automation

Autosana — AI for mobile QA

Autotab — AI for knowledge work

Avent — AI for industrial commerce

b-12 — AI for chemical intelligence

Bluebirds — AI for outbound targeting

burnt — AI for food supply chain operations

Cactus — AI for smartphone model deployment

Candytrail — AI for sales funnel automation

CareSwift — AI for ambulance operations

Certus AI — AI for restaurant phone lines

Clarm — AI for search and agent building

Clodo — AI for real estate CRMs

Closera — AI for commercial real estate employees

Clueso — AI for instructional content generation

cocreate — AI for video editing

Comena — AI for order automation in distribution

ContextFort — AI for construction drawing reviews

Convexia — AI for pharma drug discovery

Credal.ai — AI for enterprise workflow assistants

CTGT — AI for preventing hallucinations

Cyberdesk — AI for legacy desktop automation

datafruit — AI for DevOps engineering

Daymi — AI for personal clones

DeepAware AI — AI for data center efficiency

Defog.ai — AI for natural-language data queries

Design Arena — AI for design benchmarks

Doe — AI for autonomous private equity workforce

Double – Coding Copilot — AI for coding assistance

EffiGov — AI for local government call centers

Eloquent AI — AI for complex financial workflows

F4 — AI for compliance in engineering drawings

Finto — AI for enterprise accounting

Flai — AI for dealership customer acquisition

Floot — AI for app building

Fluidize — AI for scientific experiments

Flywheel AI — AI for excavator autonomy

Freya — AI for financial services voice agents

Frizzle — AI for teacher grading

Galini — AI guardrails as a service

Gaus — AI for retail investors

Ghostship — AI for UX bug detection

Golpo — AI for video generation from documents

Halluminate — AI for training computer use

HealthKey — AI for clinical trial matching

Hera — AI for motion design

Humoniq — AI for BPO in travel and transport

Hyprnote — AI for enterprise notetaking

Imprezia — AI for ad networks

Induction Labs — AI for computer use automation

iollo — AI for multimodal biological data

Iron Grid — AI for hardware insurance

IronLedger.ai — AI for property accounting

Janet AI — AI for project management (AI-native Jira)

Kernel — AI for web agent browsing infrastructure

Kestroll — AI for media asset management

Keystone — AI for software engineering

Knowlify — AI for explainer video creation

Kyber — AI for regulatory notice drafting

Lanesurf — AI for freight booking voice automation

Lantern — AI for Postgres application development

Lark — AI for billing operations

Latent — AI for medical language models

Lemma — AI for consumer brand insights

Linkana — AI for supplier onboarding reviews

Liva AI — AI for video and voice data labeling

Locata — AI for healthcare referral management

Lopus AI — AI for deal intelligence

Lotas — AI for data science IDEs

Louiza Labs — AI for synthetic biology data

Luminai — AI for business process automation

Magnetic — AI for tax preparation

MangoDesk — AI for evaluation data

Maven Bio — AI for BioPharma insights

Meteor — AI for web browsing (AI-native browser)

Mimos — AI for regulated firm visibility in search

Minimal AI — AI for e-commerce customer support

Mobile Operator — AI for mobile QA

Mohi — AI for workflow clarity

Monarcha — AI for GIS platforms

moonrepo — AI for developer workflow tooling

Motives — AI for consumer research

Nautilus — AI for car wash optimization

NOSO LABS — AI for field technician support

Nottelabs — AI for enterprise web agents

Novaflow — AI for biology lab analytics

Nozomio — AI for contextual coding agents

Oki — AI for company intelligence

Okibi — AI for agent building

Omnara — AI for agent command centers

OnDeck AI — AI for video analysis

Onyx — AI for generative platform development

Opennote — AI for note-based tutoring

Opslane — AI for ETL data pipelines

Orange Slice — AI for sales lead generation

Outlit — AI for quoting and proposals

Outrove — AI for Salesforce

Pally — AI for relationship management

Paloma — AI for billing CRMs

Parachute — AI for clinical evaluation and deployment

PARES AI — AI for commercial real estate brokers

People.ai — AI for enterprise growth insights

Perspectives Health — AI for clinic EMRs

Pharmie AI — AI for pharmacy technicians

Phases — AI for clinical trial automation

Pingo AI — AI for language learning companions

Pleom — AI for conversational interaction

Qualify.bot — AI for commercial lending phone agents

Reacher — AI for creator collaboration marketing

Ridecell — AI for fleet operations

Risely AI — AI for campus administration

Risotto — AI for IT helpdesk automation

Riverbank Security — AI for offensive security

Saphira AI — AI for certification automation

Sendbird — AI for omnichannel agents

Sentinel — AI for on-call engineering

Serafis — AI for institutional investor knowledge graphs

Sigmantic AI — AI for HDL design

Sira — AI for HR management of hourly teams

Socratix AI — AI for fraud and risk teams

Solva — AI for insurance

Spotlight Realty — AI for real estate brokerage

StackAI — AI for low-code agent platforms

stagewise — AI for frontend coding agents

Stellon Labs — AI for edge device models

Stockline — AI for food wholesaler ERP

Stormy AI — AI for influencer marketing

Synthetic Society — AI for simulating real users

SynthioLabs — AI for medical expertise in pharma

Tailor — AI for retail ERP automation

Tecto AI — AI for governance of AI employees

Tesora — AI for procurement analysis

Trace — AI for workflow automation

TraceRoot.AI — AI for automated bug fixing

truthsystems — AI for regulated governance layers

Uplift AI — AI for underserved voice languages

Veles — AI for dynamic sales pricing

Veritus Agent — AI for loan servicing and collections

Verne Robotics — AI for robotic arms

VoiceOS — AI for voice interviews

VoxOps AI — AI for regulated industry calls

Vulcan Technologies — AI for regulatory drafting

Waydev — AI for engineering leadership insights

Wayline — AI for property management voice automation

Wedge — AI for healthcare trust layers

Workflow86 — AI for workflow automation

ZeroEval — AI for agent evaluation and optimization

[deadbabe]

I think this is oddly predatory, and sends the wrong idea to graduating students who have not even entered the real world.

There is no need to rush to get into YC, and it would help to get actual experience in a job before setting out to build a whole company.

[jamestimmins]

These kids are (typically) in some of the best colleges in the world and in incredibly high demand. They have lots of options and enormous amounts of agency.

Hard to buy that "here's another option" is predatory.

[imiric]

Not just predatory, but irresponsible.

The idea that someone fresh out of college should start and run a business is deeply concerning. These are kids who have just (hopefully) learned about ethics and what it takes to run a business, yet you expect them to be responsible stewards of their users' data, to comply with laws and regulations, while you throw $500,000 at them, give them minimal guidance, sell them fantasies about infinite riches, and skim whatever you can from the top.

Yes, I'm aware that Jobs, Gates, Zuckerberg, and others, started their businesses before even finishing college. But a) these are outliers, and b) when someone refers to users of their products as "dumb fucks", do we really want to put them in charge of running a company?

[__loam]

Putting inexperienced kids with good credentials who are amenable to listening to a board in charge of these things is part of the yc business model.

[gkoberger]

I loved YC and can't recommend it enough. But if you're going to start a company, please consider working at another company first, even if briefly. (And make it a company you respect and want to emulate.)

The amount of wheels you won't have to reinvent if you work at another company are astronomical. From engineering practices to sales to management, there's a lot you don't want to innovate on. Starting a company is really hard, and it's even harder if you've never seen first-hand how a functional company works. Your future employees will thank you.

[0x696C6961]

> if you've never seen first-hand how a functional company works.

You can go an entire career without seeing how a functional company works.

[Esophagus4]

This is partially why the average age of a successful founder is late 30s to early 40s at the time of founding.

There’s a lot of focus in the media and in accelerators on the 22 year old with a dream, but it’s nice to have a real adult in charge when the stakes are high.

Not to mention, if you have no work experience, you have no idea what problems are worth solving. So you end up with junk startup ideas from the latest fad / hype cycle.

But a senior partner at a law firm knows the pain points of being a lawyer and they can now start a company to fix them.

And a senior quant at a hedge fund might have some good ideas for automating tedious back office processes.

[kelleyk]

I made this mistake. I love where I've wound up, but I would have gotten there much more quickly and with a lot less heartache if I'd worked as part of an existing company before starting my own.

[bix6]

I learned a lot working for other people but I’ve learned the most running my own thing.

I do think many college grads generally don’t understand how business works though because they just haven’t experienced it yet. School is a totally different beast.

[jimmyl02]

Cannot +1 this enough! Joining a team you respect and seeing how they operate gives you a really good baseline to work off of and take what you like and modify what you disagreed with.

You'd be surprised how many times you can "iterate and fail quickly" only to end up at an established practice some other shop has been doing for years. It is important however to understand the why behind the decisions as otherwise you're no better than just figuring it out yourself

[tyre]

> And make it a company you respect and want to emulate

Personally I would caveat that they be a small company. Large companies are a very different beast. What it takes to get ahead and succeed at there is often very different from a startup, in ways that don’t become obvious until you’ve worked at a startup.

Rather than learning which wheels not to re-invent, you have one data point and reflexes that you’d need to deprogram.

Working at the company I most highly respect and would want to emulate (Stripe), I don’t think the skills would have been at all the right ones. (Admittedly I was in a highly toxic and political org.)

[ralph84]

If this is what tips the scales for someone in deciding between being a founder and taking a 9-5 job, they don’t have the level of commitment needed to be a successful founder.

[wolfcola]

bad, ideologically-motivated idea when thiel did it, and bad, ideologically-motivated idea now

[dang]

"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Jared's description about why YC is doing this now seems clear. If you know more or better, you're welcome to make a substantive argument. But please don't use this site for shallow putdowns—it's not what it's for.

[podgorniy]

Young, fool and hungry. The best VC material.

[dvrp]

Paul Graham Essay and early YC: live your life, don’t start a company in your 20s. You are young only once.

Post Paul Graham YC: reserve your YC spot now. There’s no downside!

[dang]

I'm having a hard time understanding the 'gotcha' quality of this comment and this subthread. There's no inconsistency; PG has always said that people should finish college before starting a startup—I heard him say this over 15 years ago, and he went on about it at length at his most recent YC talk.

Edit: I think I understand the problem now. PG's actual advice has always been "finish college before starting a startup". Somehow somewhere that got distorted into "don't start a company in your 20s", which is certainly not what PG has been saying (the average graduation age is somewhere around 23). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45372572 quotes a representative passage, and if you read that essay you'll see that he's mostly saying "don't start a startup at 20".

(Edit: I deleted my last sentence which was irritable.)

[pclmulqdq]

As startup valuations have gone up quickly and the YC offer largely remains the same, YC has naturally moved downmarket. They have gone from being an exclusive, premium product aimed at people who have a serious chance of building a unicorn to a finishing school for venture-backed entrepreneurs. In my opinion, this is a great thing for YC because it's a more natural fit for their main value proposition, but it also means that the best time to do modern YC is essentially straight out of school.

[danielfalbo]

For whoever wants to re-read one of the articles that mentions the idea, there you go: https://paulgraham.com/before.html#f7n:~:text=You%20can%20do...

[siva7]

> Paul Graham Essay and early YC: live your life, don’t start a company in your 20s. You are young only once.

I've been lurking on HN since 2008 and can't remember a time where i got the vibe from pg to be like "live your life" instead of "start a company now and apply". Can you point to some specific essay you had in mind?

[siva7]

If there is a single advice i would give the young folks here: Don't listen to VC's. Live your life. Startup founder is more comparable to an olympic athlete in terms of what you have to give up to get there - by definition 99% of people who try no matter how brilliant won't walk this path successfully - but both will lose many things on this way without being much happier than before. This is also where most of this community is being very dishonest be it co-founder search or success stories: Only a very small percentage of people is mentally suited (e.g. extreme resilience) to go on with this gamble yet we encourage everyone to try it out here.

[fakedang]

Doesn't PG actually argue for startups as the "surest" route to million dollar "success"?

[keiferski]

Honestly I think there are two different audiences. The type of person that is open to traveling, exploring jobs, etc. in their twenties is different from the “institutional pipeline” track of good high school > good college > good job.

This early decision thing is functionally going to move a few pipeline kids from the corporate world to the startup world, which probably isn’t a terrible outcome. But it also reflects how YC has become a marker of institutional pipeline success for a lot of people.

[josfredo]

Whatever statement is more relatable at the time hence better for their business.

[shafyy]

Gives me weirdo Thiel vibes who pays (or used to pay) kids to drop out of college and start a company for him.

[podgorniy]

First time he gave that advise it was not directly affecting his company profit chances. Second time though is different.

--

Another good example of expressing and exersiging values, how easy to construct appealing narrative regardless of underlying subject and something else what I can't pinpoint at this stage...

[zulban]

I've had to explain this to several people: YC goals are not our goals. For YC, it would be great for lots of people to burn down their lives for even the slimmest chance at success.

[kurtis_reed]

What do you mean "turn out their other job offers"?

[snowmaker]

Whoops - I had a typo! Thank you; fixed.

[Maro]

I can't quite put my finger on it, but this announcement gives me bad vibes.

[bko]

I think a few things:

Wanting to finish school is a negative signal. Also

> Also we know that many students spend a lot of time in Fall or during their final year applying for jobs or internships. Early Decision gives students another option: apply to YC and bet on yourself.

So now YC is an alternative to searching and apply for jobs? I think if you're marginal on trying to find a corporate job or starting something, then you should prob find a corp job. Objectively starting a startup is worse, you work harder, lower odds of success, more stress, less money, etc. You have to be a little crazy and hardheaded to make it work

Finally everything that YC does to increase it's applicant pool so they still maintain exclusivity. If you have 2% acceptance rate, why are you trying to maximize the top of the funnel? You should discourage people to apply.

[DonHopkins]

I have been thoroughly enjoying re-watching HBO's Silicon Valley, appreciating all the little details and sub-plots I missed during my first watching long ago. It's aged so well.

It's telling how many people are afraid to watch that show and detest it because it's just so spot on accurate, and they cringe when they see themselves in its characters and their own lives in its plots.

[floriferous]

Exactly the same feeling here, it's such a strange thing to promise a kid they are accepted into a program, but it starts in like 4 years.

As if all of your education (and probably side-projects, life decisions) is meant to lead to YC.

[theplatman]

For awhile now I’ve felt like YC has turned into another badge for the type people who are obsessed with prestige. It’s all about checking a box and not about the substance of what they want to do.

This is evident in how disappointed certain people are when they’re rejected from YC. Their startup is merely a vehicle to get into the club.

[gghffguhvc]

The number of people we are talking about as a percentage of CS like graduates is tiny. They aren’t kids either. It seems like a low risk experiment on both sides.

[epolanski]

Asking people without experience, skills and maturity to know what they want in their life to commit to YC way before graduating comes off as simply too much.

[gjgtcbkj]

They just want warm bodies. Why else would they focus on people that don’t have experience?

[mikert89]

This is basically ensuring YC starts to get more absolute top graduates. Entrepreneurship is more and more seen as the default path for top people in the USA. All other career paths are for people that want to take the risk of ending up in a 50 year assembly line. This is probably good for society

If you want to get rich by 30, you basically have to start a startup or get into a top small hedge fund out of undergrad.

[zahlman]

I feel like being "the best and brightest" is quite orthogonal to having what it takes to be an entrepreneur.

I also feel like highly intelligent people might quite reasonably decide for themselves that they shouldn't have to take on that kind of risk to get what they want out of life.

[thebigman433]

This really is not true, basically every engineering job in the Bay Area will set you up with enough money to live extremely well.

YC startups are a bit above average, but still most startups fail.

If you care about building wealth, taking a stable engineering position straight out of college and working hard is a great path

[sobellian]

Having done this, and acknowledging the fuzzy definition of "rich" etc - going through YC after graduating is a great career move. You have to do everything yourself so you learn a lot. About business, about a specific industry, about programming, whatever. You make connections. But unless you walk an absolute golden path (hey it happens), > 90% chance you don't get rich. > 99.9% chance you won't get rich by 30.

[toomuchtodo]

How many YC founders end up rich before 30? Or even at all? I think it’s likely a highly valuable experience running a business experiment someone else will fund (not to mention connections you wouldn’t otherwise make), but the odds of actual, liquid wealth from the experience and time spent are very low.

[timr]

Let me make this simple for you: you will not get rich by 30.

I know, I know...there are examples! And yes, there are, but statistically, they won't be you. You're playing the lottery, only it's a lottery that steals your youth and gives you psychological problems.

If your only goal is to get rich, then don't do a startup. You have to have some more fundamental reason, or the agony will beat you.

[aprilthird2021]

> If you want to get rich by 30, you basically have to start a startup or get into a top small hedge fund out of undergrad.

I am 30, I am rich by most measures of wealth and probably in the minds of most college grads. I worked in various big tech companies (incl stints in FAANG) after graduating with my BS in CS. A lot of my peers did do startups, and they had varying degrees of success. But almost everyone who went to big tech has set up their next generation for success at this point

[woooooo]

Why is everyone equating "best and brightest" with "rich by 30"? Were Kernighan and Ritchie rich by 30?

[__loam]

> If you want to get rich by 30, you basically have to start a startup or get into a top small hedge fund out of undergrad.

Many will enter, few will win lmao

[appleaday1]

or you buy bitcoin

[fijiaarone]

Entrepreneurship isn’t getting showered with millions for doing nothing other than being accepted as a part of the blessed elite and access to an infinite spigot of free money when all other sources have been dammed off and diverted to the ever shrinking minority of ever increasing ultra-wealth.

[hnthrowaway121]

Senior year of college, aren’t we talking 21/22 year olds?

[ascorbic]

Your 20s is a great time to be a founder. You have fewer responsibilities so can get by with less income and more easily up sticks to somewhere else. Your opportunity cost as a junior is low. It's a bad time to get a job as a junior too, so this is a good way to get job experience if nobody will hire you. You probably won't succeed (because most startups fail) but you'll learn a lot and probably have a lot of fun.

[omosubi]

uhhh, it's their website. they can promote as much as they want

[cdelsolar]

lol come on guys let kids live a little

[user3939382]

Yeah so all our talent can line the pockets of SV.

[antonvs]

Eternal September for the startup world.