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cassonmars | 5 months ago

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?

discuss

order

snowmaker|5 months ago

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.

repeekad|5 months ago

There are plenty of remote schools, always have been, they’re just lower quality and solve a different problem than traditional in person university

skeeter2020|5 months ago

>> But essentially zero universities have stayed remote since the early days of the pandemic.

This is not true. I know several people at different institutions - decent schools - that have most or (in one case) all of their courses (at Queens) via remote delivery.

vasco|5 months ago

Because a university's ability to charge the prices they do depends on people being on location. Nobody is going to pay 50k or 100k for an online course.

Plus if rich fucks can't buy a building to put their name on that kids will walk through they won't donate money.

You make it sound like it's a decision based on school administrators putting learning first.

solumos|5 months ago

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|5 months ago

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|5 months ago

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.

_--__--__|5 months ago

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.

aetherspawn|5 months ago

I don’t usually wear my ring day to day because it’s poorly fitting, but I wear it to meetings with private equity because I want to filter out anyone with that mentality.

dang|5 months ago

This doesn't resemble anything I've ever heard at YC in the many years I've been here. People don't think or talk that way at all...they're far more normal and decent than that.

paxys|5 months ago

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.

edoceo|5 months ago

This is too flippant.

YC is so early on some of these deals that the primary gauge is team - which means personality of founders. Very hard to measure remotely.

I'm in a group, not as big or famous, that does early checks. We're 95% remote. IME, it's so hard to make those judgement calls through web-cam.

Agreed that founder focus is a big factor and that life gets in the way (of deals). However, if you don't like YC conditions there are 100s of other places to (attempt a) raise.

westurner|5 months ago

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