Definitely not true! How did you get that impression?
I wouldn't be here if it were—my cofounder Scott and I made it to YC from way outside elite circles, US or otherwise. It's really important not to go for these demoralizing assumptions, lest they become self-fulfilling prophesies.
Here's some better information: if you can build, can make something people want, and are willing to be coached in the way that YC coaches founders, you have as good a chance as anyone at getting funded by YC. (And certainly a far better chance at not being overlooked for prejudicial reasons such as 'not from elite university'.)
You may not be wrong in general—it's clear that class divides are increasingly organized around educational divides—but IMO this is less true of YC than society at large and it's a big part of YC's business for it to remain so.
Edit: while I'm at it, something I wish more people would know is that if you apply to YC and get rejected, you should keep applying. Most YC startups didn't get in on their first try. If you do apply more than once, the key thing is to demonstrate progress since your previous application.
So: don't give up, and definitely don't give up before you start!
Quite a long discussion of how important the "best" universities are to starting a startup. Nothing YC-specific.
> And if you want to start a startup you should try to get into the best university you can, because that's where the best cofounders are. It's also where the best employees are. When Larry and Sergey started Google, they began by just hiring all the smartest people they knew out of Stanford, and this was a real advantage for them.
> The empirical evidence is clear on this. If you look at where the largest numbers of successful startups come from, it's pretty much the same as the list of the most selective universities.
> I don't think it's the prestigious names of these universities that cause more good startups to come out of them. Nor do I think it's because the quality of the teaching is better. What's driving this is simply the difficulty of getting in. You have to be pretty smart and determined to get into MIT or Cambridge, so if you do manage to get in, you'll find the other students include a lot of smart and determined people.
> You don't have to start a startup with someone you meet at university... but universities are the main source of cofounders. And because they're where the cofounders are, they're also where the ideas are, because the best ideas grow out of projects you do with the people who become your cofounders.
> So the list of what you need to do to get from here to starting a startup is quite short. You need to get good at technology, and the way to do that is to work on your own projects. And you need to do as well in school as you can, so you can get into a good university, because that's where the cofounders and the ideas are.
> When Larry and Sergey started Google, they began by just hiring all the smartest people they knew out of Stanford...
I worked for a large tech company as an intern in the late 90's, which is where I learned smartest doesn't always equal best. There were two of us interns in the org, one on the east coast and one on the west coast. I was in grad school at a regionally known engineering school, whereas my west coast counterpart was a grad at Stanford.
They were one of the smartest people I've ever met and worked with, and were basically a walking encyclopedia of CS knowledge, all the way down to level 1 of the OSI model. They were also entirely unable to execute on anything. There was no ability to plan and schedule work or to stay focused on the job itself.
One of us got a raise and asked to come back next summer and the other got walked from the building by security (a first, apparently) before the summer ended.
Yes, it's anecdata, and over my career I've worked with many other people from "top" institutions. As a whole, I haven't been any more or less impressed with them than any other Engineers I've worked with or hired.
All this says is that elite universities have a higher density of good people. Which is totally true. If you want to maximize your chances of meeting good people that's a concrete thing to aim for.
I learned a long time ago, that HN and YCombinator were never for me. We were too poor and never part of the elite SV venture capitalism scene, no matter how sharp or crazy the idea.
We were never part of that 'scene'. Hell, I even tried to enter the VC scene locally. It was all about blatant lying and redoing Uber than actual innovative and crazy ideas. I even had a 'mentor' say that I should just lie about hockey stick growth, cause that's what everyone does.
It's not that hard to see the emperor is dearlng no clothes. But damn, don't say that if you want to deal with SV folks.
> It's not that hard to see the emperor is dearlng no clothes.
Well the business model assumes 90%+ of companies fail. They're only looking for a small number of big winners. And because of the fast moving nature of the space, things like numbers can be fuzzy and aren't really too important until the later stages. So there's just less diligence in general and understandably that creates room for some fraud. That doesn't mean the model is a scam.
The issue is that too much money got pumped into the space in recent years when it really wasn't needed.
>I learned a long time ago, that HN and YCombinator were never for me.
It's not you personally and don't take it too hard on yourself. A vast majority of people on this planet won't fit the "founder personality" and thus won't make it.
It's more interesting to bootstrap your own company and if push comes to shove you can look for incubators in your own city and apply for it.
I would like to debate you on your assumptions. A class divide is bigger and worse than any other divide. Because there is no push (like DEI) we make innate assumptions about a person depending on their class; hence most of YC fits a certain "personality" which commentators in here are complaining about.
While I am past that complaining stage, it's worthwhile for the VC industry to take a look at that class divide.
> something I wish more people would know is that if you apply to YC and get rejected, you should keep applying. Most YC startups didn't get in on their first try. If you do apply more than once, the key thing is to demonstrate progress since your previous application.
Again, you are right from your perspective but my opinion based on my experience and fellow founders is that if you fail the first time, founders should just move on. Startup founders have this Hollywoodesqe mentality of what a startup is with all the glamour and almost all of them waste time pitching to YC/VC and think they are failure if they don't get accepted.
There needs to be a revamp of startup financing and I think something like startup school is in the right direction.
Or apply with something they are looking to fund. Then change your idea to what you really want to do when you get in.
(This is what Tiktok told me to do)
Oh no—that's a terrible idea. YC partners are going to be far more interested in what you really want to do. Interposing an irrelevant charade will only come across as uncompelling.
A belief is honestly held if it is based on your best ability to apply reason to facts.
A belief is dishonestly held if any other consideration comes between you and reality--that is, if you evade. You could choose to not carefully think about the issue. You could choose to treat something as a fact when you don't have evidence for it.
You can be honestly mistaken, perhaps due to a lack of knowledge and an error in logic. In those cases, you change your view when the correct facts and method are made available to you.
You can also be dishonestly mistaken. Example: adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse, who were victimized by a stepfather or their mother's boyfriend, often report that their biological parent blames them for "stealing" the affections of their abuser. Blaming the victim for the abuse they suffer is clearly a belief that cannot be held honestly.
Of 11,162 YC founders who haven't opted out of the directory, the top 9 alma maters account for nearly exactly 20% of founders.
540 - Stanford University
388 - University of California, Berkeley
373 - Massachusetts Institute of Technology
193 - University of Waterloo
187 - Harvard University
144 - Carnegie Mellon University
143 - Columbia University
143 - University of Pennsylvania
124 - Cornell University
I don't know what you'd compare this to for "society at large" but of the 500 CEO's in the Fortune 500, the top 9 alma maters account for about 16% of those CEO's.
25 - Harvard University
11 - Stanford University
9 - University of Pennsylvania
7 - Massachusetts Institute of Technology
6 - Cornell University
6 - University of Chicago
6 - Northwestern
6 - Columbia University
6 - Yale
Very nice work and pretty interesting to see. The comparison for society at large is definitely difficult, but I'm not sure if there's a better one than what you've come up with.
It's nice to see my ala mater up there! Go Cornell! Also, I know PG disassociates himself from his roots but it's nice to know he was probably once sitting at the same desk I'm at now.
- I am older, established, and have done a number of successful startups in various roles.
- I have a family and can't spend a summer in California.
- I don't need the seed funding YCombinator provides, but I don't mind it either. I can self-fund a bit
However, I'd truly enjoy the experience, and with my next startup, I'd be glad to trade off the equity to be in the YC community. I think I'd learn a lot from it, since YC does startups very differently than I have (learning might go both ways!).
Does it make sense to engage with YC in any way next time I do a startup (or before)? Or am I far enough outside the target demographic?
There is no target demographic, so I wouldn't think in those terms. Also, last I heard, there wasn't a hard requirement to spend the entire program in California, although most founders do. Your track record with previous startups should certainly help. I'm biased but I'd say go for it!
It feels to me that YC would generate enormous value the first time. It feels like there might be very strongly diminishing returns on investment after that. My impression is that the equity YC receives, relative to funding, is quite high, and most of the network / learning / etc. would happen on round one (This is a comment about me to give context for my likely naive question, not a comment about YC; I'm explaining in hopes you'll explain how I'm wrong. Given you did it twice, I am aware my thinking here is probably wrong, and I need to share my misconception to have it addressed)
