One evening in early 2008, I got the opportunity to meet Michael at an Austin hotel during SXSW. I pitched him on the idea for Airbnb, and he took us under his wing. For the rest of the year, we would visit his office every Friday night for hours on end. Each session, Joe and I would demo our latest site and report on our progress. Michael taught me about fundraising, product growth, and building the basics of a startup culture. He kept reminding us to take just a few more steps. If we had known just how many steps there were, we may have been discouraged, but Michael always made progress feel within reach. The most important thing Michael did was believe in us. Had it not been for Michael, there might not be an Airbnb today.
Michael was one of our group partners during S16, and I cannot think of a person better suited for this position than him. He consistently demonstrated the ability to cut through all of the nonsense founders tried to use to defend their actions (ourselves included) and delivered fantastic insights into our businesses to which we were blinded.<p>For me, the group partners were the primary value delivered by YC during the program, and I look forward to that value being continued under Michael's leadership. Congratulations!
Obligatory link to How to Start a Startup Stanford class by Sam Altman:
<a href="http://startupclass.samaltman.com/" rel="nofollow">http://startupclass.samaltman.com/</a><p>As the founder of a MOOC search engine, I am excited. Its good for my business :)<p>P.S. You can follow the class on Class Central [1] and we will send you an update whenever the course dates are actually announced<p>[1] <a href="https://www.class-central.com/mooc/7130/startup-school?follow=true" rel="nofollow">https://www.class-central.com/mooc/7130/startup-school?follo...</a>
I would personally seek Michael's advice when I was in the S15 batch because of how earnest his advice was. Even for companies outside his group you could really tell the effort he would give to provide quality guidance. One example of how much Michael cares was in the days before our demo day, I was the first to come in at 8AM and Michael literally had slept on the couch having stayed up all night providing feedback the night before. He comes out of the partners office, sits down, and has me pitch maybe 10 minutes after he probably woke up :) Congrats!
What didn't work with the Fellowship, exactly? In light of the dissolution, how did the winners of the Apply HN competition (<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11440627" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11440627</a>) work with the most recent Fellowship class?
You buried the lede: a YC MOOC!<p>I always felt that onemonth.com basically was the YC MOOC. (It is funded by YC, and you see the themes of user first, user research, growth etc running through it).<p>Not sure if anyone else here knows what I mean.<p>Will the MOOC be free?
Am I reading this correctly that the $20,000 YC fellowship is no longer available (and therefore the only want to get any form seed funding from YC is once again to move to the Bay Area)?<p>That said, the MOOC sounds interesting!
Seeing <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Buchheit" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Buchheit</a> in the announcement is a fun coincidence. He founded gmail. One of the things he did with gmail is gave it a command-line user interface.<p>I recently found out that a lot of people I would expect to know about it, don't. If that includes you, go to the gear on the upper right of your gmail, select that, then Settings, then turn keyboard shortcuts on and save.<p>Typing "?" randomly in gmail will let you know what shortcuts are there. It takes time for your fingers to learn them, but scanning email with j k [ ] is so much faster than a mouse. I don't even think before using / to search. :-)
What the world needs is a solution to <i>funding</i> orders of magnitude more startups than currently get funded.<p>YC is in the incredibly fortunate position of having this opportunity but instead it looks like Sam Altman is falling into the same trap Larry Page did with Google. He's turning it into a bit of a rich guy's playground...<p>On behalf of the world that wasn't born into a world of wealth and elite connections: Please shine your massive resources on the many thousands of deserving little startups!
One question does YC == Y Combinator? In the TLDR, YC Core is renamed to "YC", and YC Group now consists of Y Combinator, YC Continuity, YC Research and the new YC MOOC. But I wasn't 100% clear whether the group Michael Seibel is the CEO of "YC" is the same as the component in the YC Group referred to as "Y Combinator".<p>It would have been a bit more clear (to me) if the group had been consistently referred to as "YC" if that's the new branding, so I'm guessing there are a lot of others like me who aren't certain as well.
I expect to be downvoted but my YC interview with Michael a couple summers back left a bad taste in my mouth.<p>I'm not really sure he asked more than "how is this a billion dollar company?" multiple times during the 10 minutes. I'm not sure why YC would pay $1k to fly us to Mountain View if that question was that important and wasn't already answered by our application.<p>Hope that was just a fluke though... Good luck YC!
PG wasnt joking when he said:<p>"You could parachute [Sam] into an island full of cannibals and come back in 5 years and he'd be the king." - PG 5.5 years ago[1]<p>[1] <a href="http://paulgraham.com/fundraising.html" rel="nofollow">http://paulgraham.com/fundraising.html</a>
I'm surprised they got to shutdown YC Fellowship; is it already shut down, or they are planning on that next year.<p>Without YC how one could get access to YC network and get one to one advice without moving to bayarea?<p>online classes are not really one to one advice.
My understanding of a provost's role is to be as senior as possible without having to do any administrative, managerial, or executive duties -- so they can focus entirely on academic topics.<p>Is that basically what you're going for with the PB analogy, except s/academic/startup-mentoring/ ?
There are many great mentors in the startup world, but I've yet to meet one with a better time in to help out ratio than Michael Seibel. Excellent choice to lead YC.<p>It's also very inspiring to see YC Group tackling some of the world's most important problems. Excited to see what comes of this.
I asked Sam in a live webcast he did some months ago whether YC would build a chatbot for the fellowship to replace mentors and he said they would try. I wonder if they actually did and it'll be included in the MOOC.
I hope Paul Buchheit becoming a provost doesn't mean he won't be part of YC going forward.<p>A little part of me is hoping to have him on our interview panel again to show him how far we've come.
Michael has been everywhere when it comes promoting YC. Si it's great to see this formalization.<p>Of course, the timing of this announcement is more exciting being that Michael and Qasar will be in Nigeria in 10 days :) [1][2]<p>re: MOOC<p>Sam/Michael,<p>What are your thoughts on (semi)formalizing a relationship with incubators globally as the top of the funnel for recruiting startups.<p>It can key into them helping adopt your MOOC curriculum. That way the fundamentals of knowledge are taken care of at the lowest of levels and potential YC recruits have the basics even before applying.<p>I was just having it as a rough idea to discuss with Michael when he visits only to see this post pop up<p>[1] Lagos - <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/techcircle-presents-building-a-startup-a-chat-with-yc-incubators-co-tickets-27008639568" rel="nofollow">https://www.eventbrite.com/e/techcircle-presents-building-a-...</a><p>[2] Abuja - <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/techcircle-presents-build-a-great-startup-qa-in-abuja-with-y-combinator-tickets-27078547665" rel="nofollow">https://www.eventbrite.com/e/techcircle-presents-build-a-gre...</a><p>Both are oversubscribed but pop me an email (see profile) if you want to attend and have not registered I'll get you a ticket.
> *I’m going to be the President of YC Group, which includes Y Combinator, YC Continuity, YC Research, and our<p>Presumably it also includes YC (that used to be YC Core) - was including 'Y Combinator'in the list a slip - and it should have been YC?
Does this change mean YCombinator is going to invest in primarily mature startups?<p>It feels like the research and mooc will boost early stage startups to eventually apply to the YC core program. Is that the goal?