As a solo founder, I found startup school invaluable. It really helped keep me honest with myself to discuss what I had done and what I will do at the weekly office hours.<p>I would recommend Startup School to any startup but if you're a solo founder then I think you will find the weekly office hours especially valuable.<p>Here's my presentation: Pingy is a desktop app to create, share and deploy websites: <a href="https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/373" rel="nofollow">https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/373</a>
We completed startup school (<a href="https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/470" rel="nofollow">https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/470</a>). Took us about 3 hours to create a Keynote presentation and add audio to it.<p>Hopefully, this provides a somewhat different perspective. We aren't your typical founders in their twenties.<p>Startup School was overall very positive. Speaking with our advisor, Michael Johnston was absolutely excellent. He is an absolute mensch, very helpful, consistently useful advice and very generous with his time.<p>That having been said, would I say that time spent on startup school consistently added more value than just spending that time doing one of a) hacking away and pushing forward, b) resting or c) exercising? Nope. If you need outside validation and an external push and someone keeping you accountable for you to keep pushing forward, it's going to have much more value. On the other hand, if you know what you need to get done and your startup is something that makes you jump out of bed in the morning so you can get to it, which is how I feel about our startup, I'm not sure that you aren't better off just doing that and avoiding any distractions.<p>The startup school videos were consistently very good. I would recommend everyone watch those, even on topics that they think they know a fair amount about.
Having completed startup school (<a href="https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/240" rel="nofollow">https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/240</a>)<p>I can say without a doubt it's useful, and would recommend it.<p>This is a post I made early explaining my thoughts (relevant here):<p>What's helpful is that you're placed in a group of say 20 other companies all trying to produce something, some are making money, some have literally nothing. You can learn from one another, share ideas, test out each others products, etc.<p>One thing most people trying to start a company don't have is a support network of highly motivated people doing the same thing. I know I personally do, but many of my fellow startup school colleagues do not. That's what's helpful: The startup school group office hours (or therapy sessions).<p>The second most valuable portion of startup school, is that they force you to be accountable. If I say I'm doing X, they want to see it. They expect results, and they push you to share.<p>Finally, and perhaps most valuable portion of startup school for some, is the fact you can network. I'd argue this is different than group office hours. There are many companies that have synergies, for example my project: <a href="https://projectpiglet.com/" rel="nofollow">https://projectpiglet.com/</a> can help identify trends, or "experts", which other teams could use.<p>There are other examples, but it's definitely been useful.
That being said, it is not YC proper. You don't get funds, many of the founders don't actually have an LLC or C-Corps. Many are in school, or (like myself) have full-time jobs working 50 hours a week.
Although not being able to work on the project full-time sucks, I've definitely made progress I wouldn't made, with the help startup school. We would have had less without it, the ideas from the team have bubbled up and the support pushes us to do better. I would recommend it.
I recommend the program to anyone thinking about starting a startup. The highlight was having live mentorship from very successful startup founders. My mentor had raised tens of millions in VC funding for his startup. He spent 2 hours with us every week.<p>My presentation: <a href="https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/242" rel="nofollow">https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/242</a>
We had a great experience. Thanks to all of the mentors, who spent hours per week helping all of the participants in office hours.<p>We're working on Moonlight (<a href="https://www.moonlightwork.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.moonlightwork.com</a>), where we're helping companies hire expert software engineers as part-time consultants. We grew from no revenue before Startup School to thousands of dollars per week in revenue.<p>Here is our presentation: <a href="https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/14" rel="nofollow">https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/14</a>
From what I can tell, YC Startup School's first batch had 10K applicants, 3K accepted companies and 800 graduates presenting.<p>It was very helpful for us (MoQuality) and seems like a huge success overall. Thanks YC! :)<p>PS: Our presentation: <a href="https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/536" rel="nofollow">https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/536</a>
Startup school was super helpful. Mike Robbins from Circuitlab/Pantelligent was an amazing mentor!<p>Every week before our group meetup, we had a few questions to fill out that really got us thinking deeply about our business. I wouldn't have thought something as simple as a few pointed questions would yield so much fruit, but it really was awesome. The questions force you to think about on your business value, how to describe it, your target customer and how you might address them. The advice is sound, and comes from the mentor's and YC's experience, which really grounds it. We'd do it again in a heartbeat.
Thanks to the YC team for the opportunity. Our advisor (whom is also Sequoia backed) had a breadth of knowledge. Listening to his advice to other teams was very valuable. The next best value was watching the partners conduct Office Hours.<p>Would definitely love feedback for our presentation <a href="https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/355" rel="nofollow">https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/355</a><p>And if you're an immigrant living in the US, I'd love to chat about the experience. Best of hard work to everyone.
Ahoy,<p>Greg here, founder of MarineVerse - virtual reality sailing.<p>If you're interested in sailing, you might like what we're doing.<p><a href="https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/238" rel="nofollow">https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/238</a><p>Happy to answer any questions!<p>Best regards,
Greg
We've completed startup school alongside with a local accelerator program (<a href="https://kworks.ku.edu.tr/en/" rel="nofollow">https://kworks.ku.edu.tr/en/</a>). As a co-founder, I have to admit that the YC network was really helpful. We've really benefited from the internal discussions and the local meetups really helped us a lot. Our mentor, Chris, kept giving us valuable insights and overall we had a great time participating.<p>Building a company requires a lot of time and dedication. And the biggest lesson we've learned so far from YC:SS is to keep iterating no matter what. The whole YC philosophy of having one key KPI and trying to improve it WoW no matter what is really important. It brings clarity to your decisions and helps you focus on the important stuff.<p>As an entrepreneur, I'm glad that our company had the opportunity to participate in this program and internalized such an important philosophy.<p>Here's our presentation:
<a href="https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/447" rel="nofollow">https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/447</a><p>--<p>Codela is a cloud-based platform for automating the technical screening of software developers using online knowledge measurements.<p>--
I just published an article about our experience from Startup School. <a href="https://medium.com/@a13n/a-review-of-y-combinators-startup-school-938b9c003cca" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/@a13n/a-review-of-y-combinators-startup-s...</a><p>Also, here's our presentation video: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07ljML9g0Yg" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07ljML9g0Yg</a>
After completing the course I can't recommend Startup School enough. For a free course the value I got out of it was amazing.<p>* Our group's mentor (James, co-Founder of Lista YC S09) was totally committed and freely giving of his time. We could set up individual office hours for 1-on-1 advice and he put a ton of effort into surveying us & adjusting his approach so we could get maximum value.<p>* Being part of a 25 startup cohort (the size of our group) was hugely motivating. Even when the conversation in our video chat office hours wasn't perfectly incisive it was still energizing to hear other founders pushing at the same things you're facing.<p>* The internal Startup School networking tools were decently effective and I don't think YC talked about them too much when inviting people to apply. Building a network of other founders when you're bootstrapping in Cape Town, South Africa can be a little tough. Now I've got around 30 different folks I'm emailing with - all of whom have resonating experiences due to the Tinder-style networking tool in the Startup School portal.<p>* I also got around $5000 in AWS, Azure and GCP credits. Apart from being able to spend this year's infrastructure money on other business things (awesome!) I can also experiment pretty freely with the different platforms and pick the most ideal setup for my app.<p>Finally a shameless plug for my startup: <a href="https://watchdog443.com" rel="nofollow">https://watchdog443.com</a><p>I'm building a tool for ongoing monitoring of your HTTPS state & configuration. Feel free to mail me (address in profile) to chat about it or Startup School!
We participated in Startup School with AWW (shared online whiteboard) and it was a great experience - can't recommend it enough!<p>Although we knew a lot "in theory" and had some experience and traction already, we got a ton of value out of actually speaking with other founders and our group's mentor (jamesg - thanks mate!) who listened intently about our problems, gave constructive criticism, pointed out problems, and in general focused our thinking.<p>Based on this (and feedback from our users) we pivoted slightly to a more lucrative market and I'd say got our priorities straight (or at least less wrong :). Also, the huge motivation boost! :-)<p>(Our presentation video: <a href="https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/145" rel="nofollow">https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/145</a> - feedback welcome!)
Startup School was great, but it doesn't end here. I expect we all will get more value from this amazing network in the following months.<p>Best of luck for all the founders!<p>BTW, I'm one of the founders of Hubtype (<a href="https://hubtype.com" rel="nofollow">https://hubtype.com</a>), a messaging and chatbots solution for businesses. Our pitch here:
<a href="https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/344" rel="nofollow">https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/344</a>
We had an incredible experience at Startup School. I finally feel connected to a startup community I thought was out of my reach. The networking opportunities alone make the program worth every minute you put into it. Thanks to everyone that made this possible!<p>We made Strength of Two - get alerts from people at risk of self-harm (<a href="https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/205" rel="nofollow">https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/205</a>). Any feedback/ideas would be greatly appreciated.
i just watched 3 random presentations, and i was surprised how low quality these videos are.<p>I mean, they might have an amazing product, but the delivery could be a show stopper.
What do you guys think?
We went from startup school, to participating in techcrunch battlefield NY 2017.[1]<p>We were clueless to what to expect or how all this works, but through the guidance and many one on ones with our instructor we were able to manage it.<p>The course prepared us for meeting with investors, helped us with how to deal with the first rounds of investments (first money can be overwhelming) and how to do the non scalable things early on. It was definitely a useful course.<p>Also, being on a video call every week, listening to 20+ plus other people's business can be very valuable. Problems that seemed unique to us and unsolvable were solved with a quick chat with someone who already went through it.<p>Any way, i'll write a post about it eventually. In the meanwhile here is our presentation for Renly:
<a href="https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/435" rel="nofollow">https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/435</a><p>[1] <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/16/renly-launches-studio-booking-platform/" rel="nofollow">https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/16/renly-launches-studio-book...</a>
Startup School was really a great experience for us. More than anything, getting into the mindset of delivering weekly results really changed the internal team dynamic. It also forced us to be very clear about our priorities, which in turn has helped us really achieve laser focus. The results are starting show with traction on our platform.<p>The other thing that I really appreciated was the fact that everyone in the batch that participated in the calls was treated individually by our mentor, Gleb. Not entirely sure how he achieved this but I can definitely say that if you put the hours in, the program helped organized thoughts and streamline energy.<p>To close out, my mandatory plug :)<p>We're building the first global marketplace for the space industry: "Digi-Key for space". Our presentation page: <a href="https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/465" rel="nofollow">https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/465</a>.<p>If anyone is interested in NewSpace, feel free to reach out!
Startup school was awesome. The amount of dedication and commitment of our mentor, Daniel Kivatinos(founder drchrono) was beyond words. The Mattermost community helped us with ideas on growth hacking. The best thing about startup school was founders talking to founders. We got an opportunity to meet couple of YC alumni in Bangalore, India through offline(informal) startup school meetups. The talks at these offline meetups were very insightful and open.<p>We are from India, building Clorik for Indian market - 90% of the population prefers to converse in their native language. Clorik is a crowd-sourced discovery platform for content in Indian languages. Startup school helped us in being pitch ready, YCombinator style. Here is our presentation link - <a href="https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/354" rel="nofollow">https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/354</a>
Startup School gave us a lot of motivation for early developing our product. Weekly hours was great, thanks to our mentor Chad.<p>We are building web service called Adapty.<p>Adapty is AI-powered digital ads manager that helps you with automation routine tasks. Adapty works with Facebook Ads and myTarget platforms.<p>Here is our presentation <a href="https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/378" rel="nofollow">https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/378</a> and slides <a href="https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/16R9qBkyUm2HIMngL19UgNfT3iJRTJP2YFkRidsbtLBg/edit?usp=sharing" rel="nofollow">https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/16R9qBkyUm2HIMngL19Ug...</a><p>If you are interested in our product, please feel free to contact us via email info@adapty.io or directly via Facebook facebook.com/iwitaly
Epic course, got great advice and even managed to raise some money during the process.<p>The best thing is weekly update structure which really forces you to get a lot of stuff done.<p><a href="https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/148" rel="nofollow">https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/148</a>
So, here we are.<p>11 weeks completed, lots of great mentoring sessions and listening to conversations with the rest of the startup of the group.<p>11 weeks trying to find product market fit for our product and idea and at last (coinciding with the end of startup school :) it looks like we might be there there.<p>This week we broke a few records all together. Most importantly during these 11 weeks we discovered that many people believe in what we believe and that many know inside that recruitment should not have to be as bad as it is today.<p>With Fluttr we are transforming recruitment in a very social process, where candidates can learn from the job application process itself.<p>Where recruiters are in charge, but no longer they need to "guess" if somebody is talented simply looking at their CV. Because through our platform they can ask help assessing candidates to real experts in that job and working in other companies.<p>We are the AirBnB of recruitment. A warmer, more social and alternative way to find a job or a talent.<p>Companies recruiting and recruiters alike can now hire the best talent confident that the technical screening (we focus on Design, Marketing, Data Science and IT at this point) has been run by real experts.<p>They can now hire people also measuring the candidates' motivation to join the company.<p>They can now discover the most talented people independently of age, sex, religion and other discriminatory factors, because the "experts" never know the real identity of the job applicants.<p>But more importantly every job seeker receives a feedback by an expert about their application and skills and can also benchmark their own skills against the other applicants too via our platform.<p>If it sounds interesting here you might find a few more details:
<a href="https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/797" rel="nofollow">https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/797</a><p>And if you want to test out platform get in touch; write me at amleto@fluttr.in or visit www.fluttr.in.<p>You too can help us making recruitment #awesome.<p>Thank you classmates, Geoff Flaherty and Y Combinator!
During Startup School we built TechLeaks.org, a Glassdoor for Software Engineers (<a href="https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/511" rel="nofollow">https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/511</a>).<p>We went from idea to growth in just 10 weeks and I seriously doubt this could have been possible without the accountability required at the weekly office hours.<p>Thank you Ian (our mentor) and to the rest of mates in our group-45 cohort.<p>The best is yet to come. Good luck everybody!
I would definitely recommend startup school. The weekly video office hours with our mentor was very helpful. Our mentor even had 2 other startup co-founders as guests and helped us brainstorm ideas on how to get more traction and improve the product.<p>Here is our presentation: keereo is where pinterest meets wikipedia for antiques.<p><a href="https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/21" rel="nofollow">https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/21</a>
We didn't do a video because we felt we were too early (we probably should have done one anyway). We're making a platform for "bite-sized learning", starting with daily email courses.<p>We don't have the platform ready yet, but if you want to learn React.js, check out our first course: (it's free!) <a href="https://nanohop.com/react-daily-emails/" rel="nofollow">https://nanohop.com/react-daily-emails/</a>
We already had a few thousand in MRR before joining Startup School, but didn't have proper roadmap towards growth, sales, development and running a business in general.<p>Startup School and the weekly calls helped us identify our weaknesses and now we're better equipped towards scaling Nestify.<p>Our presentation: <a href="https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/532" rel="nofollow">https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/532</a>
Another happy graduate - the program was great!<p>I highly recommend others to sign up for the next cohort when the opportunity arises. The weekly calls, content, and team spirit was all really motivational and taught me tons.<p>Here's my presentation for Monkey Test It. Check it out and let me know what you think:<p><a href="https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/461" rel="nofollow">https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/461</a>
Congrats to all the founders!<p>I hope it is okay to let folks know about our site in this thread: <a href="https://capitalandgrowth.org" rel="nofollow">https://capitalandgrowth.org</a><p>It is a free resource for founders to ask questions on sales and marketing--we have about two dozen and growing domain experts. We also do weekly interviews with investors, one of which ran on Y Combinator's blog (Paul Buchheit).
The experience was great.<p>Aside from really great advisors, the group spirit and interacting with fellow founders was best part of the program for me.<p>Shoutout to our advisor, Joshua, and others at YC for all their time and hard work.<p>I will be launching in a few weeks, here is my presentation: <a href="https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/791" rel="nofollow">https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/791</a>
I like the sense that I can get a broad overview of what is out there and what the market looks like by seeing such a large sample of successful companies.<p>How do you guys pick the categories?<p>I ask because some categories are largbe (B2B) and there seems to be a lot of overlap. (i.e. what if there is a B2B company that is also a developer tool?)<p>There are also some categories that I cannot find. There isn't, for instance, a data science category.<p>Thanks in advance.
Had a lovely time participating! Here's our presentation: Helping people in big organizations get help
<a href="https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/611" rel="nofollow">https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/611</a><p>Please see this as an open invitation to ask question or give comments about our product :)
We had a lot of run doing SS!<p>Launched <a href="https://kyso.io" rel="nofollow">https://kyso.io</a> - Kyso is the fastest way to share data analysis to your team and the world.<p>Our pres: <a href="https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/411" rel="nofollow">https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/411</a>
It was a great experience, and really helped focus on getting a MVP out in the world.<p>Barely managed to release a public beta this week in time for the presentation :)<p><a href="https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/91" rel="nofollow">https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/91</a> (personal games for kids ages 1-5)
Big thank you to Steven for making the entire logistics work and Russ CTO and co-founder at Rainforest QA our advisor for his help, advice and support.<p><a href="https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/324" rel="nofollow">https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/324</a>
YC SS helped us a lot, thanks to everyone making it happen.<p>We just launched Tuiqo (simple document versioning) and this is our presentation: <a href="https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/215" rel="nofollow">https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/215</a>
Launching soon, I'm proud of what we've accomplished so far.<p>"Mom, I'm on TV": <a href="https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/799" rel="nofollow">https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/799</a>
This is so cool. I watched a handful of presentations and was surprised/encouraged to see just how many startups are working on interesting things.<p>It was also great to see that there was clearly effort put into crafting a solid pitch.
Yep, it was very useful, we learned a lot.<p>Shameless self promotion: :)<p><a href="https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/281" rel="nofollow">https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/281</a>
Startup School was immensely helpful. Having an experienced founder as a mentor (In my case Ben Sand co-founder of Meta) was just so incredibly valuable.<p>My startup is Mindmeld, a better way to work remotely. Check it out :)<p><a href="https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/518" rel="nofollow">https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/518</a>
that was a great time spent with YC Startup School. Our presentation at <a href="https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/309" rel="nofollow">https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/309</a> Middle.io
Thanks, Steven!
Startup School was a blast. Connecting with like minded people, getting some sanity check and verification from YC alumni was awesome.<p>We're Gruply - Instagram for Learning (<a href="https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/452" rel="nofollow">https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/452</a>)
Need a better way to split books with friends? <a href="https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/432" rel="nofollow">https://www.startupschool.org/presentations/432</a>
Based on the comments in this thread, it seems like there was some sort of instruction for all the students to come here and post about their experience, which has resulted in a complete non-discussion.