Or, you can start showing up at cool hacker spaces like the Hacker Dojo or Noise Bridge.<p>Get a stack of business cards, and hang out at Hackers & Founders </shameless plug> or 106 miles and make a point of having coffee with a couple of cool new people every week.<p>Join one of the dozens of cool co working spaces in the area. (Avoid Plug and Play).<p>Spend $9 on the "Pitching hacks" ebook. Best money you'll spend as a founder.<p>Work on building:<p><pre><code> team with at least one technical founder
workable product
refined pitch
gain some traction
preferably find one or two people to be your advisors (aka social proof)
</code></pre>
And then apply to Angel list.<p>You need demo day for "social proof" in front of investors and to get a press bump. Demo days aren't essential for funding any more now that Angel List has turned funding into an API.<p>There's an open ecosystem in place for this, and it's improving. There are still a number of places in the early stage ecosystem that really suck, however. And, that's why incubators are still able to charge 6% of your equity for fixes to that.<p>But, some of us are working on fixing these problems. You'll be hearing more from Hackers & Founders about this in the near future.
A word of caution about the name and approach. You'll find when fundraising that branding yourself as "ycreject.com" will make it very hard to raise funding. VCs and Angels are going to think, "if YC wouldn't give them money, why should I give them a much larger amount of money?"<p>I don't think it's controversial to say that most angels and VCs suffer from group-think and an over-reliance on social proof. That's why finding your first investor is the hardest.<p>This concept will be perfect for boot-strapers, but not good for someone looking for funding. You'd be better off avoiding all relation to YC and branding yourself as some sort of unaffiliated startup co-op.
I was in YC, and I think this is an awesome idea. You can replicate lots of the value, even if you don't have PG giving office hours. However, five isn't enough. Lots of the value from YC was to hear lots of different ideas and opinions and feedback, and you won't get that with five.<p>What's the downside of taking 30? You're not taking investment, not providing mentorship; there's no cost to taking more.<p>You're going to want to arrange stuff for you to do, right, speakers for example? So you should split the effort of getting angels to talk, between the companies who join.<p>Finally, no-one is going to want to give talks (very high value) to five groups, and there will definitely be no demo-day (ultra-high value) with 5 groups.<p>With five groups you'll gain very little (some, but little).
I'd urge you to accept as many groups apply, to a limit of 30-ish at least.
Good idea, but:<p>(!) You should invite more people. I can't figure out why you wouldn't want as many as possible<p>(2) You should change the name. Not only is it not good to label yourself as a "reject," there may also be people who have independent funding (I'm a contractor and make good money that way) that don't need YC money but would still be regular participants. What about "Indie YC" or something like that (perhaps related to a different math theorm)?<p>(3) Why do you want people to fill out the YC app again?<p>(4) And why does only one person (yourself) get to decide who gets in or not? There would need to be considerably more trust involved before people are just going to just let you make all the decisions. I tend to think it is better to say, "My co-founder and I will be at this place at this time every week with our laptops and free food." Once you have 3 or so committed startups you probably have traction enough to continue.<p>That said, I'm moving to the Bay area next month to work on solo ventures. I'm in if something is going on.
I actually like this as a concept, though iamelgringo's advice is probably better in practice. But you could run this social group in addition to taking his advice. Good luck!<p>Be careful with using the name YC around here though, one of the rules of Hacker News is that you can only use "YC" if you are actually affiliated with YC.
I dont think there are many downsides to letting in more people. If you want to keep the quality high, maybe crowdsource and let the YC community vote on who gets in. But 30-40 just like YC is a good idea. It also increases the odds that someone coming out of the group will actually be successful<p>I suspect as the person organizing you wont have time for your own startup as you will need to keep the thing organized, get speakers etc. but you may be able to get funding.<p>maybe a name like abiogenesis - spontaneous formation of life would be better than yc rejects<p>Also I suspect you will immediately be able to get press as everyone loves the underdog
i have been rejected from ycombinator multiple times over the years probably because i am a solo founder- its hard to find other guys to work with that i get on with in my local area..<p>my startup is yrecruit.com - someone mentioned am i ripping of ycombinator - its more a play on words
Nice idea! Here's something similar we tried in Brighton, UK in 2009: <a href="http://bootcycle.com" rel="nofollow">http://bootcycle.com</a><p>I think being in the bay area and basing out of somewhere like Hacker DoJo would have made a huge difference.
A bunch of people will push forward regardless: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2422145" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2422145</a>