Interesting article and I wanted to comment on the bit on outsourcing.
Our project needed an extra hand and that's where we turned to oDesk and some good old word of mouth.
Very quickly we found some coders but we stayed only with one group.
The relationship moved from outsourcing to co-founderness with Tomas after a few months.
He's Slovakian and studies in Poland and needed a way to get some income during his last year at university.<p>We've been working together for more than a year, and he's used this project to write his thesis and make some money.
It raises an interesting point, as finding founders is sometime a question of good luck and great people.
Regardless of where you look, its all a question of feeling, mutual trust and being open minded.
One interesting point I hadn't seen before is the following recommendation:<p><i>Have someone in YC vouch for you</i><p>Is this common? How's it transmitted to YC, through the application or do they specifically write PG and crew to let them know about it?<p>We are in a position where we can get a recommendation from two alumni but we felt it was not a correct thing to do when we submitted our app. Anyone else has experience with this?
This is accurate. I would add two things:<p>1. Make sure your video can be watched easily on a Mac browser without plugins. Bonus if it works on Windows and Linux. I've seen a few people that use .wmv files, which end up crashing browsers. YouTube private video links are a great way to make sure thats not a problem.<p>2. Same idea with the video: if you link to a document, make sure its a PDF.
I wonder when we'll start seeing startups created specifically to help people apply to programs like YC. Similar to prep classes for the SAT, these could help you fill out your apps, fine-tune your answers to the essay questions, coach you on interviews, and even polish your videos. Maybe advanced courses could teach you how to launch and market your MVP before applying to YC.
"For a given company, the partners just need to identify that there is some slight promise that makes an interview worthwhile."<p>This sounds very forgiving and makes me wonder how many out of those estimated 4000 get the interview.
Whether or not you're accepted, dotCloud is offering every applicant one year of free hosting for their app. In exchange we only ask that you don't give up.<p>Email hn@dotcloud.com and we'll hook you up!<p>Good luck everyone.
Excellent info, I am largely surprised that we managed to hit every point that you have mentioned. Looking forward to seeing this batch (and hoping we're involved)