Recommend a Founder for YC

Does YC still require founders move to the Bay Area? That is a significant burden for say, older founders with families.<p>I mention that because the pitch says:<p>&quot;We know that great founders can come from anywhere — any city, school, country or background&quot;<p>But the application form says:<p>&quot;If we invest in you, your group is expected to move to the Bay Area for June–Aug 2017.&quot;<p>There&#x27;s a bit of a disconnect, and I&#x27;m curious how it&#x27;s reconciled.

I&#x27;ve noticed a lot of effort over the past year to get more startups interested in YC (deal flow). I&#x27;ll say what I hear a lot of startup founders saying now -- YC is just not the same anymore. It&#x27;s lost its appeal and exclusiveness factor. People are just turned off from it.<p>I hope some of the YC team reads this comment and takes heed.

I think a lot of early stage startups look up to YC acceptance as validation, but when you apply at the early stage, you get rejected almost automatically. Too much emphasis on number of users, revenue, etc. So a lot of potentially great startups die before they even see the light of day.<p>Feedback to early stage startups could encourage more founders to apply and keep going. Otherwise it&#x27;s time consuming to put an application together.<p>I have a feeling that the next Facebook, Google, etc. will not be discovered in any accelerator program.

YC is failing in the same way that so many once-great startups fail. They&#x27;re not innovating or reinventing themselves, at all.<p>And YC really does need to change with the times. Paul Graham was the big reason people wanted so badly to get into YC and he&#x27;s essentially gone now<p>It&#x27;s now obvious to everyone that YC can&#x27;t grant success to founders, it can &quot;only&quot; grant opportunity.<p>So why not admit that YC needs good founders more than good founders need YC? It&#x27;s always been true but now it should be obvious to all.<p>So, drop all the fake eliteness, secret panels of &quot;experts&quot;, and insider-club mentality. Just straight up tell founders what the requirements are for YC funding and then fund them!<p>For example say that all YC startups need:<p>1. One competent programmer willing to dedicate years. 2. At least one other person willing to dedicate years. 3. A <i>Launched</i> and <i>usable</i> prototype software.<p>What else do you need to know, whether they went to the right school? Whether they&#x27;re attractive??? How good their spoken English is???

There should be more ways to get help if you are at a pre-YC stage. I&#x27;d imagine there are a lot of startups that fail before they get to a YC stage.<p>Startup School is good but it&#x27;s not ongoing. Most VC firms have been more helpful than YC in the early stages personally.<p>For example, I&#x27;ve had VC firms write me a letter of recommendation for a visa when that&#x27;s not something YC would do.<p>I can see YC is trying to increase flow. Why not make it more organic?

Best of luck getting much of the world to apply in the next couple months with so much visa uncertainty for the next 4 years.<p>What is your plan for founders who get turned back at the airport if they chose you? PHD-in-progress wasn&#x27;t good enough reason to enter the US last week and you want the <i>smart</i> people to apply for something in months.<p>What happened to YC&#x27;s remote etc stuff? That would have been helpful about now.

I don&#x27;t mean to flamebait or troll or anything, but lots of the &quot;misconceptions&quot; seem grounded in data, based on the very data that you&#x27;re putting forward:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.ycombinator.com&#x2F;common-misconceptions-about-applying-to-yc&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.ycombinator.com&#x2F;common-misconceptions-about-app...</a><p>&gt; Misconception: Only US companies get into YC.<p>&gt; S16: 29% were from outside the US.<p>So it&#x27;s mostly true.<p>&gt; Misconception: I need to raise a seed round before I apply to YC.<p>&gt; S16: False. 14.2% of accepted companies weren’t even incorporated when they applied.<p>So it&#x27;s mostly true.<p>The list goes on and on. Not that it removes the merit of YC or anything, but, hey, mind neutering the PR&#x2F;marketing BS a bit to give the actual picture without trying to paint lipstick all over the pig? ;-)<p>The way that FAQ or whatever it is reads atm is: &quot;Our deal flow is not as big as we&#x27;d like, so please send more applications in so we can show we&#x27;ve tons of demand to those we raised funds from and ensure they&#x27;ll invest again because we get to be picky since we&#x27;re <i>hugely</i> popular!&quot; Which is PR&#x2F;marketing at the end of the day, but just don&#x27;t be misleading to would-be founders.

Tossing in an idea: Why not use a rolling application process where founders can update YC on any progress they are making with their startups and an internal system ranks and reddit-scores the startups. YC can jump in and send a note to a founder any time - like an internal advisory board. When application times near, just send a note to the founders you find promising based on your scoring system and they can provide additional info like a video or join an interview if needed. This approach would give YC a lot more data and be less distracting to founders. If you want to reduce volume, just ping companies you know are not VC fundable and let them move on.<p>The deadline-based application process is distracting. While the application is helpful, and should be kept, the founders are expected to waste time and attention every 6 months wondering &quot;but what if my next 3 out of 6 months are committed to YC&quot;. Now requesting recommendations adds just one more distraction. People who are committed to work on their project will likely apply multiple times to an ever-decreasing odds process.<p>If you keep the application open year-round we can just direct information your way whenever it happens and use it as our own benchmark. Just a thought.

What exactly does this do? Clicked the links and it&#x27;s not clear if YC is just request the community send links to the YC Application page, of if something else is going on.

For those that do not click the links...<p>Applications for YC Summer 2017 are open now: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=13600594" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=13600594</a>

Kinda related to some of the discussion. Is there anywhere within 2-3 hours of the Bay Area where one could start a company yet have a normal house with a normal yard for a family?

For a minute I thought it would be a service to match founders of fail startup from previous batches with others entrepreneurs willing to apply. I would definitely like that.

For some reason, they just keep refilling this piñata.

I&#x27;d like YC to maybe do a blog-post or give some insight into what they are doing here, what they are planning to accomplish, etc. Though that may spoil the data they are trying to collect??

So does this mean that I should contact people in my network to go and recommend me?<p>Is YC going to read all these recommendations or is it going to be only forwarded to the person applying?

Don&#x27;t get it. You&#x27;re supposed to recommend a founder but end up on an application page? I don&#x27;t want to apply - only recommend!

&gt; If you know someone working on a startup who we should encourage to apply for the Summer 2017 batch, recommend them here.<p>What the heck? This post reads like YC can&#x27;t find enough founders (in quality + quantity) already.<p>If so, is it due to the changing landscape of startups themselves or the shift in focus from startups to left leaning political ideology?

I&#x27;m curious how much does it cost to rent for 3 months near YC campus for 3 months?

YC should have branches for europe and asia.

The RMS Titanic?