Or how about reasons why not to apply, if there are any? I imagine it's stressful and time-consuming for many people, for example. (Though of course that comes with starting any company.)
- In its beginnings ZeroTier was a one-man band for several reasons (some circumstantial, some historical). PG has explicitly written against single founder ventures, so I decided I had near zero likelihood of being admitted for that reason alone. Add to that the fact that my degree is from a Midwestern state school and I have not "worked at Google," etc., and I figured the lack of impressive credentials coupled with single founder status reduced the likelihood of admission to the point that I'd be better off spending the time to purchase a PowerBall lotto ticket.
- I am older, have kids, and am not rich. The Bay Area's real estate costs are simply too high, and I can't relocate on a whim because I would have to uproot family. It would make no sense to move there unless it were a permanent move, and YC's stipend is not sufficient to support a family in the Bay for even one year. Post-YC, being in the bay would cause our burn rate to be unacceptably high. (Almost 2X by my estimations.)
- At the time ZeroTier already had 10% month/month user base and active device count growth and I already had clear ideas about how to grow further and monetize, etc. I didn't feel like I needed that much hand-holding and already had some idea of the advice I'd get, etc.
By the time I became a we and this became a full time venture with everything it needed, we were too far along and YC fails cost/benefit analysis. At this point we'd have a chance of getting in but we don't need to get in.
There's one more point that didn't factor specifically into not applying to YC but is relevant:
I think there's a perspective advantage to not being in The Valley. It's very faddish up there and we'd be much more likely to end up in a situation where everything we build and our entire marketing pipeline is optimized for selling to other startups and Valley companies and that's not a good place to be in when that industry is extremely cyclic.
Our product is very useful to a lot of less faddish, trendy enterprise users and institutions like universities, etc., and we do not need to be in the Valley to reach these customers.
SoCal is underrated IMHO. It has a great talent pool minus the completely flat out insane real estate costs and is about two hours by plane from SF/SV.
I can't stress enough how crazy the RE costs up there are, especially when compared with what you get. First time I visited SV and toured a $3000/mo apartment with a lobby that smelled like dog urine I called it "perhaps the world's only six figure slum." Manhattan is that expensive but you're in Manhattan, not a crap vanilla apartment in a boring suburb. You have to spend over $5000/month there if you have a family to get an acceptable place to live. We currently spend under $2000/month for a clean, modern, nice place and are 20 minutes from this:
http://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-o/04/a5/d7/5a/c...
We are located here and likely will be for a while:
Click on my handle and drop an e-mail if you want to meet.
(I'm sensitive to this because it used to be my big objection to YC, because 7% is a large amount of equity to give up for the money they're giving you, maybe even today.)
The value you get out of YC isn't really the money.
7% is a lot.
You're making an assumption that with YC your company would be worth $10m+ and without, $100k. That assumption isn't really valid to me.