Apply to YC for the Winter 2018 funding cycle
ycombinator.com
ycombinator.com
Is rolling admissions an idea worth trying out for YC - all teams start at the same time, but interviewing and admission decisions don't have to?
The worst thing for an investor is a missed opportunity (after all, they're looking for that 100th portfolio item that makes up for the 99 other losses).
Meanwhile, you're just shooting yourself in the foot by giving yourself a bad early impression from the get go (solo founder who didn't find a technical cofounder a few weeks later, didn't close your first customer yet so you were still pre revenue, etc.), and the difference week over week can be night-and-day for an early stage startup.
I hope YC can continue to deliver value by raising batch levels and providing support to through their satellite offering. It is difficult to replicate; or if replication is the wrong word-- provide a service consistent with their brand and values-- via a distributed network with a remote team.
In many ways since it started, I think the Stripe Atlas program is a great way to address this issue and I can see it evolving into an investment model. I hope YC has the resources to scale their efforts. Scaling is hard; a mistake hurts their brand, credibility and their companies. Success broadens their Network, their portfolio and gives them a foothold in different markets and verticals.
Good luck; and sincerely thanks for pioneering this. It is much more brave than the ivy approach. YC believes-- with good reason-- in it's mission and I'm glad they are willing to expand it's breadth with this, non profit, hard science and funding research
The application process is valuable beyond simply getting accepted, though, so it's worth doing.
However, if you still plan on wonly accepting companies twice a year.. doesn't it still have many of the same disadvantages?
I.e. a company which wants funding likely won't wait to hear back / get funded in 6 months.
I know my company is potentially looking for funding. If we jumped on that option, I'd be reaching out to everyone I could tomorrow.
Otherwise if one applies today, will they only get an answer in early October?
Maybe I should stop applying with just ideas, and apply for the company I have actually been running, even though it's not a "tech" company per se.
I would love to run a tech company, and code on the side and to some extent code tools for my business, but I feel safer in a business that's actually bringing in money.
Not saying you don't have a great business, congratulations on making something profitable and getting ahead of 95% of the crowd here :)
I am not a VC, however if I was I would be looking for businesses that can generate 10x the investment in few years.The margins are really really thin in your business and its hard work
We run a startup that helps sellers like you scale up and move to "Seller fullfilled prime" because that's where the profit margin is slightly better
> I would love to run a tech company, and code on the side and to some extent code tools for my business, but I feel safer in a business that's actually bringing in money.
It looks like you and ikeboy would be competing in the same space, but they have actual experience as a customer for the problem that needs to be solved.
ikeboy: Skip YC, study marketspace tooling, refine using your existing business to dogfood, sell those tools as a SaaS. Buy me a beer if you get rich.
I think you could most definitely build it alone. Start with an MVP. Don't know enough code to build an MVP? Learn to code. Ruby or Python IMHO. Once you've got an MVP, dogfood part of your business through it. Iterate. Slowly, run more of your business through it. Once you're driving your entire business off of it, start selling it to others. You have the perfect testimonial: "We run our 300k/year business off of the platform, and its the core of our business".
You don't know what you can do until you try. Try.
I absolutely want to be grossing $3 million a year in a few years and think it's realistic. There are plenty of motivated $3 million/year sellers and I've met a few.
But I agree there's a limit on growth. Looking at the top few companies, that limit is about $100/million a year in gross revenue.
As revenue increases margins tend to decrease, but at my level I'm able to make 20% net margins and I know some bigger sellers who are also at those margins.
I guess it doesn't compare to 90% margins of software, but nothing can.
I rarely have met sellers who exceed 5-10% margin
For our startup funding is life or death situation. The number of users is overloading our CPU and if we don't scale up, everyone leaves.
I would love to avoid approaching VC's and spending months talking to them, demoing them products etc. I would rather be working and scaling up my own product
Raise by offering yearly discount for upfront payments to subscribers?
The Javascript is unreliable because it parses the item dimensions from the page. We can't use API on the extension because we had way too many downloads and the Amazon API is throttled.
We are working around both issues and our next update will have more precise calculation
Everyone I have talked to who went to YC said it was great. They've accepted older/mature companies in the past (Quora as an extreme example), who have joined purely for the network and the mentorship.
We decided not to go with it for a few reasons:
* Over the years we had gathered a couple of angels in the cap table. And YC was unlikely to budge from their $120k@5m terms for us, which would have ruffled some feathers from the others.
* We'd outgrown (ie us cofounders as individuals) the "hustle or die for my startup" mentality -- being a profitable business where we make our own rules was nice and valuable and we are extremely happy with it. We don't want to live as the stars of a Silicon Valley episode, it's nice watching from the sidelines in a profitable, fun business.
* I did not have a US visa at the time and it would have been a logistical nightmare to colocate with my team in Mountain View, which is (was?) non-negotiable to YC. Americans underestimate how much of a showstopper immigration to their country can be.
A very valid point that you bring up and it's not even to do with the current political climate.
My co-founder left US and moved to Australia with me. There are plenty of people like him (and even my wife) who are pretty adamant to not even visit US, even for a day.
We used to live in Brooklyn and the number of times we saw/heard gun violence is staggering.
Once you get used to the ultra-safe communities like EU/Australia/Canada you can just wonder why would you even think about visiting US risking your life and your families life?
This is why I love Waterloo, Ontario. You can walk around the sketchiest allies at 2 am in the morning and feel safe.
Can you share your "elevator pitch" so I can take a look?