Kat from YC here. Sam, Matt Krisiloff and I are happy to answer any questions about the Fellowship. You can also send questions to fellowship@ycombinator.com.
Hi! I am 32 years old, have a young family, and a steady software engineering job at a large software company. I have always loved the idea of a traditional YC experience but have never applied because I feel like I am not at a stage in my life where I'd be a good fit. Is it fair to say that this Fellowship experiment is an attempt to examine the "may have a good idea but is not very mobile" demographic?
Does YC ever consider ideas that aren't designed to be billion-dollar companies? For instance, if someone was working on a next-gen diagnostics tool for VoIP, they might realistically be able to get to $10-20M, maybe 10x if things go really well. But it's hard to see that becoming a billion+ company under any circumstances.
It's OK to be working on something that's hard to imagine how it would grow to be a really big thing, that's how most ideas start out. (Apple made hobbyist computers, Google was another search engine of 1000 -- how big of a deal could they have thought these would become?). It's important to be open-minded to the pathways of how your idea could become something big as it keeps growing though, and it's good to stop and think about those ideas every once in awhile.
One of the biggest things I've learned from being around YC community is that most successful ideas start out as small but end up being very large. I would encourage you to think bigger about the fundamental problems you're solving and then how you can turn solving the immediate problem into something really big down the line. Hope this helps!
Thanks for making yourself available, Matt. Sounds like an incredible opportunity.
What kind of progress do you expect founders to make by the end of the Fellowship? Put another way, if the goal of participation in Y Combinator is for companies to build enough traction to become top-tier candidates for an institutional fundraise, what is the outcome that participants in the Fellowship should hope to achieve?
We'd like teams to make as much progress as possible during the 8-weeks of the fellowship. If you have a prototype, that would mean launching and getting your first customers. If you're at idea stage that would mean building a prototype and talking to users. At the end of the 8-weeks we hope the teams will be ready to apply for YC W16 (it's not a requirement -- but we'll encourage it).
Hi, Matt and Kat. Cool to see the focus on helping more people start companies - I had written off an article bouncing around over the weekend alleging that rich families are the key to entrepreneurship [1]. Maybe it is true, but with enough YC fellowships it doesn't have to be.
Question: my organization is a nonprofit co-op. I know YC recently started accepting nonprofits - what's your opinion on them for YC fellowships?
Unfortunately we're not going to be accepting non-profits for this first experiment. If it goes well though, we hope to fund some this way in the future.
Hi Matt, we run a web design & development business and have been trying to free up resource to work on a saas product which we already have potential customers lined up for...
We would put full-time focus on this, but we can't really close up shop completely, we could put projects on hold, but we'd need to at least lightly manage/delegate tasks when things come up occasionally. Is that going to work?
I am a grad student working on a purely research based concept that I feel could make a good start to a company. However, I'm fully committed to the research at the university for the next year. The YCF would be used to get this project from just a thesis to an applicable concept. Would this be a good start to what YC is looking for?
It would, but not until you're ready to work on it full-time. We're not sure yet whether we'll offer YCF again (will depend how it goes), but if we do in the future it could be a good fit.
Are there any plans to do a normal YC program (7%/$120k) but also be inclusive of remote teams?
0% for $12k is obviously a great deal, but my main stumbling block has always been the loss of income from dropping paid work, and $12k over two months is barely half an engineer's salary - let alone to cover multiple team members.
That said, it may well be enough to make someone like me think "well, at least I won't be earning zero dollars..."
Ok, rephrase that as "at least I'm only losing 80% of my salary instead of 100%".
Plenty of people who could create great things are also saddled with families and expenses that run to 80+% of their disposable incomes. It's all well and good to suggest that an individual can live on ramen noodles, but a family and young children cannot and should not have to. That leaves only a few options left for such people to start a company: do it on the side in evenings/weekends; and save up a nest egg then quit/reduce your job to work on the startup.
Suggesting that willingness to forgo having a family is a pre-requisite for entrepreneurship is fallacious.
It's a 12k equity-free grant, it lasts for 8 weeks, you can do it remotely, and it's primarily meant for idea and prototype-stage companies. No dinners and no formal Demo Day, but there will be kickoff and end events in Mountain View where teams will present to the YC community. We'll fly out remote teams for those.
Can my company join, aiming to finish our flagship product?
My company released lots of products, all of them had critical acclaim and high user reviews, but we ran out of money before releasing our main product, and we never had marketing money, so our sales are nowhere interesting.
I am wondering if you consider this early enough or not. (we had no investment beside from extra money from the original founders).
It sounds like you might be doing a company re-launch from the ground up? If that's the case, definitely apply for YCF.
If you still have successful ancillary products and just want to develop your flagship product with YC's help, consider applying to YC W16. Applications for that will open up in August.
Hi, my co-founder and I are currently working on our idea from Hawaii and Portland Or. Will separate remote locations be ok during the fellowship, or will you want us to both work from the same location?
Please only submit one application! Figure out whether you'd rather work on your solo project or with the co-founder, and then choose whichever idea you think is more promising.
Hi Matt! As I know it is not required to move to the Bay Area for the program. Will be possible to join in person in 2-3 weeks later, let's say, in October? Thanks
Great opportunity, thanks guys. I'll point out that first yc.submittable form is a bit confusing: http://imgur.com/ITk71jN
I guess the "YC Fellowship Application" is a link to it? I wasn't sure where to click besides 'submit' and was a bit afraid it'd submit a blank form and lock me out of a real submission later! (It didn't, of course – the submit button is just an anchor tag pointing to https://yc.submittable.com/submit/44764)
Sorry about that -- it's definitely safe to click through that first button. The actual application page's submit button, however, will submit your application!
edit: we've changed it to link directly to the application form now. Thanks for pointing this out.
Is there a bias against solo founders? I've yet to find any coworkers or friends that want to work on a project together (not enough technical skills or too busy working overtime at their jobs).
No bias, but it generally is harder to build a successful company as a solo founder (though totally possible! Dropbox, Zenefits, Instacart all started with solo founders). If you're applying alone, tell us how you plan to overcome the solo hurdles of being alone / managing everything to do, and if you plan to bring someone in soon, let us know.
Where would be best to put this in the application form? I have explained that I am looking for co-founders and what I look for in them in the "Is there anything else we should know about your company?" section and am at the word limit. Can't seem to find a question that prompts me to to talk about how I will make do for the time being.
I think this is entirely misguided. People have selective memory: all but one of these companies had multiple founders. Hell, most companies we associate today with a single person had more than one founder. It's just that one held the most publicly visible role:
Apple: Steve Jobs | + Steve Wozniak + Ronald Wayne
Microsoft: Bill Gates | + Paul Allen
Google: Larry Page | + Sergey Brin
Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg | + Dustin Moskovitz + Chris Hughes + Andrew McCollum + Eduardo Saverin
Uber[1]: Travis Kalanick | + Garrett Camp + Ryan Graves
Tesla[1]: Elon Musk | + JB Straubel + Martin Eberhard + Marc Tarpenning + Ian Wright
[1]: Travis & Elon musk weren't even founders of Uber & Tesla. They just "became" founders post factum in startup lore.
Having a dominant founder is different than being an only founder. But what's common to all these companies is that one founder was really dominant and had the vision. In fact, out of the top companies, it's safe to say that very large proportion have a dominant founder, who wound up having much more equity than the other founder.
I don't understand why there are so many downvotes on something that is, indeed, a verifiable statistical fact. Can you downvoters write a message that elaborates on why you have such a strong reaction to this data?
dominant founder is highly subjective and simply wrong in some of those cases, as pointed out above. Even if you want to argue there was a 'dominant' founder (whatever that means), your examples don't make sense:
Apple would not exist without Steve Wozniak
Google started as a partnership
Allen sold qdos to IBM which established Microsoft
I'd argue that Apple had a dominant founder in the early days, but it was Steve Wozniak, not Steve Jobs. He'd basically built the Apple I in its entirety and shown it off at Homebrew before Steve Jobs said "Let's build a company around this and sell it."
Also, Larry was always the primary driver behind Google; it started out as his thesis project, PageRank is named for him, and he'd already started crawling the web by the time Sergey joined. Sergey's initial startup idea was to order pizza via fax machine. Google obviously wouldn't exist without both of them, and Larry was smart enough to share equity and credit equally, but a startup at the YC fellowship stage is much more likely to look like Larry's thesis project than Google when it took VC.
Jobs had to persuade him to leave HP, and do all the selling and marketing, those are also important parts of building a business. In my view it was a partnership and you're ignoring a huge part of what made Apple Apple. That leaves you with Google, which also had two very early significant players.
I'm not arguing against single founders, it's perfectly possible, but most companies are not started by a single founder, they are collaborations and are all the better for it.
A few questions about tax (guess who is doing their taxes right now)
1. What are the tax implications of these fellowships for non-US citizens? The reason I ask is anyone with any experience of the IRS will want to avoid dealing with it if at all possible.
2. Will accepting such a grant mean the recipient will have to file a tax return with the IRS?
3. What about withholding taxes? Will the non-us recipient need to file a W-8BEN or W-8BEN-E form?
> We encourage you to come to Mountain View if you can make it, but remote interviews over video chat will be okay too ...
For remote teams with viable ideas that YC is interested in funding, how remote can such teams be? Can teams apply from outside the US; from Europe, Asia or Africa?
Yes absolutely. Teams from anywhere in the world are welcome to apply. We just ask that you have a strong internet connection that allows for clear, reliable video chats.
Hey Kat, thanks for being available for questions!
I'm currently on F-1 (student) visa, and I'll be graduating soon. And I think this may represent some other people's situation as well.
In order to maintain the visa status after graduation while working, I'll need an OPT (Optional Practical Training). OPT is supported by the school AND a company that hires the person full-time, and is commonly used before the employee gets an H1-B. Clearly if I work on an idea full-time, I won't be working for a established company in full-time. Will YCF be a able to help in this case if accepted? For example, by hiring the team as YC employee in paperworks for the 8 weeks, but allowing the team to work on their own ideas?
Unfortunately we don't have the bandwidth to get involved with visas before or during the program :( If you can't do it from the Bay Area though, you can still apply to do it remotely--we want to try working with remote teams!
You don't need a job offer to do OPT. I'm on an F-1 student visa in the US, and just finished a PhD, and will be starting a company on OPT. You even qualify for the STEM extension (you just have to register your business on e-verify). This gives a total of 29 months of runway, which is more time than I have money for.
You don't need any help from YC to do this - talk to your international student office, they process lots of OPT applications. Read the instructions on the USCIS website. They are very clear on this, you can start a company, you don't even need to incorporate to satisfy those requirements (although, this is not legal advice, talk to your international student office, and their lawyers).
Thanks for sharing. I guess registering your own company e-verify counts that you are employed, so you don't need to worry about the 90 days unemployment limit? Also good luck with your start-up!
Hi Kat,
considering applying for a hardware-based startup. I have enough savings to quit my current job for 2 months but the 12k would be enough to build a few prototypes. Would you consider a robotics-based startup?
Yes - we are considering hardware-based startups. We know $12k isn't a lot to get a hardware company going. We'd ask that you tell us in the application how you plan to make progress in the short amount of time, with a small amount of funding.
Hi Kat! We're considering applying and wondering if you folks have a conception of companies that would be considered too far along for this program. In our situation, we're have not yet taken investment, but we would definitely love to and still have much to learn about getting ready for that. We're also somewhat beyond the prototype phase, but only to the extent that we're soon shipping a version 1 product to crowdfunding backers. Thanks!
It sounds like you may be far enough along to apply for Y Combinator (those applications open in late August). But I don't have quite enough information -- so if you're in doubt, you should go ahead and apply for the Fellowship. If you're working on hardware you'll have to illustrate how you plan to make progress with the limited amount of funding the fellowship provides.
Thanks. The last question is: does YC have restrictions about the types of companies that can apply?
Our company makes open source sex toys, and we've got an ever-growing list of places that just won't work with businesses related to adult products (stripe, square, mailchimp, kickstarter, ...). Fingers crossed that YC doesn't care.
I see a lot of emphasis in other comments on the importance of teams. I'm a solo founder that is close to launch. I realize my company would be stronger with a cofounder, but I just haven't found the right person/people who are willing to take on that role yet. I'll be applying, but I was curious if the chances of being accepted are less for single founder companies.
Hi, I just started filling out the form when I encountered this question - 'Will all founders commit to working exclusively on this project for the next six months?'
Isn't the point of this, that you are definitely committing 8 weeks and going from there?
We're requiring that you'll work on it full-time for 8 weeks, but we hope you'll commit to it longer; the most important founder trait to us is determination -- answering no to that question won't disqualify you, but we'd love it if you were able to answer yes!
e.g. "We've been working on this project() for over a year on evenings and weekends, collectively contributing >1500 effort hours, and we have spent $75k on rent and expenses. To keep that going, and have each member meet their familial costs, at least some of us need to earn money from consulting. However, if sufficient follow-on funding can be found, we'd be very glad to answer yes, and focus on this exclusively."
It's a hardware project requiring a fair amount of warehouse/build space, hence the expenses.
I'd say you should answer that question honestly there, but explain the situation in the video you make. We're pretty understanding, and don't want to discourage people from giving their ideas a real try.
1) If we are still looking for / selecting technical co-founders, can we apply?
2) Does the entire team need to dedicate itself full time to this? Alternatively, if the "paying bills" job is quite light (2-3 hours per day), and we are willing to forego some sleep, can we still apply?
1) You can apply as a solo founder, though we do think it's important that the fellowship teams we fund are able to build product themselves. Working with contractors is expensive and can slow you down considerably. If you are non-technical, try to make a strong case for why that won't be a problem.
2) We prefer that you are able to work full-time on the product for the 8 weeks of the program.
How much have you sold through Kickstarter? I'd say use your best judgement, and if you're not certain, still apply. If it's a lot, you may just want to apply to the W16 batch of YC (applications open in August).
Hey Kat, thanks for taking questions. I noticed you said the main aim of the program is to build a prototype or acquire a first customer. Our company is still working on our prototype, but we just got our first 3 paying beta customers last week. Is that a bit too late stage?
Hi, Do you look at how many lives will be impacted because of the idea or how easy it is to monetize the idea? I feel my webapp can help users find needle in the haystack but I haven't really gotten to the business model part yet.
Hey Kat (Sam and Matt too)! I am a grade 11 High School student from Singapore, and I’m considering applying with my buddy. The problem is that we have our End-of-Year / Promotional exams from 23 Sept to 30 Sept, and we won’t be able to get excused from school for this. However, we will be able to skip school and commit for the whole of October + November + December.
Would YC Fellowship be open to later stage startups?
We've already gone through a previous accelerator, done some fundraising (below series A) and have employees. Moving would be difficult for us since our key business is in fashion (we're in NYC) and also employees. As founders we're happy to go down to SF once in a while, but the remote option would suit us perfectly.
Seems clear from the about / FAQ pages that (at least for now) the answer to this is no. But would be cool to have something along these lines available for companies that prefer remote!
Hi Kat, we're very excited to hear about this and we look forward to applying. The FAQ for the normal YC program says that it's fine for the cofounders to submit separate applications focusing on different ideas. Does that apply for the fellowship as well?
We don't have beta ready, but we do have wireframes. Should we post them instead in "If you have an online demo, what's the url? (Please don't password protect it; just use an obscure url.)" question?
As Sam said, take a semester off. I did that during college just for some personal exploration and its one of the best decisions I ever made. Once you get started with work, taking a 6 month break is MUCH harder - aka it'll never be this easy to get time off again.
If you work for startups taking time off is not hard at all! Startups fail all the time and it is an ideal time to take 6 months off. There is a bit of a stigma to taking too much time off between jobs, but if you can show that you actually built something during that time, it isn't hard to overcome. I even took off 8 months after I quit a job to write free software. I simply showed prospective companies the code I wrote during that time.
The main thing is to save money while you are working! It gives you freedom.
I took a year off college to build a startup. I went back after the year cause we got acquired. But regardless, I learnt more about building products and leading a good life in that year than rest of my 24 breathing years.
If your school policies are as flexible as mine (I was at CMU, which is awesome when it comes to leaves), definitely consider taking a semester off.
5 years down the line, it won't matter that much. So it's not the big battle you should be fighting.
It's important to us that the team itself can build the product it's trying to create. When you try to hire contractors to build out an idea, it's expensive, slows down iteration speed, and it's really hard to judge the quality of their work if you're non-technical too. If your team is entirely non-technical, try to make a good case for why that won't be a problem, and what you're doing to close that skill gap.
We hope accepted teams will still apply to YC (the timeline for that will be a little bit later than the normal application period.
If you aren't accepted to YCF, you're definitely welcome to apply to YC W16 with no penalty as well -- try to make good progress though in the interim period.
