YC is in the incredibly fortunate position of having this opportunity but instead it looks like Sam Altman is falling into the same trap Larry Page did with Google. He's turning it into a bit of a rich guy's playground...
On behalf of the world that wasn't born into a world of wealth and elite connections: Please shine your massive resources on the many thousands of deserving little startups!
This is, however, a clear logistical challenge when you have a partner/advice model that doesn't scale all that easily. It may just turn out that an online, infinitely scalable net is precisely the best way to grow the number of great companies you can see and subsequently fund.
I don't think YC intends this to be a purely educational exercise.
Also, being connected doesn't help people get into YC. We have no connection to most of the companies we fund.
This certainly isn't the perception on my part - the flood of posts from previous YC companies who talk about how they had help from other YC companies to polish their pitch makes it seem like current YC companies are definitively connected to previous YC companies.
-Connected people can more easily get an interview slot
-Connected people can get feedback on their application before submission
-Connected people can more easily coaching and advice before their interview from alumni and partners
"You could parachute [Sam] into an island full of cannibals and come back in 5 years and he'd be the king." - PG 5.5 years ago[1]
Obviously he's figured out how to get a few powerful people to bet on him. But, he doesn't seem to have any outward success.
From his videos, he doesn't seem to be classically charismatic.
So, what has he figured out? How is he a kingmaker?
TL;DR: Michael Seibel will be the new CEO of YC Core, which we are now just going to call "YC". Ali Rowghani is now the CEO of the YC Continuity Fund. I’m going to be the President of YC Group, which includes Y Combinator, YC Continuity, YC Research, and our new online class. We’ll add more organizational units over time. We’re going to replace the Fellowship with a much larger MOOC launching next year.
It's concise and let's me cherry-pick the sections below I'd like to read - better than a table of contents except in those magazines that provide a paragraph for each of their lead stories).
I'd like to see other sama stories in an abbreviated form too.
If I had to look it up, I'm sure others are in the same boat.
As the founder of a MOOC search engine, I am excited. Its good for my business :)
P.S. You can follow the class on Class Central [1] and we will send you an update whenever the course dates are actually announced
[1] https://www.class-central.com/mooc/7130/startup-school?follo...
Do you account for the effects you have on the rest of the community when calculating your impact?
For example, I suspect YC is strongly responsible for the rise of "low amounts of equity without control for a small amount of funding" seed rounds, and for the existence of accelerators, in both cases globally.
The Fellowship model of investing tiny amounts - like "sparks", lighting a fire - into an enormous number of teams with as little friction as possible was the next logical step and I was looking forward to Fellowship copies sprouting all over the world.
Unfortunately by effectively ending the program you might be sending a signal to global investors not to try it, that YC Core is the deal size floor that works...
I'm not really sure he asked more than "how is this a billion dollar company?" multiple times during the 10 minutes. I'm not sure why YC would pay $1k to fly us to Mountain View if that question was that important and wasn't already answered by our application.
Hope that was just a fluke though... Good luck YC!
That said, I'm sorry you had a bad experience. We're working on better ways to pre-screen startups before interviews so we can hopefully avoid as much unnecessary travel as possible.
The experience was really not bad except that the persistence and insistence of that question made it feel like an episode of Shark Tank.
Maybe we were just bitter realists but the only answer to that question is "get really lucky."
For me, the group partners were the primary value delivered by YC during the program, and I look forward to that value being continued under Michael's leadership. Congratulations!
Interesting insight. The hype is around the money and demo day, but it seems like insight from great partners is the true differentiator for YC.
I always felt that onemonth.com basically was the YC MOOC. (It is funded by YC, and you see the themes of user first, user research, growth etc running through it).
Not sure if anyone else here knows what I mean.
Will the MOOC be free?
That said, the MOOC sounds interesting!
However, we may offer something like 'financial aid' for future versions of the MOOC.
I recently found out that a lot of people I would expect to know about it, don't. If that includes you, go to the gear on the upper right of your gmail, select that, then Settings, then turn keyboard shortcuts on and save.
Typing "?" randomly in gmail will let you know what shortcuts are there. It takes time for your fingers to learn them, but scanning email with j k [ ] is so much faster than a mouse. I don't even think before using / to search. :-)
really? Oh wow... I've used j and k for ages, but didn't know about this pop-up. Thanks!
I plan to talk in more detail about it near the end of this year.
Without YC how one could get access to YC network and get one to one advice without moving to bayarea?
online classes are not really one to one advice.
- automated cities & robotic workers - HARC working on the interfaces for the "workers" - basic income to replace minimum wage earners' incomes
Would love to work on this path!
Because I want to believe it, but all contemporary evidence points to an outcome that includes an even more extreme stratification of wealth and masses of struggling, impoverished people.
It would have been a bit more clear (to me) if the group had been consistently referred to as "YC" if that's the new branding, so I'm guessing there are a lot of others like me who aren't certain as well.
Is that basically what you're going for with the PB analogy, except s/academic/startup-mentoring/ ?
I like working with startups and advancing our program, but do not generally enjoy administrative work. This change enables me to do more of what I like and less of what I don't.
A little part of me is hoping to have him on our interview panel again to show him how far we've come.
It's also very inspiring to see YC Group tackling some of the world's most important problems. Excited to see what comes of this.
What is PG's role these days?
Of course, the timing of this announcement is more exciting being that Michael and Qasar will be in Nigeria in 10 days :) [1][2]
re: MOOC
Sam/Michael,
What are your thoughts on (semi)formalizing a relationship with incubators globally as the top of the funnel for recruiting startups.
It can key into them helping adopt your MOOC curriculum. That way the fundamentals of knowledge are taken care of at the lowest of levels and potential YC recruits have the basics even before applying.
I was just having it as a rough idea to discuss with Michael when he visits only to see this post pop up
[1] Lagos - https://www.eventbrite.com/e/techcircle-presents-building-a-...
[2] Abuja - https://www.eventbrite.com/e/techcircle-presents-build-a-gre...
Both are oversubscribed but pop me an email (see profile) if you want to attend and have not registered I'll get you a ticket.
Presumably it also includes YC (that used to be YC Core) - was including 'Y Combinator'in the list a slip - and it should have been YC?
It feels like the research and mooc will boost early stage startups to eventually apply to the YC core program. Is that the goal?
