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YC Open Office Hours
- mwseibel 11y agoHey folks - Kat and I so excited to announce this new program - happy to answer any questions
- gok2 11y agothe program is 2 months later, is anyone available for some coffee today :)
- probdist 11y agoHow'd you decide what groups you wanted to focus on? Vets, Women, URM, International. Any other demographic categories you think are important to especially reach out to?
- leereeves 11y agoAt least a few should be, like Native Americans, Muslims, and disabled. Perhaps LGBT, if they're underrepresented in SV.
- kartikkumar 11y agoAwesome! Since the first round is for all founders and subsequent rounds are targeted at specific groups, are people encouraged/allowed to apply for multiple? Or should we pick?
- mwseibel 11y agoFeel free to apply as many times as you'd like
- smeyer 11y agoHow much time do you anticipate going into sorting through applications versus the actual sessions?
- mwseibel 11y agoWe have a lot of experience reading applications so it doesn't take us too long
- hbhakhra 11y agoThanks for offering this service. What determines which founders you meet with? Since you had 650 founders apply the first time around and met with 50 teams there must be some filter and I assume its not random.
- mwseibel 11y agoWe are looking for folks who are actively working on their startups. Having a technical co-founder is helpful, working full time is helpful, and trying to solve a large problem is helpful.
- khamoud 11y agoHi! Thank you for posting and doing this! I was wondering if I could still apply even though what I'm working at the moment is still just a side project that I work on on nights and weekends. It's generating revenue and I'm hoping to pursue it full time in January/February. The problem is that I only qualify for the general office hours. Would you suggest that I apply or wait until June for the next general office hours?
- mwseibel 11y agoApply :)
- natmaster 11y agoThanks for having a general session. It's really hard for me coming from a poor white family with no history of entrepreneurship to enter this space.
- icpmacdo 11y agoThanks for this awesome opportunity, you should set up a system with the other companies blessing to release to remote office hours online. I am going to apply!
- danieljoonlee 11y agoThank you for this opportunity. I've noticed ycombinator has been trying a lot of new things, and trying their best to reach out to as many people as possible. You guys are great!
- mwseibel 11y agothanks!
- mtviewdave 11y agoThanks for doing this! Any plans for an open office hours session focused on LGBT founders?
- kevindeasis 11y agoAny chance of opening: How about Other Person of Colour who are of First Generation Immigrants Status of a Country, which isn't the US in the future? That would really be electrifying ;P
- kevindeasis 11y agoI don't understand why this is getting down voted? Someone explain?
- sharemywin 11y agoPlease try to have a Midwest office hours. We all have the same problems/opportunities: 1. mediocre startup scenes/investment options. 2. lots of technical talent. plenty of enterprise companies with experienced IT. So, what if we use C#/java. 3. Better test market. SV is great for early adopters but if you want a really big company it needs to work here too.
- wj 11y agoIt sounds like you can do the office hours remotely via Skype so the Midwest shouldn't miss out.
- sharemywin 11y agoI was thinking of an office hours that are specific to the Midwest or maybe not SV, NY, Boston etc.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- cperciva 11y agoAdditionally, Amazon is generously offering $5,000 in AWS credit for all participating teams. This seems really dangerous -- it creates a huge incentive for companies to waste YC's time. There aren't many things early startup founders can do which are worth more than $15000/hour. Sure, you can probably filter out many AWS-credit-seekers via the application process, but that adds more work for the people who read through all the applications. Have you considered either (a) refusing the credits, or (b) taking a small number and handing them out to the most "deserving" startups at the end of the day?
- mwseibel 11y agoWe feel comfortable with this
- fragsworth 11y agoAt the risk of sounding too cynical, have you considered that Amazon is likely paying YC as much or more for the opportunity to offer this credit? And that maybe this whole deal is at least partially because Amazon wants to acquire new customers?
- matheweis 11y agoStartup Weekend regularly hands out $100 AWS credits to all attendees. I don't think I've ever seen anyone (or groups of people) go to SW just for that credit. $5000 is a bit more, but that -that- much more.
- staunch 11y agoMost great startups would not exist if not for the work of some critical helper in a position to help. Apple had Mike Markkula, Facebook had Sean Parker, Airbnb had Michael Siebel, and Viaweb had Julian Weber. The list endless. The ingredients are: great founders + great products + great helpers. It's easy to say that great founders with great products will attract great helpers, but that ignores how few great helpers there are and how inefficient the "market" is. YC is the greatest helper of startups in the history of startups, and expanding that help to a wider group is a great thing for the world.
- taurath 11y agoSounds like someone should make more "mentorship" startups.
- JacobAldridge 11y agoAnd I would add, many of the best founders (tech startup or otherwise) are those willing to ask for help and listen to advice. Those founders who fear revealing their flaws and so avoid talking to mentors and colleagues are always woefully underprepared to go to market (where, you know, you not only reveal your flaws but do it in the context of asking for currency).
- matheweis 11y agoI put down Skype on my application because Mountain View is a 12 hour drive from here... but now I'm wondering; does Skype vs in-person have an effect on whether you'd be accepted? ... 'cause I'm pretty sure I'd make that drive for the chance to meet with the YC partners if it made any difference :)
- glxc 11y agowhat will YC Research address?
- dang 11y agoThat's a separate announcement, of course, but I'm pretty sure it's coming soon.
- pcmaffey 11y agoThis is an excellent strategic move to improve YC's pattern recognition of alternative signals coming from "diverse" marginalized groups. Continually impressed.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- miiiiiike 11y agoKat's great! Easily one of the most competent people I've met and she went out of her way to sit down with me in New York. Bonus: For some reason Twitter now sends me a notification every time she tweets about Rick and Morty.. I'm mostly ok with it!
- vishalzone2002 11y agoI work in USA on a visa. Can I apply under international category?
- leereeves 11y agoThis sounds great for those who are able to participate, but dare I ask why it's divided by race and gender? If it's about helping those who most need it, who most needs YC's help: Obama's daughters or a group of poor white boys? If YC is reaching out to marginalized people, are race and gender really good proxies for "marginalized"? And if YC is seeking to increase the diversity of its membership, how many children of blue collar workers from Montana, say, are in YC now? ... Downvotes instead of honest responses. Sadly predictable.
- dang 11y agoDownvoting without responding is fine on HN. There are many more downvotes (and upvotes) than comments, which is as it should be. I imagine these downvotes were because your comment gave what has become the #1 stock response to any such story without showing any awareness thereof or adding anything new; because the edge in it made it sound polemical rather than a sincere request for information; and because polemical stock responses turn into flamewars, which most of us aren't interested in and which break the HN guidelines. To downvote such comments is to be a good citizen, the way putting out small fires would be. Note that one can make all of the above observations without disagreeing with the position you're implicitly advocating (that resources should target disadvantaged individuals rather than categories like race and gender). It's generally better to assume that downvotes are procedural rather than ideological. It yields better feedback about how your comments could be improved.
- leereeves 11y agoI asked a few questions, and I'm honestly interested in the responses. There may be very good reasons for the racial and gender bias in this program. Political, economic, marketing, correction for past bias by YC, or bias in other VCs, or who knows. But asking for justification should be the stock response to such unabashed racism and sexism.
- lfjmfkekdk 11y agoYou do make a great point. It does baffle me that Obama's daughters would theoretically get special privileges for YC's office hours over, say, an immigrant kid from China whose family earns below the poverty line.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- UshZilla 11y agoJust applied for the veteran opening and very excited about the prospect! It's encouraging and helpful to see a few initiatives like this spring up. TechStars has been running a sort of primer on entrepreneurship for veterans (http://patriotbootcamp.org/ http://patriotbootcamp.org/) for a few years now, but that's aimed at people just trying to figure out what's going on. The YC opportunity seems more appropriate for those of us who are all-in and already building great companies. A nice evolution, and an important gap filled- thanks YC!
- iMuzz 11y agoIf our founding team includes an Army vet AND an international founder.. which one should we apply for?
- katm 11y agoApply for both! Or either.
- forrestthewoods 11y agoCan any focus be given to rural communities? For example the coal miners of Kentucky. https://medium.com/backchannel/canary-in-the-code-mine-903884eca853 https://medium.com/backchannel/canary-in-the-code-mine-90388... As someone who grew up in the rural South I'm saddened by how overlooked it's communities are. Poverty is wide spread but services and activist groups are lacking. No one cares about rednecks.