YC is an accelerator, and as such, needs to accelerate /something/. If you join too early, then it's almost a distraction to getting the product out and talking to users. However, hit the sweet spot and YC is an invaluable resource to help you grow.
On the other hand, YC opens the door to so many opportunities and great people, that even if you're too early, the net result is still a pure positive for your career and startup.
Hey Dom, we worked together directly when you were in YC, and I deeply disagree with your assessment that having progress helps a startup succeed in YC.
The worst case scenario is a newly accepted YC startup with a little bit of traction... just enough traction that they aren't willing to change ideas/markets and not enough traction for them to actually know they have product market fit. It's the uncanny valley of product-market fit. These companies with a little bit of progress can spend months or years of their life chasing what they later realize was a mirage.
When a new YC company enters the batch with very little or no traction (and can move incredibly fast) they will longterm outperform companies accepted with small traction most of the time. Based on the hundreds of companies I have personally funded at YC, speed is the single most predictive variable of if a startup will succeed - not traction at time of accept.
Hey Dalton, thanks for the answer, that's fair. I totally agree that in the long-term, moving and failing fast is a net positive for both founders and YC. I wonder how different the YC three-months experience is between founders who have product-market fit vs the ones who don't? It seems like there's a "cadence" to the program highly focused on growth culminating to demo day?
Hi Dalton OP here, appreciate your input here, Thank you.
Moving fast is something we are working at hard at. From a technical and creative perspective.
Correct me if I am wrong. When you say moving fast, do you mean being nimble and quick at pretty much everything, with the goal to find product-market fit?
imagine we are talking about CPU clock rate - the rate at which founders are able to make progress - which means everything from how many customers they can talk to in a day, how fast they learn from running a test, how fast they can build a prototype, how quickly they internalize feedback from customers, etc.
Ok, got it thanks! And, from your experience: what are biggest underlying drivers for speed? Founders’ chemistry? Founders’ willingness to work long hours? Market they’re operating in (some markets are faster than others I suppose)?
I don't think of YC as an accelerator, but maybe that's where things are headed since we (InfluxDB) went through in W13?
Originally it was enough to have a few people, an idea, and a prototype. I think that was the model for the most successful YC companies currently out there (Dropbox, Airbnb, Stripe, PagerDuty). Some didn't land on their actual idea on product until after the batch (Twitch).
There are certainly companies that come in with a baked product and the start of some real users/customers who then use their time in YC to juice their numbers and raise big rounds at crazy valuations right at the close of the batch. However, I think what YC offers that is unique (and a real strength) is that they back completely unknown founders very early in their process of building a product and a company and give them the connections and advice to help build something big.
The YC series A program strikes me as more of an accelerator.
YC is an accelerator, and as such, needs to accelerate /something/. If you join too early, then it's almost a distraction to getting the product out and talking to users. However, hit the sweet spot and YC is an invaluable resource to help you grow.
On the other hand, YC opens the door to so many opportunities and great people, that even if you're too early, the net result is still a pure positive for your career and startup.