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We only hire Americans from elite universities, but please come along and waste your time!

Definitely not true! How did you get that impression?

I wouldn't be here if it were—my cofounder Scott and I made it to YC from way outside elite circles, US or otherwise. It's really important not to go for these demoralizing assumptions, lest they become self-fulfilling prophesies.

Here's some better information: if you can build, can make something people want, and are willing to be coached in the way that YC coaches founders, you have as good a chance as anyone at getting funded by YC. (And certainly a far better chance at not being overlooked for prejudicial reasons such as 'not from elite university'.)

You may not be wrong in general—it's clear that class divides are increasingly organized around educational divides—but IMO this is less true of YC than society at large and it's a big part of YC's business for it to remain so.

Edit: while I'm at it, something I wish more people would know is that if you apply to YC and get rejected, you should keep applying. Most YC startups didn't get in on their first try. If you do apply more than once, the key thing is to demonstrate progress since your previous application.

So: don't give up, and definitely don't give up before you start!

> Where did you get that impression

Probably from Paul Graham: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39756865

What specifically? That's a long essay that was only published last week.

Quite a long discussion of how important the "best" universities are to starting a startup. Nothing YC-specific.

> And if you want to start a startup you should try to get into the best university you can, because that's where the best cofounders are. It's also where the best employees are. When Larry and Sergey started Google, they began by just hiring all the smartest people they knew out of Stanford, and this was a real advantage for them.

> The empirical evidence is clear on this. If you look at where the largest numbers of successful startups come from, it's pretty much the same as the list of the most selective universities.

> I don't think it's the prestigious names of these universities that cause more good startups to come out of them. Nor do I think it's because the quality of the teaching is better. What's driving this is simply the difficulty of getting in. You have to be pretty smart and determined to get into MIT or Cambridge, so if you do manage to get in, you'll find the other students include a lot of smart and determined people.

> You don't have to start a startup with someone you meet at university... but universities are the main source of cofounders. And because they're where the cofounders are, they're also where the ideas are, because the best ideas grow out of projects you do with the people who become your cofounders.

> So the list of what you need to do to get from here to starting a startup is quite short. You need to get good at technology, and the way to do that is to work on your own projects. And you need to do as well in school as you can, so you can get into a good university, because that's where the cofounders and the ideas are.

> When Larry and Sergey started Google, they began by just hiring all the smartest people they knew out of Stanford...

I worked for a large tech company as an intern in the late 90's, which is where I learned smartest doesn't always equal best. There were two of us interns in the org, one on the east coast and one on the west coast. I was in grad school at a regionally known engineering school, whereas my west coast counterpart was a grad at Stanford.

They were one of the smartest people I've ever met and worked with, and were basically a walking encyclopedia of CS knowledge, all the way down to level 1 of the OSI model. They were also entirely unable to execute on anything. There was no ability to plan and schedule work or to stay focused on the job itself.

One of us got a raise and asked to come back next summer and the other got walked from the building by security (a first, apparently) before the summer ended.

Yes, it's anecdata, and over my career I've worked with many other people from "top" institutions. As a whole, I haven't been any more or less impressed with them than any other Engineers I've worked with or hired.

All this says is that elite universities have a higher density of good people. Which is totally true. If you want to maximize your chances of meeting good people that's a concrete thing to aim for.

I learned a long time ago, that HN and YCombinator were never for me. We were too poor and never part of the elite SV venture capitalism scene, no matter how sharp or crazy the idea.

We were never part of that 'scene'. Hell, I even tried to enter the VC scene locally. It was all about blatant lying and redoing Uber than actual innovative and crazy ideas. I even had a 'mentor' say that I should just lie about hockey stick growth, cause that's what everyone does.

It's not that hard to see the emperor is dearlng no clothes. But damn, don't say that if you want to deal with SV folks.

> It's not that hard to see the emperor is dearlng no clothes.

Well the business model assumes 90%+ of companies fail. They're only looking for a small number of big winners. And because of the fast moving nature of the space, things like numbers can be fuzzy and aren't really too important until the later stages. So there's just less diligence in general and understandably that creates room for some fraud. That doesn't mean the model is a scam.

The issue is that too much money got pumped into the space in recent years when it really wasn't needed.

>I learned a long time ago, that HN and YCombinator were never for me.

It's not you personally and don't take it too hard on yourself. A vast majority of people on this planet won't fit the "founder personality" and thus won't make it.

It's more interesting to bootstrap your own company and if push comes to shove you can look for incubators in your own city and apply for it.

I would like to debate you on your assumptions. A class divide is bigger and worse than any other divide. Because there is no push (like DEI) we make innate assumptions about a person depending on their class; hence most of YC fits a certain "personality" which commentators in here are complaining about.

While I am past that complaining stage, it's worthwhile for the VC industry to take a look at that class divide.

> something I wish more people would know is that if you apply to YC and get rejected, you should keep applying. Most YC startups didn't get in on their first try. If you do apply more than once, the key thing is to demonstrate progress since your previous application.

Again, you are right from your perspective but my opinion based on my experience and fellow founders is that if you fail the first time, founders should just move on. Startup founders have this Hollywoodesqe mentality of what a startup is with all the glamour and almost all of them waste time pitching to YC/VC and think they are failure if they don't get accepted.

There needs to be a revamp of startup financing and I think something like startup school is in the right direction.

Or apply with something they are looking to fund. Then change your idea to what you really want to do when you get in. (This is what Tiktok told me to do)

Oh no—that's a terrible idea. YC partners are going to be far more interested in what you really want to do. Interposing an irrelevant charade will only come across as uncompelling.

You are too generous in your reply; the GP's position cannot be held honestly. Spending just a few minutes googling or searching HN would be enough.

Just as a starting point, there's the ~quarterly immigration attorney AMA.

https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=proberts

It can be held honestly. I don't think it's productive to say another commenter can't possibly believe something I don't believe.

In either case here's a better starting point. There are batch stats https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/yc-summer-2020-batch-stats

that can be referenced against the founder directory.

I did not say the what you claim I said.

A person may dishonestly believe something.

May and an assertion are two different things. Maybe I'm misunderstanding?

A belief is honestly held if it is based on your best ability to apply reason to facts.

A belief is dishonestly held if any other consideration comes between you and reality--that is, if you evade. You could choose to not carefully think about the issue. You could choose to treat something as a fact when you don't have evidence for it.

You can be honestly mistaken, perhaps due to a lack of knowledge and an error in logic. In those cases, you change your view when the correct facts and method are made available to you.

You can also be dishonestly mistaken. Example: adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse, who were victimized by a stepfather or their mother's boyfriend, often report that their biological parent blames them for "stealing" the affections of their abuser. Blaming the victim for the abuse they suffer is clearly a belief that cannot be held honestly.

Peter will be doing another of those soon!

10x easier to raise capital from an elite university

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> but this is less true of YC than society at large, and it's a big part of YC's business for it to remain so.

Are there collected statistics that showcase this?

This might help for creating an initial analysis: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/founders

Of 11,162 YC founders who haven't opted out of the directory, the top 9 alma maters account for nearly exactly 20% of founders.

    540 - Stanford University
    388 - University of California, Berkeley
    373 - Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    193 - University of Waterloo
    187 - Harvard University
    144 - Carnegie Mellon University
    143 - Columbia University
    143 - University of Pennsylvania
    124 - Cornell University

    25 - Harvard University
    11 - Stanford University
    9 - University of Pennsylvania
    7 - Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    6 - Cornell University
    6 - University of Chicago
    6 - Northwestern
    6 - Columbia University
    6 - Yale

Very nice work and pretty interesting to see. The comparison for society at large is definitely difficult, but I'm not sure if there's a better one than what you've come up with.

It's nice to see my ala mater up there! Go Cornell! Also, I know PG disassociates himself from his roots but it's nice to know he was probably once sitting at the same desk I'm at now.

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Good question. Probably? I imagine so. But I doubt the data is public. I'm just talking from my own observations in any case.

Edit: i inserted an IMO into my comment to make that clearer

Question:

- I am older, established, and have done a number of successful startups in various roles.

- I have a family and can't spend a summer in California.

- I don't need the seed funding YCombinator provides, but I don't mind it either. I can self-fund a bit

However, I'd truly enjoy the experience, and with my next startup, I'd be glad to trade off the equity to be in the YC community. I think I'd learn a lot from it, since YC does startups very differently than I have (learning might go both ways!).

Does it make sense to engage with YC in any way next time I do a startup (or before)? Or am I far enough outside the target demographic?

There is no target demographic, so I wouldn't think in those terms. Also, last I heard, there wasn't a hard requirement to spend the entire program in California, although most founders do. Your track record with previous startups should certainly help. I'm biased but I'd say go for it!

As two times YC founder, you fit 100% in what YC invests.

As someone in a similar scenario to the comment you're replying to, I feel like we 0% fit because of this:

> I have a family and can't spend a summer in California.

I'm curious: Why two-time?

It feels to me that YC would generate enormous value the first time. It feels like there might be very strongly diminishing returns on investment after that. My impression is that the equity YC receives, relative to funding, is quite high, and most of the network / learning / etc. would happen on round one (This is a comment about me to give context for my likely naive question, not a comment about YC; I'm explaining in hopes you'll explain how I'm wrong. Given you did it twice, I am aware my thinking here is probably wrong, and I need to share my misconception to have it addressed)

No Americans from elite universities here at Fly.io (W20).

I went to a state school (UNC Chapel Hill). Sure, the odds are better at Stanford, but I’m not the only one in my class at UNC who ended up doing YC.

Am I reading this correctly - anyone can apply to Startup School, but only students can do the in-person interviews?

Yes. As part of our annual college outreach tour, we're holding in-person interviews for students at this stop.

Any chance it'll also be streamed live?

I'm in Boston, but guessing 13 speakers is a long time to be in an event space with a lot of students bused in from various schools. (1-on-1 or few-on-few can be better in-person, but remote works a lot better for talks.)

Also, Covid is going around the schools right now, and not everyone would let having Covid preclude a networking opportunity like this. Which would be a reason in favor of streaming (i.e., lower the incentive to make a lot of people sick). And also a reason some people would opt to watch the stream.

We're working with the venue to stream it. At the very least, we will be recording the entire event and uploading it to YouTube!

“We’ll be chartering buses to travel to and from schools around the Northeast. Sign up early if you’d like a seat on one of the buses.“

Will they be doing that “roll call” song too? https://www.tiktok.com/@theoffice/video/7254560650909928750?...

Instead of your own name, you do your startup's elevator pitch in that format.

Why do founders need to be in school?

It’s worth noting that the main online “startup school” course doesn’t have this limitation, neither does the core YC program. I’m guessing this specific event is just very targeted at a particular market - Boston area student startup founders. Talks that are very targeted towards student founders, trying to make connections between similar age/location entrepreneurs, trying to build ties to YC within a close knit group so that they’re all more likely to apply to YC later, etc.

With that being said, I have zero association with YC, I could be wrong about any/all of that. But to me it just looks like a single event that’s trying to be really specific and focused with their market. It’s very common for meetups to have a very specific target market. It IS more uncommon to outright ban ppl outside the target market, but YC is so popular that if they didn’t, they’d probably get a tonne of non-student, non-Boston-area ppl attending a meetup whose content is focused on Boston area students.

Why do we need to meet YC partners to start a startup?

Why do fools fall in love?

You don't.

YC teaches people how to run startups. There are other ways to learn how to do a startup.

But I do suggest watching some of their videos or reading some on their articles. Their approach and attitude helped me realize I'd rather join an early stage startup than run one.

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It seems like even the Startup School signup is limited to students. I applied anyway, and will comment again if I receive a response

'We’re conducting in-person interviews for the Summer 2024 batch for current undergraduate or graduate students at universities in the northeastern US.'

Why are recent BA/BS, MS, and PhD graduates excluded?

Looks like it's a special opportunity for students to interview early and not excluding non-students from interviewing through the normal process. Maybe they are concerned the interviews may be overrun with professional founders and they only have 1 day?

College outreach has been part of YC's recruiting efforts for years. It doesn't mean others are excluded. Certainly everyone who wants to should apply for Startup School!

Would be of great service if YC were more upfront about its biases to applicants. The narrative that YC is an accessible path for anyone seems to contradict the actions taken.

Where is the outreach to those outside of elite academic and professional circles?

Everyone has biases. They don't have to enumerate them at all times. What do you actually want?

For YC/HN to peddle fewer platitudes, euphemisms, and equivocations.

At what point does preservation of this hallucinated wealth game become forced conservation of history and get in the way of the “freedom” part?

Why are we socially trained to accept “people say Musk is rich so it must be true?”

It’s all a socialized hallucination backed by government force. It’s kind of a huge joke.

Let’s just get drunk and shoot pistols at the workers feet. At least it’s honest.

> Why are we socially trained to accept “people say Musk is rich so it must be true?”

We're not socially trained for this. People don't think it's true because people say it. They think it's true because he owns a large stake in a lot of extremely valuable companies.

Owns is a socialized concept. It’s not immutable physics

We learn what it means as far as ground truth from socialization

Okay, but "rich" isn't, if you've accepted people can own things.

Not killing people is a socialised concept. I don't think this banale-fact-dressed-up-as-criticism of "is a social construct" is worth much. And if it is, it's also a social construct, as are the words used to communicate it. So should we then ignore it?

People can own things != minority of people should own all the things. Gradients, ranges, distributions, not binary.

If it’s so banal it would have no influence but you seem to accept the underlying; “banal” facts have power and social concepts are mutable. So you push back with empty rhetoric, over generalizing others to avoid the powerful fact socialized society is hallucination.

I never criticized “social concepts” either. I criticized our current social concept. Others can be propagated. Your banal attempt to generalize specifics is a lame rhetorical approach where you both accept socialized society as a concept but refuse to debate its specifics (that would require actual effort not just miming money/assets changed hands via paperwork).

May as well browse r/conservative as all HN is ever shipping is fealty to who we say is smart and rich but never requires them to prove it, but requires us to kneel and kiss the rings regardless, as if spoken tradition and written records are real evidence of skill and accomplishment when billions are spent reminding us these things are true.

> People can own things != minority of people should own all the things. Gradients, ranges, distributions, not binary.

You've just described capitalism, and our current situation.

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Or those of us with no degrees and decades of experience?

I'm in Boston.

Presumably because they want to work with students instead of people with decades of experience?

Students are willing to work hard for free for the 0.001% chance that they'll be the next Mark Zuckerberg.

> Students are willing to work hard for free for the 0.001%

The best startups run lean anyway. I'd argue this is the proper way to run one, as opposed to taking mountains of VC money and burning up in a year

Also won't raise as many eyebrows when they're taught how to manufacture valuations with little to no basis in reality.

Or perhaps this is ageism

Forgive me as I have little sympathy for middle aged adults calling "agism!!!" whenever an opportunity is presented to a college student that wasn't also presented to them

I do think you are entitled to filter for a specific age group implicitly, but it doesn't make it any less discriminatory.

Example: statistically the odds of someone graduating from college being over 30 are low. Therefore if I claim that I hire college graduates I get to also filter implicitly by age.

Then the question is: assuming an inherent bias of sample, is it desirable or undesirable to introduce a "function" that attempts some mitigation? I see the "functions" that attempt to mitigate sexism, racism but not ageism.

It feels like companies or organizations are just fine with slapping a paragraph at the end of an announcement that parrots "we are inclusive trust us" without any real adjustment and call it a day.

I mean isn’t that literally ageism? I don’t have any opinion on whether it’s acceptable or not here but come on…

There's also no rules saying middle aged adults cannot be college students. The only agist policy here is that you need to be 18 to apply, and nobody bat their eye at that.

Yes there are. A 50 year old man cannot enter Harvard college.

1 in 10 college students in the US is 40 or older

That’s not relevant - the schools in the area do not have undergraduates in their middle age.

Middle aged college students usually attend extension schools part of the university, but not part of the undergraduate college.

In any case there’s no strict limitation on being an undergraduate at say 60 (I believe Harvard Colleges oldest graduate was in their 80s), but it’s so exceptionally rare it’s ageism.

There’s no reason why one would need to be an undergraduate.

Why not?

That’s simply their rule.

Where is this rule? Even in your other reply you say there's "no strict limitation" so it's not a "rule", just a trend.

Dorm rules mainly. Like I mention in a sibling comment, given the demographics and the arbitrariness of the decision it’s effectively ageism without being explicit.

Maybe an end-around? Here are some Harvard summer courses... https://courses.dce.harvard.edu/?srcdb=202403&summer_school=.... (a long time ago now, I landed a job this way because I said I was "studying at Harvard")

Why assume that they are excluded?

Should be a fun event with that date in Boston!

Will videos of the talks be recorded and posted to YouTube? I have really enjoyed the recordings of the older Startup School talks.

Yes! It'll be recorded and put onto YouTube afterwards.

And thus YC becomes a traditional company, let alone VC, with these campus placements from top schools. What happened to PG's mantras and vacillations about "The Reddits", and how they hired inexperienced founders from non target schools?

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So now that the recipe of "build stuff that people want" is so wildly successful, decentralised cults of near religious fear spring up that invent new categorisations of ideologies to criticise this simple recipe and its proponents. Dramatic, but inevitable? Googling TESCRAEL gives two results, an x thread and a blog post. Seems to be synthesis of internet tech optimism and acceleration and transhumanism. I will stay out of all the eventual madness apart from this small observation. Not reading the news, taking a walk in nature, yep, the world still exists outside of the internet...

Is it only for university students? Would love to go there.

Nope, anyone can apply to attend the Startup School event.

Is there gonna be something similar in Bengaluru?

Why run a startup when you can run a business with bank loans to leverage your technical capital, comrades! Wake up from the perils of being yet another cannon fodder, for it is your time and time is our most valuable thing! Our kingdom is near, strike!

Funny they decided to do it on 420.

Jeez, some of the voters in this thread should prly imbibe when they go to this meetup on 420

blaze it