I got a lot of value out of SuS, I highly recommend participating if you are in any stage of your business.
The sum of the whole experience is worth more than the individual parts. It seemed many of the businesses didn't participate much, perhaps because (a guess) they didn't seem much immediate value in things like progress reports or group meetings. (over half my first group and a significant percent of my later combined group didn't participate at all, and almost no one did so consistently)
But, there's an overall effect on your motivation and perspective that I think is important for people that are considering doing this, but aren't certain. It helps you take action (even small amounts can be vital) on important business processes that you wouldn't otherwise focus on.
I treat it like college where you get what you put into it, and it can be a lot.
As a side note, I think it really helped some startups see the reality they were getting into by trying to start their particular business. Maybe good or bad, but reality is a strong motivator to either cut your losses or get busy.
Agreed! Also worth noting that Startup School is very startup-like itself, and we're constantly trying to provide more value. As an example, we're moving to more dynamic grouping so you won't get placed for video calls with founders who aren't engaging with the program. Hoping that will create a better experience for everyone!
Hey HN, this is Kevin Hale, one of the partners at YC. I'll be hosting this year's Startup School alongside Adora Cheung. We learned a lot from last year's class and the Startup School team is really excited about this next iteration. Over the next few weeks, we're going to talk about some of those changes in more detail--about the data that drove those decisions and the new software we made to improve the experience for founders.
If you have any immediate questions about the course, please do let us know.
Just a bit of heads up in case you would like to join from Europe and don't have plans to be there "on the ground" - DON"T DO IT.
I did it last year and it was all heavily focused on "lets catch our next billion dollar unicorn" for our investors. People that don't live for idea "lets move to dream country USA" just waste time while participating. Additionally, Y decided several times to "change the rules" just for the sake of it. They basically can not handle amount of people that have a dream to start something and it all ends up to:
1.) put them in groups,
2.) let them report "progress" to us
3.) let them watch videos.
Granted, there some interesting materials but all of them you can ALREADY find online or in startup/scaleup books that we are all reading and recommending.
My 2c, take it how ever you wanted. For me it was waste of time and quite of bit of irritation around Y. However, met some great folks that were also trying to start something in my group.
Yep, your points 1-3 were exactly what I thought was going to be a waste of time as well. But what I have found about all good processes, they simply aren't magic. No business got made simply by watching videos or talking on the internet with some strangers.
I found SuS to be more like a framework or a guide for my own work, not an end result in itself. I applied what I learned, not expecting to get much for free, and it was invaluable for me.
Did you participate in ever group meeting? I took notes, asked the other people questions, and this was both instructive and encouraging. Did you watch every video? I did, and learned stuff from hardware businesses I never would have learned just watching videos on software focused discussions.
Most of all, almost everyone speaking really seemed to walk the talk, not just have good theories. The last video (that I recall) was about health, physical and mental, and it was enlightening.
I hope you consider trying again, and look at it from a different perspective.
Yep, they like their unicorns, and I suspect my business will never get funding, but that's not why I participate, it's useful for me to change my perspective. Maybe take on some of the traits of highly successful businesses and apply it to my own.
Thanks for finding time to write this reply, I really appreciate that. I'm glad to hear that process was useful for you and that you learned a lot.
Just to answer your questions, yes I did watched all videos (also every single one from previous years) and I also participated in every single group meeting. That is the part I liked from my first note where I said I met some smart people and had nice chats.
However, all that I could do (and will continue to do) with random startup groups in my city. and/or online I just don't see any value from Y in that entire process. I was hoping they will at least help in some way to jump start my dream but like I mentioned they focus only on top profit promising startups and especially ones that are US based or willing to move to US because of it.
If I had a local group to meet with, then I would be more inclined to do that. And I would likely find more use/support from a local group. It's good you have this option.
One odd thing I got out of group meetings was seeing partly where people failed to live up to their own goals. (a bit of a warning to myself)
If what someone is looking for is actual funding, I completely agree that SuS is a waste of time for about 95% (or more?) of the people joining it.
We're sorry that your experience with Startup School last year wasn't great. That was not our intention, and hopefully you'll give us another shot.
You're definitely right that we were scrambling in the last minute to build software and adjust the program to better cater to the large number of companies in 2018.
As Kyle also mentioned in this thread, we spent a lot of time listening to the community and have made quite a few new changes and improvements for 2019 to better support the program at this scale and improve the experience for founders.
We'll also be taking Startup School on the road to meet SUS founders across the globe and will have YC alumni and partners participating in the Forum to help advise.
Of course OP's experience is valid, but I just want to say, this was not my experience and not the experience of many founders I know who participated.
Last year thousands upon thousands of folks were accidentally accepted into the program, and some things had to change along the way to accommodate that. A syllabus designed for a couple hundred people isn't going to scale to 15,000 without some tweaks.
There's not really a downside to joining startup school. You can leave at any time, if it's not beneficial to your company.
If you're early-stage and looking for a cohort of peers to help you make more progress than you would on your own, I would recommend giving Startup School a shot. It costs nothing, the minimum time commitment is almost zero, and it looks like there's going to be a great community of folks in this batch.
I'm glad to hear that you had different experience and that you learned a lot! Wish you lots of success with your startup.
However with this I don't agree:
> "There's not really a downside to joining startup school. You can leave at any time, if it's not beneficial to your company."
Downside is: It is a big time sink and I would recommend using that time instead to focus on one only thing that matters -> YOUR IDEA
>Granted, there some interesting materials but all of them you can ALREADY find online or in startup/scaleup books that we are all reading and recommending.
What books are these? The lean startup being one I assume?
Question: Hi, I'm a solo person and have few ideas of startup in my mind, would you recommend me applying at this stage? While filling out the application form it's asking for Company Name and plan which I am unclear about at the moment.
Also anyone has any tips on filtering multiple good ideas to finding the best for for startup? Thanks!
I attended last year as a solo founder. Here's what I think...
It's not well suited for funding a solo founder, there's just too much they expect you to do in the 10 weeks of classes.
And it's not suited to help you filter multiple ideas to find the best startup during those 10 weeks. So pick a product and go through process. You'll know if it's the right one before you finish the 10 weeks.
It's really about learning how to "find product market fit" for your idea. What they want to see is your idea being something that people really want and will pay for and you'll learn how to find that out and not spend a lot of your time or cash in the process.
And you'll learn how to setup a corporation that makes it easy for VCs to invest in if you do have product market fit for your idea, and maybe more important, what not to do.
Unless you already know all about that it's worth your time and effort. And getting together with others every week in a group setting all working on those same lessons was great.
But it's not easy. They expect a lot from a team of founders, so going into it solo is a deep dive.
Yes! It's okay if you don't know which idea you want to pursue. Our first lecture actually goes over how to evaluate ideas for potential and helping you weigh and decide which to pursue.
I did it last year and found the exercise very valuable. I definitely recommend taking part. Yes, things were changing a lot right up to, and through, last year's event. I don't see that as a negative, but rather as the YC folks having the willingness to flex and adapt to circumstances. Could things have been smoother in some areas? Probably. Will they be so this year? Probably.
I have a small business that is now operating in two EU countries and in the US, we have grown with zero marketing budget 100% through word of mouth, our customers asked us if we could serve them there and we did, it's an overlooked niche and the last thing we want is to attract competition, I mentioned that as YC is everything we need right now but we don't want any publicity and we definitely don't want to expose our business to others, with that in mind, would we still be able to take part?
I've read what Paul Graham wrote about not worrying but why attract it if we don't have to? For YC the startups work on stealth mode until demo day, and that makes sense to me, we can expand to more markets keeping a low profile and push until we have a solid expansion model that works.
Very helpful. We manage to participate for 1/2 of it, and we realised that we needed more work in the inside (product market fit, elaborate a clear value proposition, one liner) than in the outside (marketing and landing pages)
I'm mostly talking about office hours, and forum (not that much youtube playlist). Actual real people caring about what you have to say on camera. Challenging you and giving you the space to get out of your head.
Great ressource.
Do not miss it. Doing it again on another level :)
Looking forward to it! I participated last year and wish I was in a group where the others were more invested. As the moderator, it was just my startup (MedAngle) and another one where the founders participated actively.
For those who say that SUS isn't helpful, I disagree and say that it is what you put into it. If you actively study the videos, and make an effort, it's a valuable experience. We've used some of the lessons from SUS, and are seeing great results.
I'm facing problems signing into my profile that I created a few weeks ago (from my desktop). Basically, I'm signed in on that machine and am unable to sign out from there. OTOH, I'm unable to sign in from my laptop or any other machine using my associated YC account.
I know this is not a support forum for SuS; just curious if any one else is facing problems signing in from multiple machines. I've been at it for the last half an hour or so.
... and this magically started working! :) Leaving the original comment here in case anyone else faced the same issue: I guess the answer is to keep trying (perhaps with exponential backoff).
Exciting! For everyone registering or thinking to apply, I just created an unofficial SS19 chat community here: https://openland.com/invite/g1kxeF9
We ran similar chat communities for YCombinator applicants in the last few cycles. It is amazing to see how generous are YC alums and applicants with their time for helping each other.
In the description, it says that there will be support for helping founders to find cofounders. What will that look like? It seems risky to partner with somebody you met in a forum
We'll be sharing more on how that works in the near future, but essentially we've built a few features to help you connect with other founders in the community. You're under no obligation to partner with someone -- we just wanted to give founders the tools to connect with one another.
However you decide to continue interacting with the founders you meet is entirely up to you.
I'm joining Startup School this year; I'm building lilit.dev (Java code intelligence on your browser), and it's in private beta right now. So, great timing for me.
I participated last year with a startup which I got pulled away from due to another offer. I have since started work on a new startup which I want to apply to SS2019 for.
I have re-applied/'signed up' with my old profile, and it looks like this has submitted the 'old' company. I am going to edit the details of this form on my profile. Will this get reviewed as a new company, or should I create a new profile and thus a new company and apply again?
At which point will my profile be assessed? After the deadline, or at some random point between now and then? Hoping to have it completed by tomorrow - just don't want to be worried that it's already submitted and statically waiting for a review..
This year we're opening Startup School to all active startups -- all you have to do is sign up / re-enroll, and you're in. As long as you have your profile updated by July 22nd, you should be set.
Is there a way to preview all the questions on the application beforehand? Or at the very least allow to save our progress so we can return and finish them later?
For most of the questions I know what I want to write, but I like to revise my answers over the course of a few days so I can make them more clear and concise.
Looking forward to this! Thank you to everyone at YC and Startup School :)
I signed up but am slightly nervous about the program timeline vs where I’m at with my startup. If I’m actively iterating on the product with paid customers, it doesn’t make much sense for me to spend a few hours watching videos on how to generate good ideas.
I’ll always be asking myself “is this the best use of my time right now?”
I would watch every single video. I had already gone live, I have a budget, income, solid product, but the courses showed me things I would never run into on my own.
Also, I don't recall much about "generating good ideas", it was much more profound than that. I didn't like some of the titles of the videos, until I watched them. Often times the instructions were inspiring, simply because it was real people discussing how they built their businesses. (most of them we have heard of)
This year, each lecture is no more than 20 minutes. On any given week, there will be a max of 1 hour of video content for you to watch. More important than the lectures will be dedicating 30-60 minutes each week to participate in group sessions with other SUS founders.
Auditing the course will give you access to parts of the SUS software as well. You'll be able to access the weekly progress update tool and forums -- you just won't be added to a group for weekly group sessions.
Wow, cannot recommend this highly enough.I participated last year and will be participating again this year. The advice is to the point, brief while highly encouraging. No BS. At least this was my experience in our group.
In my case i don't have much ideas but would love to participate and contribute to a startup. Is there anyway one can meet people looking for co-founders/technical people in this class ?
At the minimum, to be considered active: you need to submit a weekly update about your progress every week (probably 5-15 minutes max).
Every week we release about an 1 hour of video content for you to watch.
Every week, there are group sessions with other SUS founders for you to talk about your startup. These should be about 30-60 minutes.
We provide discussion questions before your group sessions to give you topics to think about. Between 10-30 minutes of prep depending on how seriously you take it.
If you come to a SUS meetup in person, those are probably 2 hour events.
As you can see, it's probably a max of 2-3 hours a week in regards to time we ask of you. How much time you dedicate to your startup is up to you.
Yes please do, I had to go through the login/logout/login process thinking I had missed something. Maybe something as simple as that banner being a different color (the dark gray is a common "notice" color, but not for signing up) and also maybe span the width of the screen. (ie, just in the corner didn't seem important or required attention.)
Is this true? If it is I think it should be an optional step. Can someone else confirm this since I didn't start the application process step.
Edit : I just went through the signup process with this account and I did not come across the personal video requirement. Where did you come across it?
Startup school mods : can you please delete my startup school application, I was testing out the signup flow. Sorry for the trouble.
That's when you had to apply to Startup School for limited spots. Now it's open to everyone for free, which means we don't require the intro video to just register/signup for the class.
You can sign up directly at startupschool.org, under 'Sign Up'. Here's a direct link in case you're having issues: https://www.startupschool.org/register.
got accepted instantly. either they are accepting every applicant by default, there's a bug, they were analyzing what I was typing in real time and my responses checked off boxes to an acceptance, they're accepting HN folks who's account age is pretty old which signals something?, or I'm going to get a "we're sorry we made a mistake" rejection. o_O
The sum of the whole experience is worth more than the individual parts. It seemed many of the businesses didn't participate much, perhaps because (a guess) they didn't seem much immediate value in things like progress reports or group meetings. (over half my first group and a significant percent of my later combined group didn't participate at all, and almost no one did so consistently)
But, there's an overall effect on your motivation and perspective that I think is important for people that are considering doing this, but aren't certain. It helps you take action (even small amounts can be vital) on important business processes that you wouldn't otherwise focus on.
I treat it like college where you get what you put into it, and it can be a lot.
As a side note, I think it really helped some startups see the reality they were getting into by trying to start their particular business. Maybe good or bad, but reality is a strong motivator to either cut your losses or get busy.