IMO, there needs to be a bootstrapping track. Perhaps the bootstrapping track should even be the primary one. Of course YC won't do this, but IMHO, bootstrapping leads to the best chance for young people to quickly become millionaires.
We've talked about this, and may build a track that officially targets this in the future. That said, with the exception of two pieces of content that talk about applying to YC, one piece about understanding SAFE financing, and perhaps part of our video about pitching your startup, really everything else we talk about is the right advice whether you're planning on bootstrapping or raising VC.
Learning to build something people want, which is the core of the Startup School curriculum, really doesn't depend on where your funding comes from!
Definitely finding the right thing to make and then finding product-market fit are the same, but bootstrapping necessarily limits your choices to products/services that are profitable early on rather than after burning millions to capture market share. Bootstrapping also, in my opinion and experience, requires a lot more appreciation of accounting and finance on the part of founders, and a lot more questioning ("do I really need to hire another person for this or can I find a way to keep costs down?"). I can definitely see a different curriculum and skillset building that is separate from the VC track.
The problem is that YC-type opportunities are limited to those living in maybe 3 cities. Most places in the world do not have the funding opportunities. Shaping the narrative such that YC-style incubation is the "default" only benefits YC so they will have an increasingly large pool of applicants where they can pick the cream of the crop. This does not serve founders well as they would be wasting their time networking to nowhere when instead they should be building and selling.
I think this isn't as true as it used to be. Sure, SF and whatever the two others you were thinking of are massive, but there are smaller scenes in other places that also have funds available for incubation-type environments.
At the very least, understanding what the process is supposed to look like will help folks in those nascent scenes identify when something is amiss.
Half the value is in funding, the other half the network. You have an exponential decrease in opportunities elsewhere versus San Fran (and Seattle and NYC). Forcing, or at least strongly encouraging founders to seek out incubators as the One True Way will restrict, not increase opportunities for founders. What YC is doing is dressing up VC ideology as something that is universally founder-friendly. What's good for the capital owner isn't good for the founder when the founders do not have many options to choose from in the first place. In those situations it is better for the founder to keep more of their pie to themselves versus selling out to the only player in their very local, very small pond.
I did startup school's first cohort, and I would say it's equally useful for bootstrappers and VC-minded founders. What it is NOT useful for is side projects.
I think nurturing a side project into a full-time business is a whole different skill that's actually quite difficult and requires even more luck than bootstrapping or VC-startuping.
A side hustle is just fundamentally different than a full-time job. On the one hand, something else is paying the bills, so you can be patient. But on the other hand, you can't take meetings 9-5, or push nearly as hard on the work as you could if it was full time, so you have to be patient.
It's quite difficult to work on something enough on the side to build momentum and get it rolling, and it's extra hard to maintain that momentum for long enough for it to reach "escape velocity," that is, to become profitable to where you can quit your day job.
So the challenge of managing the two jobs, and specifically transitioning from day job + hobby (at the beginning), to two jobs but one doesn't really pay well, to finally quitting the first job so you can focus on the bootstrapped project...
That's just a whole different beast from somebody who quits their job and starts a business (with or without raising money).
I feel side projects is something you do for fun or on a whim. You just start building immediately on your off-time with not much expectations. Maybe to try out a new technology. It's more of a solo engineering activity. You build it first, and maybe down the line, something comes of it and you do a Show HN in six months.
A business is more broad and deliberate. From the get-go, you need to constantly be talking to many people, have a process for validating the problem, track metrics, plan your time, think about opportunity costs of pursuing different paths, have sales funnels, marketing, scope things out, etc.
I'm currently bootstrapping as a YC alumni, and I'm going through YC Startup School. The curriculum is just as valuable for bootstrappers! It's all about validating a problem, getting users, planning your time, etc.
The core curriculum doesn't have anything about trying to get investors. There's one video about what YC looks for in a startup application, but even that's still useful for a bootstrapper (clarity of thought).
Long-time MicroConf attendee (and one time sponsor). Still, YC has an outsized influence on young people and I'd like to see the bootstrap model expressed as a more obtainable path to one's first million.
