Do YC after you graduate: Early decision for students

Do YC after you graduate: Early decision for students(ycombinator.com)

219 points by snowmaker 235 days ago | 268 comments

We announced something today at YC called Early Decision, specifically for students. It's a relatively small change, but we thought people might be interested to hear the thinking behind it, even if you don't happen to be a student graduating this year.

A year ago, YC went from running 2 batches / year to 4 batches / year. We did this because we wanted to give founders more flexibility to do YC at the right time for them. It seems to have worked - a lot of founders have told us that they were only able to do YC because the new schedule fit their timeline.

Early Decision was driven by the same motivation. We talked to a lot of college students, and we learned that most graduating seniors interview for their after-graduation job in the fall of their senior year. For the ones who are interested in doing their own startup, this creates a bit of a dilemma. If they don't interview for jobs in the fall in order to apply to YC later, they're risking that they might be left without any options.

We created Early Decision so that they can apply to YC at the same time they're doing recruiting for regular jobs, the fall of their senior year. If they get into YC, they can confidently turn down their other job offers without worrying they'll be left without anything.

Note: this isn't really a new idea. We've quietly done this from time to time since 2018, but we didn't create a dedicated flow in the application software for it, so most people didn't realize it was an option. Hopefully by productizing and popularizing it, we'll make it easier for college seniors to start companies.

FinnLobsien 235 days ago |

I think everyone criticizing this is comparing it to the wrong thing. Many ambitious students:

-graduate and work 100 hour+ weeks as investment banking associates.

-join other people's startups where they work crazy hours

-work hellish hours in PhDs/med school/law school

Yes, being a founder is hard and can be absolute hell at times. But so are some of the "normal" things ambitious students already do post-graduation.

It's not like YC is saying you either do an internship with free lunches, corporate yoga classes and kombucha on tap or you dive into the trenches of being a YC founder.

snowmaker 234 days ago | |

Yes, this is an excellent point.

fakedang 234 days ago | | |

No it isn't. I, and many I know, would never trade away 100+ hours at a namebrand investment bank/PE firm/consulting firm to work 100+ hours at a startup. It's not what I would recommend nor is it what many people I know would recommend, some of whom are billionaires. The constant advice is to always work at the best possible opportunity the first few years of your career, then step into entrepreneurship. You'll then have an idea of things actually work in the world. And I say this as someone who went the other way around (startup first before working in corporate).

3pt14159 234 days ago | |

I'm sorry but only at my most very dedicated periods of work did I work 100 hour weeks, and that was like 3 or 4 weeks tops. I highly doubt that anyone sustains a 100 hour work week for much longer. Eighty hour work weeks? Sure, that is doable, but sleeping at the job site because you are pulling a 100 hour work week is just not sustainable.

Kranar 234 days ago | | |

Rules changed in 2003, but until then medical residency programs routinely had doctors working 100+ hours a week or longer. In 2003 a cap of 80 hours a week was instituted along with a maximum of 24 hours in any given period, but programs found various loopholes around that cap which still had doctors working close to 100 hours a week. So further restrictions were placed so that over any 4 week period there's a hard cap of 320 hours, no exceptions.

At any rate, for most of the HN crowd who work a fairly routine IT or an office job, 80+ hours sustained for months and months might seem impossible, but join the military, work on a ship, work on a farm, work the oil fields, work in investment banking, work in a film crew which threatened to go on strike in 2021 for having 98 hour work weeks for months on end... and you find that while it's not common, it certainly happens in various fields.

nostrebored 234 days ago | | |

6 days / 16 hours or 7 days / 14 hours still leaves time for a normal sleep schedule.

Many of the people in our YC batch were doing this for the duration of the batch. My cofounder and I both have families and managed to make a similar schedule work (with more peaks and valleys).

The last few weeks have been a crunch where I’ve been getting a lot closer to a true 140ish. That is unsustainable and I’ve had to go into it knowing that the price is future productivity.

But as a student with no commitments, 100hrs a week feels like the norm in YC startups right now.

doctorpangloss 234 days ago | |

speaking only for recent graduates I know personally well: ambitious students also want to be writers, for example. If only it were so easy as writing more makes you a better writer! So if you have to sit around and get life experiences that are interesting to write about (a good way to be a good writer), do you want to do that while working for Stripe, drinking kombucha and getting free lunches and being able to live in New York? Yes. You don’t want to do that while being an investment banker or a doctor or a YC founder.

The thing is those kids still have massive cognitive gifts - I’m not going to use a loaded word like talented or whatever - and have worked very hard in the past. It’s just that the journey to the thing they want to do no longer rewards hours.

Paul Graham is like the Mr. Beast of seed investing. He wants to make the best SEED STAGE INVESTMENTS in the world, to mock a Mr. Beast PowerPoint. He doesn’t want to get the kids with the highest potential, or the kids who work the hardest. They are very sincere and supportive - I mean, who the hell in your life is willing to risk $525,000 on an idea with no traction?? - but they are not out to anoint a category of kids as the “ambitious” ones versus the unambitious ones. You can be ambitious about being a writer and find success and wind up writing very little!

FinnLobsien 234 days ago | | |

> speaking only for recent graduates I know personally well: ambitious students also want to be writers, for example. If only it were so easy as writing more makes you a better writer! So if you have to sit around and get life experiences that are interesting to write about (a good way to be a good writer), do you want to do that while working for Stripe, drinking kombucha and getting free lunches and being able to live in New York? Yes. You don’t want to do that while being an investment banker or a doctor or a YC founder.

But nobody's closing that option, are they? YC is simply offering another path.

There are different kinds of ambitions of course. Not all of them are about money, some are about creative fulfillment or family or whatever. That's totally true.

But it's not like anyone's yanking those people out of their kombucha-on-tap associate job and forcing them into YC.

Kranar 234 days ago | | |

> If only it were so easy as writing more makes you a better writer!

One commonly repeated piece of advice that almost all successful authors state is to write a lot, a lot, a lot. Like just practice writing, it doesn't have to be good.

I hear this often said about many other creative endeavors as well, including painting, cooking, game development/design, etc... It often seems like really good artisans just pull greatness out of thin air, but that's because we often only see the successes, not the failures, but I am reminded that even the best writers, poets, and artists in general spend a great amount of time just creating content that no one will ever see.

neilv 235 days ago |

If the funding is available immediately (not just an immediate commitment for funding once they start a batch), would it address the following problem I've run into a few times?

In the last year alone, I've had to bow out of co-founding two promising startups with good biz co-founders, because first-year MBA students wanted to finish their degree before they sought funding.

Two ways funding could help:

1. I couldn't afford to work over a year as a technical cofounder, executing in full-time startup mode like usually needs to be done, with no income. While they were part-time, and getting an MBA and networking out of it during this period. Even ramen lifestyle funding would've made this closer to an equitable balance of contribution and risk among the cofounders.

2. There's also the concern that MBA programs seem to push students to have a hypothetical startup, so there's always a chance that the MBA student won't be fully committed to actually do the startup once they graduate. Maybe accepted funding could make this a firmer commitment. (Even if there's no contractual obligation to pursue the startup, I'd guess that new MBA graduates don't want to burn bridges in the small world of investors, so would take the commitment fairly seriously.)

snowmaker 235 days ago | |

Yes, I think it would.

aetherspawn 235 days ago | |

Being able to burn away at a startup while you are studying would be great. Uni was the most productive time in my whole life due to all the free time.

android521 235 days ago | |

if one of the founders is an MBA graduate, your chance of success just drop 50%.

yaacov 235 days ago | |

If your cofounder isn’t full time, that’s not your cofounder. That’s a part time contractor who owns 50% of your company.

neilv 235 days ago | | |

Mostly I agree. But I also think that someone who is very good, and in a very good MBA program, can do their share of contributions, iff they're committed fully to the startup upon graduation.

But if the follow-through doesn't happen, then the whole thing was probably a huge waste for non-MBA-student co-founders. (Unless those co-founders weren't really committed themselves.)

guywithahat 235 days ago |

I've interviewed at a few YC companies, and the issue with really young companies is that they don't know anything about running a company. Experienced people don't want to work for a 27 year old, and so it's a bunch of people who don't know what they're doing, making promises out of ignorance and not delivering.

I'm tempted to think that YC knows better than I do here, but my experience suggests this is a bad idea. The worst managers I've had were inexperienced, and someone who's 22 won't know when they need someone experienced, or how to talk to customers. Many of them may be too nervous to act, and since they can apply under the safety of also applying for jobs they may not be as motivated. I suspect this is just a ploy to get more Stanford grads to apply but I'm not sure it's the best way to go about it.

omosubi 234 days ago |

I don't know why there's so much negativity. I see this as a big win for students interested in it.

1. it's a short commitment - only 3 months. more time-bound opportunities should be available to kids coming out of school. too many people go straight to big finance/law/tech/etc and get stuck because they don't want to give up the salary or safety.

2. get access to a network that is very difficult to get access to otherwis

3. better status boost than most other things you could be doing. There are likely better status signals about someone's abilities/intellect than YC, but i'm guessing they are few for people in the valley.

4. Get to work on something you are interested in

5. learn a lot very quickly.

6. gives you a lot of optionality

yes, YC is trying to make money but they do seem intent on developing talent and this is a good avenue for that.

snowmaker 234 days ago | |

This is a good way of thinking about it!

Illniyar 235 days ago |

Seems like a good thing for founders, doesn't force them to quit school to start a funded startup. Especially for under-privileged youths who might not be able to miss a high paying job opportunity or have no income for months.

Seems like a bad signal for YC though - if you aren't committed enough to quit school or at the very least reject job offers and do your startup anyway - feels like you might not be committed enough to do what it takes?

But if anyone does, YC knows how to pick founders with the right mindset.

snowmaker 234 days ago | |

I think there is some risk of that. But commitment isn't static. A lot of incredible companies started with founders who were just toying with an idea and weren't committed at all, then they became more committed over time as things started to work.

solumos 235 days ago |

You should consider placing them into a 1 or 2 year “on the job training” program at another YC company before sticking them in a batch.

Maybe you could offer that as a “waitlist” option.

dang 234 days ago | |

YC has done that over the years and I believe is planning another such program. Not every prospective founder wants to do that, though, so there's a need for both options.

cosmic_quanta 235 days ago | |

I like that suggestion. Work experience at a startup is eye opening.

umutisik 235 days ago |

It does make me uneasy that founding companies is becoming another tracked thing that people feel they can apply high-IQ pattern-matching to. Especially when startups are where first-principles thinking is the most valuable.

That being said, I can see this being useful to a lot of kids. Certainly beats going to grad school for someone who wants to start a company. Keep in mind that a 500K SAFE doesn't force a founder to go big or zero-out.

evilfred 233 days ago |

Gotta catch em while they're young, naive, and malleable.

cassonmars 235 days ago |

Does YC ever intend to revisit doing remote batches again?

There's many founders in the country who are just as driven and motivated, but have real-world situations that cannot allow uprooting themselves for several months, two very common ones:

- new parents

- disabled family members, or are themselves physically disabled

The discourse on Hacker News has frequently chastised companies demanding RTO, and some of the companies in your portfolio are remote-first (or remote-only), why does YC make the same kind of RTO demand with batches?

asimpleusecase 235 days ago |

There is so much online to help jumpstart a young entrepreneur- they can have some small sense of what they are in for. As far as start a company vs get a job, just being told that is an option can be super empowering. I agree that burning up a few years in a failed company as a young entrepreneur does not have a good monetary outcome, but it does help them gain a ton of real world experience that can serve them well their whole life.

shipitto 235 days ago |

This is great in principle. A word of advice:

Life is short. Play long term games with long term people. While a batch bakes in a season, a cap table rests like a boulder in a hillside. If you’re smart there are better ways to find a lever with which to move the world.

Consider incentives. Don’t accept a hammer when you need a bulldozer. Don’t ask which paths exist: find where you want to be, ask what needs to be done. Do it.

nenenejej 235 days ago | |

This is a bit riddly. Have a concrete example?

asadm 235 days ago | | |

Less riddly: Don't take money if you don't need it. if you have to, take it from people who have values/incentives (with life and business both) aligned with you.

tossandthrow 235 days ago |

I bought into the idea of startups after college. And did It despite having an offer from a good large Corp.

I regret that decision.

Truth is that it is incredibly difficult to build startup without any good industry knowledge.

ramon156 235 days ago |

Fun fact, not every startup needs funding. Seems like post paul doesn't really talk about this anymore.

dang 234 days ago | |

YC gives founders a lot more than funding.

skeeter2020 235 days ago | |

AP (After Paul) is much more concerned with traditional VC exits; YC is just another firm now, but because they invented the space get to trade on their name a while longer.

laidoffamazon 234 days ago |

This pattern of extending the peripheral aspects of elite undergrad into high school and after actual undergrad seems…wrong. I disliked the Google cultural tendency of trying to mirror grad school but this seems worse.

throwaw12 235 days ago |

My advice to 20 year olds, don't go to startups, go to big tech while it still pays good salary, build up your wealth, network and how things work at such corporations.

Then at mid 30s get hired as Dir/VP of engineering in smaller Series A startup.

You will have higher chance to retire early and/or afford yourself to work on things you like later on.

joshdavham 234 days ago | |

Relevant blog post: https://www.gayle.com/blog/2011/10/29/why-coders-shouldnt-jo...

Something ironic I found when I was on my last job search (and applying to some YC startups) was that, despite startups often being critical of big tech, when describing their past experience, the founders (and their teams) never failed to ‘name drop’ the brand-name companies they’ve worked for.

Additionally, I think the reason a lot of founders threw my resume in the trash was because they couldn’t recognize the no-name startups I’ve worked at… Luckily I’m at a household name company now and even non-tech people recognize the company I work at.

boringg 234 days ago | |

Doesn't part of your soul die when you start working for big tech? All that youthful energy and hope to push a potentially meaningless product. Such a sad thing to watch potential and idealism get crushed.

I understand its provocative statement - your play is the risk free life route - perfect for many many people but not everyone. Certainly not people who want to build things that go into the wild.

mikestew 234 days ago | | |

Doesn't part of your soul die when you start working for big tech?

I learned more at Microsoft than any of the startups I worked at. I shipped product to more users than at any startup I worked at.

I understand its provocative statement…

Meh, more of an example of “begging the question” than anything else.

barbarr 235 days ago |

To what extent is YC's current strategy a form of "cookie-licking"? I.e. capture a small fraction of every plausible startup created by the next generation of students?

deadbabe 235 days ago |

I think this is oddly predatory, and sends the wrong idea to graduating students who have not even entered the real world.

There is no need to rush to get into YC, and it would help to get actual experience in a job before setting out to build a whole company.

jamestimmins 235 days ago | |

These kids are (typically) in some of the best colleges in the world and in incredibly high demand. They have lots of options and enormous amounts of agency.

Hard to buy that "here's another option" is predatory.

imiric 235 days ago | |

Not just predatory, but irresponsible.

The idea that someone fresh out of college should start and run a business is deeply concerning. These are kids who have just (hopefully) learned about ethics and what it takes to run a business, yet you expect them to be responsible stewards of their users' data, to comply with laws and regulations, while you throw $500,000 at them, give them minimal guidance, sell them fantasies about infinite riches, and skim whatever you can from the top.

Yes, I'm aware that Jobs, Gates, Zuckerberg, and others, started their businesses before even finishing college. But a) these are outliers, and b) when someone refers to users of their products as "dumb fucks", do we really want to put them in charge of running a company?

guappa 234 days ago | | |

Bill Gates was already from a rich family and got some nice early contracts due to his family connections.

__loam 235 days ago | |

Putting inexperienced kids with good credentials who are amenable to listening to a board in charge of these things is part of the yc business model.

tomhow 235 days ago | | |

YC is looking for people who have high agency and can back their own judgement. All the most successful founders fit this profile.

cm2012 235 days ago | | |

As someone who has worked with many boards and execs, I cannot tell how wrong this way of looking at the world is.

Execs universally love working with people who maximize proactivity and strong opinions. The opposite of what you think.

raspasov 235 days ago | | |

YC doesn't take board seats.

edit: removed snarky attack

gkoberger 235 days ago |

I loved YC and can't recommend it enough. But if you're going to start a company, please consider working at another company first, even if briefly. (And make it a company you respect and want to emulate.)

The amount of wheels you won't have to reinvent if you work at another company are astronomical. From engineering practices to sales to management, there's a lot you don't want to innovate on. Starting a company is really hard, and it's even harder if you've never seen first-hand how a functional company works. Your future employees will thank you.

ralph84 235 days ago |

If this is what tips the scales for someone in deciding between being a founder and taking a 9-5 job, they don’t have the level of commitment needed to be a successful founder.

wolfcola 235 days ago |

bad, ideologically-motivated idea when thiel did it, and bad, ideologically-motivated idea now

dang 235 days ago | |

"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Jared's description about why YC is doing this now seems clear. If you know more or better, you're welcome to make a substantive argument. But please don't use this site for shallow putdowns—it's not what it's for.

podgorniy 235 days ago |

Young, fool and hungry. The best VC material.

dvrp 235 days ago |

Paul Graham Essay and early YC: live your life, don’t start a company in your 20s. You are young only once.

Post Paul Graham YC: reserve your YC spot now. There’s no downside!

kurtis_reed 235 days ago |

What do you mean "turn out their other job offers"?

snowmaker 235 days ago | |

Whoops - I had a typo! Thank you; fixed.

Maro 235 days ago |

I can't quite put my finger on it, but this announcement gives me bad vibes.

mikert89 235 days ago |

This is basically ensuring YC starts to get more absolute top graduates. Entrepreneurship is more and more seen as the default path for top people in the USA. All other career paths are for people that want to take the risk of ending up in a 50 year assembly line. This is probably good for society

If you want to get rich by 30, you basically have to start a startup or get into a top small hedge fund out of undergrad.

zahlman 235 days ago | |

I feel like being "the best and brightest" is quite orthogonal to having what it takes to be an entrepreneur.

I also feel like highly intelligent people might quite reasonably decide for themselves that they shouldn't have to take on that kind of risk to get what they want out of life.

thebigman433 235 days ago | |

This really is not true, basically every engineering job in the Bay Area will set you up with enough money to live extremely well.

YC startups are a bit above average, but still most startups fail.

If you care about building wealth, taking a stable engineering position straight out of college and working hard is a great path

fullofideas 235 days ago | | |

This. There is a huge opportunity cost, even more so for the “best and brightest” (by whatever definition). The odds of striking it rich are really not in your favor. You may be better off working at big tech for a few years, save up, let the money work for you while you explore your entrepreneurial urge. You have a cushion and maybe that will let you take on bigger and bolder bets than what you could when you come out of college, and you maybe forced to take a “relatively safer” bet because you also have to make money soonish

sobellian 235 days ago | |

Having done this, and acknowledging the fuzzy definition of "rich" etc - going through YC after graduating is a great career move. You have to do everything yourself so you learn a lot. About business, about a specific industry, about programming, whatever. You make connections. But unless you walk an absolute golden path (hey it happens), > 90% chance you don't get rich. > 99.9% chance you won't get rich by 30.

mikert89 235 days ago | | |

Not denying you can fail, but one year spent on YC and failing puts you in a position to start another business

toomuchtodo 235 days ago | |

How many YC founders end up rich before 30? Or even at all? I think it’s likely a highly valuable experience running a business experiment someone else will fund (not to mention connections you wouldn’t otherwise make), but the odds of actual, liquid wealth from the experience and time spent are very low.

mikert89 235 days ago | | |

Alot of them do, not only that, they build skills that help them start their next company. Many of which are bootstrapped and profitable. This whole idea that startups are a complete lottery ticket is not only false, its increasingly less false, more money is being made now in startups than ever

timr 235 days ago | |

Let me make this simple for you: you will not get rich by 30.

I know, I know...there are examples! And yes, there are, but statistically, they won't be you. You're playing the lottery, only it's a lottery that steals your youth and gives you psychological problems.

If your only goal is to get rich, then don't do a startup. You have to have some more fundamental reason, or the agony will beat you.

mikert89 235 days ago | | |

I live in NYC, I have met alot of very rich startup founders. But not only that, lots of people making 50k a month from a startup they built post YC, raised no VC, and have no boss.

Its an outdated take to think people arent doing this

aprilthird2021 235 days ago | |

> If you want to get rich by 30, you basically have to start a startup or get into a top small hedge fund out of undergrad.

I am 30, I am rich by most measures of wealth and probably in the minds of most college grads. I worked in various big tech companies (incl stints in FAANG) after graduating with my BS in CS. A lot of my peers did do startups, and they had varying degrees of success. But almost everyone who went to big tech has set up their next generation for success at this point

mikert89 235 days ago | | |

By rich I mean like 25 million +, not 3 million

woooooo 235 days ago | |

Why is everyone equating "best and brightest" with "rich by 30"? Were Kernighan and Ritchie rich by 30?

__loam 235 days ago | |

> If you want to get rich by 30, you basically have to start a startup or get into a top small hedge fund out of undergrad.

Many will enter, few will win lmao

appleaday1 235 days ago | |

or you buy bitcoin

fijiaarone 235 days ago | |

Entrepreneurship isn’t getting showered with millions for doing nothing other than being accepted as a part of the blessed elite and access to an infinite spigot of free money when all other sources have been dammed off and diverted to the ever shrinking minority of ever increasing ultra-wealth.

fn-mote 235 days ago | | |

This would be a better comment if it asserted what the poster believed entrepreneurship IS rather than what it is not.

FWIW, to me entrepreneurship is an amazing path, but starting a company right out of college?? There’s a LOT of skills to develop. Have someone to copy. Make sure you draw enough salary. Keep an identity outside of your company (networking!) so you can pick yourself up if (when) it crashes.

dcreater 235 days ago | | |

For people who took a second to get this (like me), @fijiaarone means it is.

And I concur - in this AI hypecycle more than ever it seems to be about how can peacock the best. Its neck and neck with the crypto hypecycle a few years ago for the incidence rate of vaporware and snake oil. Sure there are some legit founders building meaningful product but they seem to be a small minority.

mikert89 235 days ago | | |

its still better than these people fighting over promotions in finance

cdelsolar 234 days ago |

lol come on guys let kids live a little

user3939382 235 days ago |

Yeah so all our talent can line the pockets of SV.

antonvs 235 days ago |

Eternal September for the startup world.