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NYT on Paul Graham's YCombinator Bootcamp

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the something-to-read dept.

prostoalex writes "The New York Times tells the story of Paul Graham's YCombinator - a venture firm that specializes in funding early stage startups that's famour for startup bootcamps conducted twice a year in Silicon Valley and over on the East Coast. YCombinator's boot camps apparently attract a lot of employees out of major software companies, who are still young and want to run a software startup."

2 of 116 comments (clear)

  1. Re:The only one to win is YCombinator by Senzei · · Score: 4, Insightful
    If you're a budding entrepreneur and you can't raise $20K for seed funding you really should stick to being a wage slave.

    Beyond that they require that you have at least two people on the project, and prefer three. If you and a buddy (or two) cannot raise 20K in funding you seriously should stick to being a wage slave.

    I want to like paul graham, I really do, he just gives me that creepy feeling that I also get from any of the pyramid scheme head honchos I have seen. All his answers are just too easy for me to trust it. Dunno who that says something about.

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    Slashdot: Where anecdotes and generalizations can be freely substituted for facts, logic, or intelligence
  2. Re:The only one to win is YCombinator by TerrapinOrange · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If you were a 20 year old kid with 2 cents to his name and an idea in his head, how exactly would you go about raising 20,000? Sure, it's possible. You could max out your (possibly non existent) credit cards and hope for the best. You could hit up rich uncle Joe and try to get a sliver of his fish packing fortune. If you have generous parents, maybe you could keep living in mom's basement, and spend the next 6 month of your life working on business plans, slogging through meetings, and dealing with folks who are far more interested in your age than your idea.

    If you do manage to get the money, then what? Mine uncle Joe's fish packing knowledge to find out how to flip a software company? Tell Visa that you'll be able to make your minimum payment as soon as you can secure your second round of funding?

    Some people would rather write software than deal with business crap, get in debt, or lose their family's money. For those folks, getting 20,000 for nothing more than an idea probably sounds pretty sweet. If things go south, they're no further behind than when they started, and if they get rich, who cares about a lousy 6% to avoid all that hassle? They're still rich.

    Lastly, Google doesn't even know about Jimmy Nobody and his Fabulous Web-o-Matic. You can bet your ass they're looking at Y Combinator's kids though.