NYT on Paul Graham's YCombinator Bootcamp

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."

Comments

Re:$6000 for 6%?

[sporkmonger]

It's not about the money. Paul Graham and company's input and expertise, plus the advantages of being in a setting with lots of other individuals doing the same thing, plus the connections that are put at your disposal are what make it worth the 6% or so. The $6000 per person is merely a safety net to keep you from having to worry about going too hungry.

Personal experience with taking Graham's advice

[goberoi]

Five months ago I quit my job as a software developer for Amazon.com to start my own software company with a friend (also ex-Amazon). I heard Paul Graham speak at the Amazon Developer's conference just a few weeks before I left. While he wasn't the reason I took this leap, his arguments helped me make the difficult decision to leave a secure and well-paying job in pursuit of something far more risky.

Here is my personal experience on some of Graham's commonly touted suggestions for entrepreneurs:

1. Do it when you are young.

   I have no wife or kids, no mortgage, and sufficient savings to last for long enough to give entrepreneurism a shot. Paul suggests people do this young not because of any inherent bias, but because the young have very little to lose.

2. Let the market decide your worth.

   The tech startup market is booming. The amount of available funding and interest shown by VCs, and large companies is very attractive to a couple of small entrepreneurs. With several startups having been acquired in the last year, there are rewarding exit strategies on the table too. If you are skilled, and good at your job, why not let the market decide your value instead of your manager?

3. It's cheap - fund yourself.

   The cost of creating value on the Internet is very low. Our product is a web-based application (some may call it Web 2.0), built entirely using open source software. With an abundance of cheap machines, and the fact that most web-apps simply don't need much more than lots of memory and some big disks, our hardwares costs have been low. In fact, we have funded the entire thing ourselves from our savings. With such low startup costs, you don't need to give equity away to try out an idea.

4. Failure is not that bad.

   What really happens if I fail? Well at worst I'll be nearly broke, and back in the job market. But even then, I will have ways to commoditize my failure. Though by no means a given, having entrepreneurism on your resume often suggests some traits that employers look for: self-motivation, willingness and ability to work hard, maturity, technical expertise, ability to prioritize etc. I conducted many interviews during my time at Amazon, and candidates who had tried something on their own and failed were nevertheless, generally more interesting.

Graham helped me assert to myself that the risk calculation I was doing was right enough. At the end of the day, the risk is mine, and the rewards too. We launched the site 5 weeks ago, already have over 3000 users, have been contacted by several VC firms, and have gotten some great press on blogs like TechCrunch, and the Scobelizer. If you're interested, check out what I've been up to at http://www.billmonk.com/, and decide for yourself.

One thing I can say for sure: this is the best job I've ever had.