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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."
"I can't hear you!"
"SIR, YES SIR!"
"Are you ready to convince angel investors that your fooseball table is an integral part of your creative environment?"
"SIR, YES SIR!"
"Are you ready to convince gullible members of the public that your particular URL is worth several million dollars?"
"SIR, YES SIR!"
"You, maggot! Front and center! What's you're name?"
"Smith, sir!"
"And what do you do, Smith?"
"Program, sir!"
"Well goddamn, a white boy who thinks he can program! Are you half-Asian, boy?"
"No, sir!"
"And what do you think your non-Asian ass is going to be programming in?"
".NET, sir!"
".NET?!?!? .NET!?!? What sort of goddamn candyass faggot shit is that??? No VC is going to give no sucking-his-momma's tit .NET programmer jack! You will program in JAVA, and you will LIKE IT!"
"Sir, yes sir! Java, sir!"
"Now drop into that Aeron chair and give me 20 lines of code!"
Crow T. Trollbot
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.
Slashdot: Where anecdotes and generalizations can be freely substituted for facts, logic, or intelligence
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.
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.
Here is my personal experience on some of Graham's commonly touted suggestions for entrepreneurs:
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.
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?
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.
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.