From what I understand the reason why YC is offering this Advisor Edition classes is to get these non-YC alum advisers ready for the regular version of the YC Startup school.
Last year YC accepted everyone into YC startup school (due to a Boolean error) and a lot of groups ended up participating without an adviser. And you get the best experience when someone actually guides you every week.
This year YC will again open the YC Startup School for everyone and YC can't scale it without having trained advisers.
Finally, I wouldn't worry too much about "advisers without experience." YC is smart enough to filter out bad apples from the bag.
Our Android developer silently inserted cryptocurrency mining code into the new release, pushed the clean version to github, but submitted the infected version to Google Play.
After a few weeks Google caught that and banned our app. We lost thousands of customers and years of work and had to start over with a brand new app. Years later the infected app is still mining cryptocurrency because users ignore Google’s malware warning message and keep using the app.
PS: I should have said “our FORMER Android developer.”
Ok, I agree that some MBAs can be full of it but can we already stop this MBA hate on HN? I feel like lots of people here think that if you build something then customers will surely come. I've got a huge surprise for you. You will have to sell your product and some of the MBA's are really great at that. In B2B a single sale can make or break your company when you're low on cash.
You do your job and let them do theirs. You code, talk to users, ship, and iterate. They handle sales, operations, marketing, and maybe fundraising. These other things can be done by a technical founder but they are not fun. There is a reason why some companies hire COOs so that CEOs can focus on their job.
Finally, it's not MBAs who decided to focus on growth at all costs. It's the nature of the game. Either you get to the top or your competitors will do that. So don't hate the player, hate the game.
Lots of local services in Central Asia depend on it for communication and operations via telegram bots.
We just lost hundreds of orders during lunch rush hour. Users couldn't place orders via bots. The orders that were placed via mobile app or website were still sent to managers via Telegram bots. Of course, restaurant managers didn't see the orders and couriers didn't get anything as a result.
But that's nothing compared to our neighboring bot only taxi service. I think they lost thousands of orders and hundreds of drivers didn't get paid. Lesson learned: don't put all your eggs in one basket.