Ask HN: What to Expect at YC Startup School?
Our company was accepted by YC's Startup School. What to expect from the program?
25 comments
I've been organising a group of founders in London. Right now there are 28 of us signed up to do Startup School together, looking to do the course as a group and recreate as much of the YC experience as possible. We have weekly dinners lined up with some brilliant speakers and a London business school is kindly offering its space for us to work together during the ten weeks. We're also looking at plans for a London demo day at the culmination of the course.
I got to speak with Sam Altman on Monday whilst he was in London, explained what we're building for founders and what it is they want more than anything: to meet and learn from YC alumni. He was generous with his time and supportive, advising us to go out there, find them and persuade them to take part. So here I am on HN following Sam's advice! We'd love to have YC alumni come along to some dinners and share valuable insight with our collection of founders. Even if you can only spare 30mins, any alumni assistantance would be amazing. We're a friendly bunch who are passionate about building things.
If you're a YC alumni near London who wants to get in contact, please post a message here or email me at:
[email protected]
If you're a London founder who'd like to take part, please get in contact too!
I got to speak with Sam Altman on Monday whilst he was in London, explained what we're building for founders and what it is they want more than anything: to meet and learn from YC alumni. He was generous with his time and supportive, advising us to go out there, find them and persuade them to take part. So here I am on HN following Sam's advice! We'd love to have YC alumni come along to some dinners and share valuable insight with our collection of founders. Even if you can only spare 30mins, any alumni assistantance would be amazing. We're a friendly bunch who are passionate about building things.
If you're a YC alumni near London who wants to get in contact, please post a message here or email me at:
[email protected]
If you're a London founder who'd like to take part, please get in contact too!
Hi, this is Santiago co-founder of Nightly.travel and we're London based. I'd love to get involved. Let me know how. I can be reached at [email protected] or @SantiagoBiz on Twitter. Looking forward to meeting you all asap.
Hey Santiago, thanks for getting in contact and wanting to take part, I'll drop you an email.
Sign me up :)
Will see if I can get BillForward (YC S14)guys to contribute!
That's awesome ENadyr, you just made my Friday night!! Note to self: got to stop working long hours on Friday nights! If you can get the BillForward guys involved that would be brilliant, thanks a bunch from all the London Startup School founders :)
Drop me an email and I'll be in contact about what we're up to.
Drop me an email and I'll be in contact about what we're up to.
Congrats! I'm still waiting for our email. I'm prepping by watching all the Stanford startup videos on YouTube and making notes. The PG, Thiel and Schultz lectures have been thought provoking. I'm a natural contrarian, so I loved the Thiel talk, especially the monopoly vs perfect competition theme. If we're lucky enough to get on the program I've got high hopes for the mentorship by YC alumni element. Would be great to get some guidance from a B2B SaaS that's been there and done it. But I'm a solo founder and I'm a lot older than the usual YC profile, so I'm expecting to get rejected.
I definitely recommend watching the videos. If you are interested I did take notes and you can download them here:
https://leanpub.com/how_to_start_a_startup
https://leanpub.com/how_to_start_a_startup
I'm a solo founder (although I'm currently talking to someone who might want to join as a co-founder) and also a lot older than the usual YC profile and based in Singapore.
Also eagerly waiting and will be keeping my fingers crossed the next few days... All the best to you!
Also eagerly waiting and will be keeping my fingers crossed the next few days... All the best to you!
Startup School is very fun and inspiring. I went to the 2014 in NYC. Alexis Ohanian was the host. Man, he's a great guy and a great MC.
I didn't get a chance to meet him, but I'm sure he would've stayed around for anyone who wanted to talk.
My take-away was that its a very inspiring event. So inspiring that I wanted to leave ASAP so I can work on my ideas. Basically, you're in an auditorium learning about how a few of these companies (e.g. https://www.codecademy.com/) got started. Afterward, you may stick around to socialize.
I will say that I didn't necessary learn anything new. But, I don't think that was the point. It was more about getting people excited to dream big and create things that may become businesses.
Here are some videos to watch that will help you get the most out of it - 1. Alexis Ohanian : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKYkmYuk5l8 2. Sam Altman's Course : http://startupclass.samaltman.com/ 3. Apoorva Mehta (Instacart) at Startup School NY 2014 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkmR7TYUt_c
Good luck!
I didn't get a chance to meet him, but I'm sure he would've stayed around for anyone who wanted to talk.
My take-away was that its a very inspiring event. So inspiring that I wanted to leave ASAP so I can work on my ideas. Basically, you're in an auditorium learning about how a few of these companies (e.g. https://www.codecademy.com/) got started. Afterward, you may stick around to socialize.
I will say that I didn't necessary learn anything new. But, I don't think that was the point. It was more about getting people excited to dream big and create things that may become businesses.
Here are some videos to watch that will help you get the most out of it - 1. Alexis Ohanian : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKYkmYuk5l8 2. Sam Altman's Course : http://startupclass.samaltman.com/ 3. Apoorva Mehta (Instacart) at Startup School NY 2014 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkmR7TYUt_c
Good luck!
Not the same Startup School. This is a MOOC that lasts 10 weeks, it's different from the conf. that was only 1 day.
Though very similar in idea and goal!
haha, yes, people always confusing it.
Thanks for the links! Btw, we're in group 20 (https://botmakers.net/) and our group mentor is Ryan from https://www.codecademy.com/
Congratulations!
Ryan's a cool guy. You're going to learn a lot and have fun doing it. I wish you the best of luck, and hope to see more information on your start up soon.
Ryan's a cool guy. You're going to learn a lot and have fun doing it. I wish you the best of luck, and hope to see more information on your start up soon.
They already sent you a confirmation email? I thought they were going to inform teams if they were accepted or not on April 3.
We're slowly going through and accepting teams on a rolling basis. Finbarr is the sole engineer building the software, so we wanted to have a bit of buffer time in case we overlooked something in the program/product.
Apologies for the error in the messaging, it should have said _by_ April 3rd.
Apologies for the error in the messaging, it should have said _by_ April 3rd.
Maybe he got fast-tracked because his startup is into AI. That's a hot area.
I think people here are confusing startup school with accelerator program. The startup school invites are in, the accelerator confirmation will be on April 3rd.
yes they did. but I think they are still processing them, people are keeping poping up in the chat (don't know if it's due to timezones or what)
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Congrats ! Wish I had not seen this though.. I am going to be rushing to my phone every time I hear an email notification, all weekend :)
Do you think getting into Startup School will mean you didn't get into YC Accelerator?
Startup School will have no effect on your YC Accelerator application.
Good news :)
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