- The speaker discusses the benefits of applying and succeeding at YC (Y Combinator).
- Completing the application forces individuals to think about important aspects of their business.
- If someone is watching the presentation, it suggests that YC may be a good fit for them.
- Filling out the application should only take a few hours and has a potentially high upside.
- Great founders create luck by setting themselves up for fortunate opportunities.
- People often don't apply because they think they are too early or too far along, but there is no such thing.
- Being a solo founder, having previously applied or raised money, or having competitors are not valid reasons to not apply.
- Valid reasons to not apply include having a business that is not fast-growing or not wanting to work on the venture for a long time.
- The application process is straightforward and can be done early or late.

- It is acceptable to apply for a program early or late, depending on circumstances.
- Many people ask if they can still apply after the deadline, and the answer is usually yes.
- Applicants do not need to ask for permission to apply, they can simply fill out the application.
- Good applications are properly filled out and follow the given directions.
- Clarity is important in applications, and they should be easy to understand and follow.
- Weak applications obfuscate important information and make it difficult to understand.
- Clear and concise descriptions of the company and its product are crucial in a good application.

- The speaker empathizes with applicants who use jargon and buzzwords, but it doesn't help their chances of getting funded.
- A good application should tell a story and include information about the team, their accomplishments, and why they will succeed.
- It is important to have at least one person on the team who can actually build the product or technology being proposed.
- Obfuscating information about who built the product or who will build it is not recommended.
- Applying more than once can be beneficial, as it shows progress and determination.
- Networking is not necessary to get into the program, and attempts to cold email or seek attention are not helpful.
- Beware of well-intentioned advice from people in the YC network, as it may not always be accurate or helpful.

- The speaker warns about predatory advisors in the entertainment and tech industries and encourages people to be wary and do research on individuals claiming to help break into Silicon Valley.
- YC interviews are short, basic, and focused on understanding the nuts and bolts of the business.
- The speaker advises against approaching the interview as an adversarial process and emphasizes the importance of having a productive conversation and building trust with the interviewers.
- Successful interviews demonstrate a mastery of the business, self-awareness, and an understanding of the challenges.
- If not selected, applicants receive feedback and are encouraged to address the concerns and reapply.
- Applying to YC is straightforward and the skills needed to successfully apply are broadly applicable to being a great founder.
- The speaker encourages saying yes to opportunities and not being a barrier to setting oneself up for success.

The speaker believes that the information provided will be beneficial for founders.

The speaker discusses the benefits of applying to and succeeding at Y Combinator (YC). They emphasize that completing the application forces individuals to think about important aspects of their business and that applying to YC suggests it may be a good fit for them. The application process is straightforward and can be done early or late, and it is acceptable to apply after the deadline. Good applications are clear, concise, and tell a story about the team, their accomplishments, and why they will succeed. It is important to have at least one person on the team who can build the proposed product or technology. Networking is not necessary to get into the program, and applicants should be wary of predatory advisors. YC interviews are short and focused on understanding the business. If not selected, applicants receive feedback and are encouraged to address concerns and reapply. The speaker encourages saying yes to opportunities and not being a barrier to success.

YC Partner Dalton Caldwell gives insight into how YC admissions works and what makes for a successful YC experience.

Transcript and lecture slides here: https://www.ycombinator.com/library/6t-how-to-apply-and-succeed-at-y-combinator

This lecture is part of YC's Startup School, a free online program and global community of founders. Register and join the community at https://www.startupschool.org/

Timestamps
00:00 Introduction
00:35 Why apply to YC?
2:53 Creating luck
4:38 Reasons not to apply
10:56 Properties of a good application
14:54 The importance of clarity
20:55 Great applications tell a story
22:01 Top tip for applicants
25:00 Your odds of an interview
27:10 No network needed
31:35 What happens in an interview?
38:48 Conclusion

Okay, what we're going to talk about today is how to apply and succeed at YC.

In my capacity as the head of admissions, I go around the world and I give talks and I meet folks that are applying and I answer lots of questions.

And so I think I have a decent internal model of the kinds of questions that people have and the kinds of things that people get hung up on.

And so I'm going to do my best to anticipate what you're probably thinking about and try to answer those to the best of my ability.

All right, so why is it even worth applying to YC?

People ask this question a fair amount of time and I would argue that the very act of completing the application forces you to think about stuff that you should definitely think about.

For instance, you know, what are we building?

What is different about what we're doing than other options on the market.

Here's 1 that sometimes people don't talk about before filling out the application.

People often have never had that conversation.

And so the very act of going through and doing an application and working with your co-founder to answer all these things, I would argue is an extremely good idea.

And regardless of whether you do IC again, you should ask yourselves all of these questions.

And if you find a bunch of murkiness where you can't answer them, that's usually a sign that you should be discussing this more.

And so right off the bat, I recommend going and answering the questions.

Another thing is if you are watching this very presentation, there is a good chance that YC is a great fit for you.

There's lots of people that apply and they don't really know what YC is and they Googled how to get free money on the internet or something.

And it's clear that they don't exactly understand what YC is and what it's all about.

You are here, you have been participating in this.

There's lots of context that you have about YC.

And so that out of the gate means you're gonna be much better prepared to fill out this application And that you're a great fit for the sort of company that we would want to fund.

Okay Another thing is I think a lot about What you should be doing as a founder in terms of cost-benefit analysis on time There's a lot of things that seem like a good use of time that are not a good use of time And There's a lot of things that seem like a good use of time that are not a good use of time, and there's a lot of things that may not seem like a good use of time that are an excellent use of time.

And so I'd argue filling in an application should really only take you, I don't know, 2 or 3 hours.

And the potential upside is quite huge versus other ways you can spend 2 or 3 hours where the upside is not much at all.

So let's talk a little bit about how you create luck.

And this is sort of like a meta point outside of the application thing, but great founders create luck.

And there's ways that you can create luck in your life that increase the chances that you will get lucky.

And the way you get lucky is you set yourself up to be lucky as often as possible.

And so if you can set yourself up so that every single day of your life you have a shot, it's something really fortunate happening to you, the odds that something really fortunate will happen to you is like super high.

And I would argue, applying to YC is definitely 1 of those things, right?

I answer questions, and invariably people will probably ask me questions at the end of this, that are some kind of complicated way of being like, of you talking yourself out of why you should do it for some reason.

And the fact is, you're going to set yourself up to be rejected all the time as a founder, right?

You get customers, your customers unsubscribe from your service, your customers are not happy, you're gonna try to recruit people, that may not work.

You know, you're gonna be told no all the time.

And so, if you set yourself up so that you never hear no and that you never get negative feedback, It's just like, you're not gonna set yourself up to actually be successful.

So this is an example of like when I talk to people and I'm on the road, a lot of the questions or concerns that people have all stem from this, which is they're afraid of what happens if they don't get in.

And so they don't even bother to take the chance.

And again, regardless of why I see in this particular topic, I really think this is a good trait for you to develop as a founder.

We work on this in the program with people of really encouraging people to not be so afraid of getting told no and systematically trying to set yourself up for good things to happen to you as much as possible.

And so this is just another of those situations.

So let's talk about some of the reasons that people don't apply.

Sometimes in the extreme case, people have changed their idea between when they get invited to interviews and when they get to the interview.

We also fund people that end up pivoting mid-batch.

And so that means they've been working on their startup like a negative number of days, right?

And so again, there's a lot of ideas around there that like the right way to apply to YC is to wait till you have a certain amount of stuff.

Someone asked me a question, what's the right amount of MRR to get into YC?

And like, holy cow, the answer is 0, right?

That doesn't mean you will definitely get in every time, clearly, but any kind of roadblock you put for yourself that you're too early, I would argue is your own self-constrained roadblock, not something that's coming from us.

Conversely, people think they are too far along and this 1 is great because it's like there's like this ideal point between too early and too late that is like last you know a week or something and otherwise you're too far on either extreme.

We have folks, every batch that come in, we have folks that, man, had over a million dollars in annual recurring revenue.

Folks that have raised a fair amount of money.

Like whatever metric by which you think you're too far, and again, maybe you are genuinely too far because you're like got a thousand employees or something.

The odds are though, most of the people that ask this question, it's because they are launched or They have a little bit of revenue and they're like, oh, we don't need YC, we got it all figured out.

And again, our data and the folks that we worked with suggest that you are most likely not too far along, depending on your circumstance.

So if that is the idea, don't put the barrier into yourself on why you're not gonna apply just because you think you're too far along.

This is where either you just, oh yeah, I went to business school or I've done a startup before.

Okay, that's fine, but all you're doing is limiting possibilities there and I don't, there's lots of folks that are super experienced.

Justin Kahn did YC 3 times and is now the founder of Atrium.

And he gets something out of it every time.

And clearly he's very experienced, and I would argue much more experienced than many people that think this about themselves.

So again, this is just creating barriers for yourself.

There's something specific about my company that YC just doesn't get and Usually the way that I answer this is by listing all the types of companies that we fund It is too long and too boring to list here.

So I will not attempt to be To list them all but look whatever industry you're in whatever you're doing most likely we fund something kind of like it or equally crazy to that.

And we really like crazy and weird things.

And again, what do I mean by crazy and weird?

We funded nuclear fission and nuclear fusion startups and supersonic jet startups and like, I don't know, all sorts of crazy biotech stuff.

So it's unlikely that we're just gonna be like, wow, that's too weird for us.

Maybe you are that 1, but most likely, this is a barrier you're putting in for yourself.

People think if you do YC, you have to live in the Bay Area forever.

A huge percentage of the people that we fund, you do the program here, but that's 3 months, and you go and do whatever you want.

So if you're super worried about, wow, I just love New York City, that's my home, I want to be in New York City, Okay, that doesn't preclude you from wanting to apply to YC.

Okay, there's more, I'll go through these quicker.

Okay, that's not a reason not to apply, it's just again, maybe you're afraid of rejection or you know that we encourage you to have co-founders, that doesn't mean, that's not a reason to not apply to YC.

I've already applied to YC once before, I'll address this later, but just because you didn't get in once in no way means that you won't do it again.

I don't know the stats off the top of my head, but a huge percentage of last batch had already raised on the order of 6 figures.

And there's definitely some 7 figures as well.

And so in no way does it preclude you from applying to YCE.

Sometimes if you're doing like a self-driving car startup or a scooter startup or something, there's other folks that we funded in the space.

We fund folks in the same space all the time.

This does not preclude us from funding you, nor is a good reason to not apply.

Here, there's not many, but I do think there is a couple of good reasons to not apply.

1 is you have the kind of business that is either not anticipated to be fast growing enough, nor in your ambition is something that ever makes sense to raise venture capital for.

And if that does not make sense for you, then yeah, you probably shouldn't apply to YC.

Like you should not raise any venture capital, you should make the growth rate work for you and make the business model that works for you.

The other thing is, you're just not sure you wanna work on this very long.

We're used to working with people that are working on something for a very long time.

And so if you just wanna do something for a few months or put this on your resume, then yeah, that's a fair reason to not apply.

You go to the website and you follow the instructions.

It's okay to apply early or late, depending on your circumstances.

As Jeff said, there are, it's slightly harder to get in early or late, and that's just because we're not, that's not our primary time to be cycling through things.

But if that's what, if those are the circumstances you're in, you should definitely apply.

This is a very common email question we get is, hey, it's 2 weeks after the deadline, can I still apply?

Guess what the answer to that question is?

But people wanna ask, they want permission.

And again, this is a recurring theme about founders.

You need to learn, you don't have to ask permission for everything.

You don't need our approval to do everything.

You know, there's a website, if there's a button where you can apply, you should totally apply, right?

You don't need to email us, have us say yes, and then do it.

And again, most of these questions are just people asking, should I apply?

So let's talk about what makes a good application.

The first 1, I promise this is not redundant.

This matters and it's because I read so many applications, I have a very good idea of what they actually look like.

And I realized that this talk will go on the internet and many of the things that I say will be reflected back, like I'm creating a feedback loop for the things that I read.

And so things I'm putting in here are actually meant, like I want these ideas to get dispersed, of people knowing what makes a good application, because I think that will make my job easier, right?

The first thing is that you'd be shocked how many people don't actually fill out the dang thing properly.

There's like whole areas where they don't answer the question whatsoever.

They don't put in URLs, they don't fill out their bio.

I don't know, again, it's not a very long application, you'll see yourself, but it is shocking to me how, what a high percentage of the time people just like don't fill the dang thing out or like put in lots of like errors and it's just like not great.

Think about it about, you know, applying for a job or any other kind of professional thing.

Lack of professionalism here, not equated with success.

It's that simple and that's why I'm leaving with this is you'd be shocked how few people follow this direction.

Maybe they think it's like a lottery ticket where they put it in an application even if it's a bad 1 they might get in.

I read these things and I appreciate it if you fill out the application.

The second thing is the founder video, you would be shocked how many people don't follow the day and directions there's directions on how to do the founder video, I E.

All the founders should be in the video And people don't do that.

We get the 20 minute spirit journey video where I don't even know what they're talking, it's just like, it goes, yeah.

Or like, I've seen like an hour 20, I've seen some weird stuff.

But like the 20 minute spirit journey video not super helpful, and I'm not it's really hard to sit there and watch something for 20 minutes 1 minute is a perfect amount of time we give you examples those examples are great videos be like that video It's also really good to have the entire founding team in the video.

People are always like hey, I'm here and I'm in the airport and my co founder is in here.

So here's my video and like I think that's fine.

If that's what you have to do, but maybe just waiting a couple of days so you can be with your co-founder to do the video, would be a good idea.

Because my theory is a lot of times when people don't follow the directions, it may be because their co-founder doesn't know they're applying to YC.

Like there's all these things under the hood where the lack of the co-founder in the video speaks volumes.

And so maybe you are have a great reason why your co-founder is in the video but I would suggest it right just and it's in the directions so I'm not telling you anything that's not in the directions I'm just letting you know yes we watch these things and yes it's valuable And if you just follow the directions, then we're gonna be super happy.

And when it's like, either there's no video or the video is weird.

Another thing that people do a lot is they put in like an unrelated video of a product demo that they made with 1 of those free tools where there's no humans in it.

But anyway, there's a whole genre of things that people put in there that are not remotely following directions.

This is a good application is easy to understand what they're talking about.

And it doesn't mean you write tons and tons and tons of words.

Tons of words can definitely has a diminishing return where we don't know what you're talking about.

And it's, I just can't understand what the application is saying.

Also clarity on who's building the product.

It's remarkably obfuscated to even figure out what's going on and who's even building the thing.

Like you'll see who the founders are and you'll kind of see what they're working on, but it's really hard to tell who's building it.

And so just having it be very crisp of who's building it, Again, this would put you way better than average if you just do these things.

Let's talk about clarity because this is definitely something that is worth talking about.

Great applications that I read, the application, when I read an application and I know when I read it, they're gonna get in, they're super easy for me to read.

It just reads like with no effort whatsoever.

And it's because I understand there's no jargon and everything just adds up and it's a great narrative and it's like, wow, what a great application.

You have revenue but you're not launched?

When I'm reading 1 of these applications, it's like a brain teaser where I'm trying to figure out what's going on.

I think a lot of the times that people obfuscate is they either think that that's what we want to read or we like buzzwords or we like this stuff, or they're trying to hide something where it's not, where like the revenue is actually their personal salary, but it's not revenue for the company, but they're putting it in there because they think they should have revenue, like stuff like that.

And so we'll ask questions sometimes to figure this out, but there's such a clear delineation for me as an application reader about someone that is clearly communicating in a very crisp way versus where it's this brain teaser and I'm trying to pull out, where it's just like tons of work for me to pull out the key facts from the application, okay?

If you're trying to convince someone to buy your products, or you're trying to convince someone to work with you, or you're trying to convince an investor to invest in your startup, and they don't even understand what you're talking about, you have already lost.

Simply going for coherent understanding should always be the first thing you do before you're trying to sell someone.

So if I don't understand what the heck is going on in your application, it doesn't even get to the point where it's like, hey, should we fund this company or not?

And you will notice that other people will check out, like if you're trying to pitch your thing to someone and they can't follow you, there's no way you're getting them to yes.

And so I just think this is such a broadly applicable skill and something that we work on a lot in the batch, is simply being clear and making sure the other party knows what you're doing first and then selling them comes second once they actually understand what you're doing.

So here's some examples of really great descriptions from real YC applications, from real YC companies that got in.

And this is the entirety of their answer to this question.

I don't know, I'm not gonna read it out loud, but like, it's what, 3 sentences?

And I read that and I know exactly what they do and I know who wants it and That's it great seems valuable, right?

This requires so little mental effort to pull out what Remix is and what they're doing and who it's for, that I'm like, great, takes 2 seconds to read.

Here's another 1 for a company called TetraScience, also excellent.

We're a software platform that connects scientific tools to the cloud.

It allows scientists to access their lab device from anywhere, blah, blah, blah.

And we make a small hardware module which connects those labs to the web.

Super crisp, understandable, no jargon, answers all the key questions.

Notice they're not trying to sell us on any of this, they're just explaining what it is.

And that's why this is so great, is it's super coherent, super clear.

Here's another example from GitLab when they applied to YC.

And they explain exactly what it is, the history of the company.

And they also add in really impressive facts right at the top.

Over 100,000 organizations use it, including thousands of programmers at Apple.

And it's right at the top, super crisp, right?

So this is, when we read these applications, it's very clear what they do, and we're like, wow, tell me more.

Here's an example of a bad 1, and I didn't pull this from a real application.

I wrote this myself, and I wrote this based on many of the applications I read.

Like, I didn't have to think too hard to write what a bad description is.

This is what a lot of applications are like.

And I understand, I have empathy for the people that apply with stuff like this, because I think that they think that this is what we want.

Or they think that if they use enough jargon or buzzwords, that we will get confused and fund them or something.

You know, it's like stunning us, like, oh, I don't know, blockchain, okay, yes.

Instead, this is arduous work that makes me want to go take a break.

Like I read 1 of these and I need to go get a breath of fresh air.

It's really hard to understand what's going on, and I still don't know.

I still don't know what this company does even after reading the application.

And so please don't apply with stuff like this.

And do you see the crisp difference between this and the good examples?

So here's the things that I would want to pull out of an application that I was reading.

How we got the idea, something like that.

This is what we've accomplished thus far.

Even if that's, hey, we haven't done much, that's okay.

And this is why we're going to make this work.

These are the things that I, when I read an application that I'm trying to pull out of it, and there's nothing fancy here.

And if you make me work really, really, really hard to figure this out, that's a sign of not a great application.

But if this just flows out without taking any effort whatsoever, then that's a good application.

And if you've ever hired people and read resumes before, it's kind of the same deal, right?

You just look at a resume and you're like, okay, cool.

There's some key things you're looking for and then you're like, sounds good and you move on, right?

A resume that takes tons and tons and tons of work to make sense of is probably not a great resume.

Okay, here's my number 1 tip to applicants on what would help.

Make it clear that there's at least 1 person on the team who can make the thing that you are working on.

And notice I'm being a little vague in that language because this is not just software.

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How to Apply and Succeed at Y Combinator by Dalton Caldwell