Why are you reluctant to accept one person companies? One person is often sufficient for a workable prototype. Others can join later. In fact, Y Combinator can act as a match maker of sorts, encouraging mergers among similar proposals/prototypes.
Amichail, I know exactly what you mean. Some people work better on their own. But even if you're looking for a founder, there are some places where you're out of luck. I go to the University of Virginia, and to tell you the truth, it's nearly impossible to find good hackers to work on startups with (even though 50% of Reddit went here). And without that, there's no hope getting into something as prestigious as the YCombinator.
I propose we make a simple site that allows hackers find one another, locally. A single hacker isn't going to make a Meetup group to find other hackers; that takes too much work. It should be more like Craigslist, but for this startup community. Sorted by city, people can exchange email addresses, screen names, and most importantly, ideas.
All it takes is two founders, and you never know what kind of matches people will find.
Granted, they should know that they can work together before taking on a huge project, but I think that something of this sort will really help people discover one another and get their startups going.
I'm not suggesting we re-invent Craigslist, but there are enough people here to merit something like this. Ruby on Rails, anybody?
Actually, why not do it here? I bet that sort of functionality could be integrated somehow into this site, and from Paul's first post to the group on the reasons for the site I think it would fit in well.
Then again you won't be able to use Ruby...
yeah if we fill out the profiles - and add a location and status field. It'll work pretty well at first - as you can browse people's profiles to see if they are also looking for a co-founder etc. Things can then be taken up on email
Very good idea. We can assume most people here are in the startup community.
So perhaps there should be a search by location field on a page here so that people can find each other.
if you guys are interested I could host this (the site and SVN) and maybe hack away at it a little bit (If you're doing it in Rails) I totally feel you on this one, its shouldn't be as hard as it is to find passionate people who are technical AND entrepreneurial.
I'm with you. Paul - what do you think about this? Hosting that sort of thing here would foster the entire YC community, but doing it over there means a more select user base of people who are specifically looking for partners to work with.
buildv1 is quite rigid - and it doesn't have the activity of this site. I think the principle of buildv1 is great and essential - i'm not sure if the execution is quite correct.
It's true that doing a startup right off wouldn't work, but why not meet up with other people who are just as interested and try and form friendships from there?
Paul Graham also stated that Silicon Valley is impossible to be cloned in Europe. That doesn't mean successful start-ups can pop-out in Europe. And they have, Skype, AllPeers, Six Apart, NetVibes, Fon etc...
Successful single founders is necessary to encompass a lot more characteristics. It's difficult enough to find 2 motivated people to take risk starting up, finding 2-in-1 it will be a lot harder. But if they try to avoid it, althout they don't exclude it, it doesn't mean it can happen at YC, or someone on his/her own.
Paul Graham also stated that Silicon Valley is impossible to be cloned in Europe. That doesn't mean successful start-ups can't pop-out in Europe. And they have, Skype, AllPeers, Six Apart, NetVibes, Fon etc...
Successful single founders is necessary to encompass a lot more characteristics. It's difficult enough to find 2 motivated people to take risk starting up, finding 2-in-1 it will be a lot harder. But if they try to avoid it, althout they don't exclude it, it doesn't mean it can happen at YC, or someone on his/her own.
Excellent point; YC might find that combining individuals and 2,3 member teams into new companies is where they get the most out of their portfolio.
I'll probably apply for the next round as a 1-person entity myself, though unless YC announces they're changing that policy, I doubt they'll pick me.
See http://ycombinator.com/s2007.html for details. The application form lives at http://news.ycombinator.com/apply.
Probably time to make urls in comments turn into links.
The best things I've learned from previous startup attempts is how to tell good product ideas from bad ones, and the difference between a good product and a good company. The bad news is that now I've weeded out all my own ideas.
I like Alex, Danielha, and notabel :) Keep up the great posts guys. Feel free to email/call me if any of you guys wish to discuss startups with a fellow entrepreneur. - jawad.exe@gmail.com, 1-416-879-4659
I would love to apply to YC for my upcoming startup http://www.onista.com but YC had made it clear so many times that they do not like either "Single Founder" Or "Moonlighters" and unfortunately or fortunately I am both.
Not sure why YC guys think that way (May be they want to play safe bets) but I am on very well course to release my application "Onista" for public use in Summer Timeframe.
Honestly I do not even need the funding (Amount) that YC offers, but what would be great to have is their brand-name with my startup.
May be YC should start some category like "YC Certified Startup". Funding is not major worry here. I got that.
Paul there seems to be a bug. I've been just entering some stuff in the application and it seems it forgets the answers that I entered for the last few questions. It also seems to be truncating answers. I entered 1 month and it truncated that to 1 mon. Is there a restriction to the length of the entire application?
This was in fact a bug. It's now fixed. Sorry about that.
If anyone cares, it was because the http server is also written in Arc, on top of MzScheme, and we misread the MzScheme doc on make-limited-input-port to believe that limit-k referred to k of bytes. In fact it refers to bytes. So while we thought we were capping http requests at 2 meg, we were in fact capping them at 2k.
1. enter text for the Q. Please tell us something surprising or amusing that one of you has discovered.....
2. Now hit update
3. Click the "edit funding application"
I expect to see the text in the last box. Instead it says nil.
When I reported the bug it used to be empty. I see the same behaviour
for all questions starting from "Do you have any ideas you consider patentable?"
IANL but I'm pretty sure YC funding is not enough. But I've heard there are ways to get into (or rather stay in) the US if you go on to raise larger amounts of funding.
IANAL either (although I do date one), and I too have heard of these things. I think they are called E-2 visas. They require you to raise or invest around $100k in a US business. The lawyer who told me about the E-2 was quick to warn that the applications get scrutinized hard. It sounded political, vaguely sketchy, expensive, and complicated.
it's kind of complicated, whatever process you choose. email me at gustaf@gmail.com if you want help. I'm from sweden and our company got funded by Y Combinator in November.
Assuming YC money are not enough to get someone a green card, I suppose meaning you can't get him incorporated, would you accept someone who could spend his own money the first 2-3 months while being part of YC 2007, so that in the case of helping him getting more funding enough to get the green card, you get also your percentage?
yes. if you have $1M to invest in the USA, you can get an automatic - and almost immediately - green card.
(my green card took 4 years and $5K to get).
You can get a 90 visa waiver if you're from most EU countries. You'll need to prove that you intend to return to the EU afterwards, for example you'll need to be employed by an EU company. I'm unsure about a more long term solution. I've heard of some people getting employed by friends in the US in order to get a visa. Might be worth looking into.
Awesome. Been checking the site five times a day for months. :)
BTW the ASCII application has a few dates off. Looks like a copy/paste issue from the last application.
Having been part of a few startups before, I it definately easier to do it with a partner(s). I'm currently doing my latest startup alone - but I dont' consider myself alone. I have two great programmers, even though they are working for me...I treat them like co-founders, we discuss everything not just technical issues, business model and even their love-lives! I'm also getting assistance from my network, people I've worked in the past with and people I've looked up to during my professional career. Each one of these guys have stepped up to mat and offered me guidance each step of the way. Some mentors I talk almost on a daily basis...I treat these guys like board members/quasi-founders also because without their guidance and support I'm sure it would be much harder. Startups are not built alone - they are built by teams...these teams are composed of people who may not be traditionally considered co-founders but I'd argue they are. So I respectively disagree with YCombinator shying away from one person startups - they really need to consider the entire infrastructure. (Sorry for the long post- Chandra)
