I recently spoke with someone who was accepted to the S12 batch without an idea. He's currently pivoted from what he was working on during that session, but is about to launch a new product. Sorry to be vague on the details, but I feel that if he wanted people to know what he was up to, then he would post here himself.
I know someone whose team was accepted into a recent batch without an idea. They never really settled on an idea and eventually split up acrimoniously.
It would also be interesting if they publish team size distribution vs. previous years, since many of the S12 problems seemed to have been team related. Would this mean more single-founder teams, or more teams with a founder with controlling interest, or more teams with brothers (like Stripe), ...?
that would be interesting. My app got rejected was with my brother + best friend. very skilled engineer and designer willing to leave their jobs at a certain top tier search firm!
I wonder what the psychology is for founding teams.
Clearly, at one point on the spectrum, it's people who meet a second before the application purely for the purpose of working on the application to fake their way into YC.
At the other end on the spectrum, people who have known each other for all their lives (say, twin brothers).
The former might on paper have great credentials (if I were going to pick a "fake" cofounder, I'd pick someone who has already built something similar, has a lot of accomplishments, etc., all things being equal. And, to a small extent, being able to convince someone like that to join your team kind of means something.
The latter would potentially join your startup even if he didn't believe in the idea, or have any real competence, etc., just out of familial obligation. But maybe siblings had a lot of similar experiences and both got interested in and involved with a certain tech early on.
It's even more complex with spouses. Say I'm a great musician, and I spend all my time with musicians, and really respect musicians and music. It's entirely likely my choice of spouse would be another incredibly talented musician. But, it's also likely that if people are married for other reasons, one might want to do a startup and then pull along a less-qualified spouse.
I think the sweet spot is somewhere beyond "met for just this project", at least if it hasn't been going for a long time, but "met for professional reasons", not purely social or familial ones. But it's probably a pretty flat region after that, where individual variations matter a lot more.
I think the psychology of co-founding a startup is so drastically different than any other social interaction that it's hard to predict what will happen if the team hasn't worked for a while together.
We were 3 good friends "without an idea" in the summer batch. One I'd known my entire life (literally we met as babies). The other I knew for 6 months, but was a friend of the former for over 7 years.
Very good credentials amongst us, and we had fun together just talking about ideas, playing tennis, golf etc. But ultimately when it came down to being "in the trenches" there were aspects of each other's personalities, decision-making style, work ethic, commitment etc that led to us being one of the teams that acrimoniously split up.
