What I wish I had known before YC

Before I went through YC, I thought that it would transform me into an incredible entrepreneur. No matter who I was when I went in, if I worked hard, I would emerge an all-knowing YC graduate. This is how we’re traditionally supposed to think of schools (e.g. MIT will turn me into an amazing engineer), and for better or for worse, I thought of YC as the premier “startup school”.

This, of course, isn’t true. The truth is, you will come out of YC as more or less the same person (this is what the title refers to—but allow me to explain). YC will teach you many things, but nothing transformative (which, by the way, most people would call “culty”). It will “teach” you to work harder, talk to your users more, make something people want, and then 10 other things specific to your business.

But it won’t “teach” you how to be the next Elon Musk—nobody can teach you that. If somebody could teach you, that would imply it could be reliably replicated, which would make Elon Musk and his ideas worth significantly less than they are in practice. If you are “the next Elon Musk”, it’s because of who you were before YC, and you probably won’t even realize it until you’ve worked really fucking hard for years and years.

Here’s YC’s value to the market: identifying really incredible, brilliant, driven founders who are tackling valuable problems. That is why YC itself makes money (and all VCs by the way). They have hypotheses about valuable ideas (which they publish, and can be convinced on too), and are really really good at finding great people. I can personally attest—my S16 batchmates are an extraordinarily talented bunch who work their asses off.

After that, YC puts you in the best position imaginable for a young startup founder. They tell you what to focus on (namely your users). They will tell you when what you’re doing isn’t working (sometimes by just pointing to your traction). They will point you to helpful alumni to talk to about the smallest facets of your business. But the rest—that’s all you and your hard work.

For me, that’s reassuring. It means that what stands between me and a billion dollar company isn’t more YC pixie dust, but more hard work just as I had been doing before YC. Looking back, I can see why our clubbing app Listed failed, or why Ava didn’t work out, but I only learned that by doing it. That’s the secret—you’ll only learn things by doing them, especially in startups. YC can save you some steps because they’ve seen it before, but you still need to move fast and do things.

If you’re working on a valuable idea, apply to YC. You will regret not applying (I did once or twice). And if you have any humans-in-the-loop with your startup, check out Scale, and ping me on Slack with any questions.