Startup School Reference Guide for Lecture #1 — Startup School Orientation

The lecture in its entirety. Recommend watching and then referring back to this afterwards!

While working to create the Snapchat for voice — wavechat.me — and attending Startup School 2019, I was inspired to create these “Cliffs Notes” for all the valuable content that YC provides to their attendees.

If you like it, please give Wavechat a try! https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1459456926?pt=690141&ct=mdm&mt=8

3 sections of content in this video:

1. Intro to fellow classmates/founders
2. Explanation of how Startup School Works
3. Tour of the Startup School Content

Section 1: Intro to fellow classmates/founders

Who are the people in charge of Startup School?

1. Kevin Hale and Adora Cheung — YC Leads
2. Steven Pham — Batch director, responsible for interacting with the community and making your experience great
3. Kyle Corbitt — Built all the YC Startup School software
4. Ashwin Kumar — Analyzes data, including feedback from YC Startup School Participants
5. All YC Alumni + Partners

Where to get help?

• Main help email: startupschool@ycombinator.com
• Please ask for help in the forums! Goal of SS is to build community.

What are the Goals of Startup School?

• Use the structure of Startup School as a reason to work on your startup.
• A LOT of practice talking about your idea and startup in a clear and concise way.
• Once you already launch or already have users, startup school provides you with a re-enforcement of correct first principles. This so you can a) find holes in your thinking b) opportunities you have not identified before.
• Build a global community of founders. This has never been done before at scale.

Most founders who enter startup school think they are too early, too late, have impostor syndrome, or don’t belong.

You are not alone. You are in the right place. You’re in good company.

Stats on Startup School:

• 28,000 founders
• 25,000 people auditing the class
• 21,000 startups
• 11,000 full time founders
• 8,000 part time founders — Startup school is dedicated to helping you work on a startup in a way that works for part time founders!
• 4,000 launched startups
• 5,000 startups with *only* a prototype
• 4,000 startups with *only* an idea
• 5,000 startups are teams
• 16,000 startups are solo founders
• 12,000 companies with at least one technical founder
• 9,000 companies with no technical founder
• 4,000 companies with a female founder
• 140+ unique countries are represented
• Top Cities: SF, NYC, London, Bangalore, Toronto, Lagos, Moscow, Berlin, Paris, and Bogota

How can Startup School address all these different starting points for companies and founders?

• We already do this with YC
• Companies are more alike than they are different
• For all of them we need to revisit first principles for building a startup
• Most of what we help them with is storytelling
• We figure out how to match them and group them with people and companies that help them in whatever way they need

Section 2: Explanation of how Startup School Works

How do you graduate?

• Submit 8/10 weekly updates (https://www.startupschool.org/updates)
• Partcipate in 8/10 group video sessions (https://www.startupschool.org/group_sessions)
• You must submit a weekly update to participate in a Group Session.

How do you get the $15,000 grant?

1. Graduate
2. You apply to YC at the end of the course (https://apply.ycombinator.com/)
3. Application due September 25

Weekly Update — Tips

1. Be honest. Don’t lie!
2. Be concise. Shouldn’t take you more than 15 minutes!
3. We ask how long before launch for a reason. MVPs should be slightly embarrassing!
4. For top-level metric, 99% of you should be tracking revenue. The ONLY ones who are tracking engagement metrics are ones who need large networks before they can make money (eg Facebook)
5. Always be talking to your users.

Profile — Tips

1. Complete your profile!
2. Add co-founders!
3. Keep your company updated!
4. All these things affect group matching.
5. Also allows additional features in the directory.

Group Sessions— Tips

1. You HAVE to submit a Weekly Update to participate in the Group Session.
2. Default time is 8:00pm (20:00) at YOUR LOCAL time. You can choose a DIFFERENT time when you sign up for a group session, after you complete your weekly update. (https://www.startupschool.org/updates/new)
3. Do your best to share one video connection (sitting next to your founder on the same machine) if you can.
4. Group Sessions are ONLY on Thursday.

Group Sessions —In Session Best Practices

1. What your company does should be a one liner.
2. You should have time at the end for open discussion.
3. Your goals and obstacles should be the biggest goals and obstacles, not listing everything off.

Group Sessions — How are the Groups matched?

1. Startups are matched based on timezone, vertical, progress, and physical proximity.
2. Single founders looking for a cofounder are matched with each other!
3. Every week, you’ll be matched with different companies, potentially meetup with up to 80 startups!

Section 3: Tour of the Startup School Content

Lectures

1. 20 Lectures by YC partners. Recorded at 9am Pacific time on Wednesdays. Videos are published to the “Lessons” page Thursday at 12pm Pacific. (https://www.startupschool.org/courses/5/lessons)
2. All lectures are under 20 mins.
3. All lectures are immediately followed by an in-person Q&A.
4. Lectures can be attended in person; they are recorded at the YC office in July/August, then on the road in September. Full schedule: https://www.startupschool.org/posts/24086

Meetups

1. This is new this year. There are events all around the world for participants to meet each other.
2. Located in 14 cities around the world, participants and YC partners are going to be there.
3. Takes place Evenings 5pm-8pm (1500–1800), and usually on Saturdays. Full schedule: https://www.startupschool.org/posts/24086
4. Check back often because meetups take place even AFTER Startup School is over!
5. Do not spend a ton of money and time to get to one of these events; spend as much time actually working on your startup as possible.

Directory

1. Can find other companies by name, description, vertical, proximity.
2. Find companies from your Group Sessions.
3. Can find a co-founder!
4. DO NOT SPAM THE DIRECTORY. You will be kicked out of the program and banned from ALL of YC if you do.

Tips from co-founder matching system

1. Don’t expect you’ll find a co-founder. Not impossible, but not likely.
2. Have a lot of conversations! You can find people who are interested in similar things as you.
3. You should take some of these people and doing a side project — if that blooms in to a full-fledged co-founder relationship, that’s great!

Forums

1. Most underutilized, but most valuable!
2. Post what helps the community. Don’t just promote.
3. If you’re an expert, help others!
4. Search before you post, so you don’t post duplicate content.
5. Don’t spam or scrape.
6. AMAs are on Mondays and Fridays — YC alum experts, panels, etc.
7. If you want to launch, launch on “Show” startup school! https://www.startupschool.org/channels/show-sus
8. If you want eng or technical help, use the “Engineering” channel! https://www.startupschool.org/channels/engineering

Library

1. List of hundreds of essays and articles written by partners, alumni, and experts YC trusts! https://www.startupschool.org/library
2. Organized by topic and stage of startup!
3. No required reading, but browse topics when you are stuck.

Deals

1. $30,000 worth of deals and credits from companies you can use for your startup!
2. Some of the deals increase after you graduate!
3. DO NOT share the deals with people outside of Startup School, or the deals will be cancelled for everyone :(