What I wish I knew before getting into YC

When other, mostly European, start-ups contact me, their main question is “Should I apply to Y Combinator?” My answer is always: yes! However, I also emphasize that getting into YC is no guarantee of success. It’s a good start, though.

For us, YC was a game changer. My cofounder is Croatian and I’m Slovenian. It meant that we started our hardware company, Bellabeat, in a location where the market is very limited and technology is not a big gig with either consumers or investors. As soon as we got some traction, we knew we would have to relocate to the U.S. But we were no Stanford dropouts, and we had no network at all outside the Balkans.

Bellabeat was accepted into the Y Combinator Winter 2014 Batch after we won a start-up pitch challenge at Pioneers Festival in Vienna. Michael Seibel, one of the judges at that event, is a partner at YC. We caught his eye not just because we won, but because we our product was clearly unique, powerful and revenue generating. We had already created a solid company, but we still had a long way to go to realize our vision.

We were super-excited to get into YC, but pretty intimidated to find ourselves in a room full of mostly American, mostly older and much more experienced founders. After talking to a couple of other teams at that first breakfast, I went home completely depressed. I had never felt so out of place. Before this new venture, I had studied sculpture at the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts. Sandro is an engineer and had more experience in start-up. But we were both 24, straight out of college, and convinced we could never catch up to the others. If we had felt like a couple of solitary wolves in Croatia, we felt like complete underdogs now.

EMBRACE THE UNDERDOG MENTALITY

After getting over that initial shock, we realized that we would have to go with what we had and use it to the best of our advantage. I think that YC or start-up is not about who’s the smartest. It’s about who can keep their eyes and ears open and hack the hell out of life.

So here are a couple of things that helped us get through YC and the months to come after. Two years later, we’re still alive and quite successful.

1. LOSE THE PRESSURE

Once you are cool with your underdog situation, you will realize that options are actually open for you. First, you will realize that nobody in real life cares about your startup. Nobody cares about your company name, your logo, your catchy one-liner… You’re not Google. And that’s awesome! Once you accept that, you will be much less stressed and more open to advice from YC partners. In fact, it is easy and fun to tweak, change, and hack whatever you need to make your product and your company work. The sooner you let go, the sooner you can start growing.

2. KEEP YOUR HEAD CLEAR

The second thing to realize, once you’ve accepted the fact that you’re in a group of mostly genius people, is that being a genius is no guarantee of success. Working hard is. So don’t feel crappy about anything except being lazy. Don’t let anything distract you from working. On the other hand, do not let the work distract you from thinking. By keeping your head down and digging, you might dig yourself a pretty deep pit. There are a million ways to get where you want to be and you have to find the right one. You might not be on it at the moment, so keep experimenting and exploit the freedom you have as an obscure company that nobody cares about (yet).

3. SURROUND YOURSELF WITH PEOPLE YOU LIKE

When in YC, keep clear of distractions, but do find people you like. The YC community is the most important takeaway from the program. It’s huge, powerful, and trustworthy. We couldn’t have achieved our milestones without it. At a minimum, you can expect to get good advice. Meet as many batchmates and partners as possible. Don’t spend too much time hanging out, but do find a couple of folks that you really feel comfortable with. You need people you can learn from, bounce ideas off, and rely on to safeguard your sanity through the tough times.

4. IT CAN GET PRETTY TOUGH

YC will tell you that, if you’re not up for the challenge, the program will break you. It is very intense. Expectations are huge and, even though the program is not competitive, it can feel like it. You will be surrounded by very good teams and everybody nailing it. This will add to the pressure — but so it should. You will learn that what really matters during those three months are your team, your health, and making something people want. Take it very seriously. And afterwards, stick to the regime you set up during the program. In fact, start pretending you’re in YC now. In real life, everybody will be telling you how you’re running a marathon, not a sprint, and how you should pace yourself. The unfortunate truth is that, yes, you are running a marathon, and you have to run it like Usain Bolt, at least for the first couple of years. We haven’t slowed down since leaving YC.

5. YOU NEED A REALLY TIGHT TEAM

In our team, we sometimes use analogies from movies like Fury to get ourselves hyped up. Yes, we might be weird, but that’s how your start-up should feel — intense! Your team should be rock solid, on one clear mission, with everybody giving it their all. It’s so important to gather smart people around you and your start-up. It’s good to have experienced people, too. But the best people to work with at the beginning are eager and trustworthy people. Knowledge and experience will eventually be acquired anyway, so, instead, choose people you feel comfortable with and who are just as hungry as you. Such people are rare and will get harder to find once your team grows. But during YC, it’s likely your team will be small. If you can, move in together, even if you’re not in YC. Sandro and I lived with our first employees months before and during the YC. That was hugely important to building the relationships we have today. We still have a big house in MV where we rotate to get a chance to live and work with each other, for a little while at least, and we have the same setup in China. Even though we have 45 people now, the Bellabeat team is still a tightly knit family and I don’t think we could have achieved what we did without putting our trust in each other every day. If you can’t trust your team, you’re hanging out with the wrong bunch.