MattMaroon.com

As a total internet addict/wannabe web startup founder I’ve been a pretty big Paul Graham fan for a while. He’s one of those guys whose words almost always ring true. I read them, and even though I have little experience with them, and can’t test them empirically because they are largely abstract theory, I just know they are logically correct. It’s the same feeling I used to get when reading the Theory of Poker back before I started playing. I’m a sucker for a well-crafted essay.

So a friend and I had been in the research stages of a project that I can’t really talk much about just yet (heretofore known as “The Project”) for a couple months. I went to Paul’s website to look up something related and lo and behold I noticed that YCombinator‘s summer funding session application deadline was a little more than a week away. I’ve been reading about that program since its inception and thought it might be worth a shot, so I talked to my cofounders (John and Chad) and we all agreed to fill out the application.

YCombinator is, as far as I know, the progenitor of a new type of funding. They invest in companies in the earliest stages, and do so in a rather unique way. They buy a small amount of the company for a small amount of money. The founders all have to move to their location (Boston for the summer session) for 3 months and spend the time working on their project. In our case the small amount of money they’d invest isn’t really too meaningful (I could pull more out of my wallet) but the advice, contacts, and weekly meetings with Graham and the other founder groups are invaluable. I’ve read a number of things from founders who’ve participated in past sessions, and it looks like a great opportunity.

So when we decided to apply we had, by that point, spent more hours than I can count fleshing out the idea, researching the various technologies available, forming a general business plan, looking into a possible patent application, and so on and so forth, so filling out the application was pretty easy. We felt good about our chances, even though we knew we were underdogs. Hundreds of groups apply for every session and relatively few are invited to meet with the YCombinator folks out there in Mountain View. Of them only a handful are accepted.

So we were pleasantly surprised on April 10^th when we received an email saying they’d like to hear more about our idea at their offices in Silicon Valley. We didn’t spend much time celebrating though, as we quickly realized that we wanted to get there with something to show them. We’ve spent the time since then coding and designing, day in and day out, trying to ready a demo. The Project is rather unique, so we felt that it would be much easier and more effective to show it to them rather than just try to describe it.

We’ve made considerably more progress over the last eight days than any of us really thought possible. In fact, we’ve learned so much in such a short time that we’re now convinced that if accepted, we’ll have at least most of a working prototype ready by the time we get to Boston in June, and probably a beta shortly thereafter. Certain aspects of The Project turned out to be far simpler than we had initially anticipated, and much of the design/code we’ve done for the demo will be useful in creating the beta version.

So Chad and I leave for San Francisco early on Friday. We’re staying overnight in Silicon Valley, doing our brief presentation/interview thingy Saturday morning, and then heading up to Napa for a few days of much needed rest and relaxation. That’s probably my favorite place on Earth (sorry Vegas, you’re a close second) and since I hate flying I figured that if I’m going to go through all of the expense and effort of getting to one Valley, I might as well visit the other. American Muslims probably don’t fly to Saudi Arabia without visiting Mecca, and gastronomes similarly don’t visit the bay area without stopping by St. Helena.

It sounds like we’ll know Sunday night whether or not we were accepted, so we’ll need some wine one way or the other. Champagne to celebrate, or a good Cab for consolation. I have a good feeling it will be Champagne though. We have a great idea, and we’ve made what I feel is an excellent demo of it. And, most importantly, we believe in ourselves. We believe in our ability to make this product and get a beta up and running. We believe in our ability to learn what it is customers want as we grow and then serve it to them as we mature. We believe in the ability this product to make a ridiculous sum of money.

In fact, our building this demo has cemented our resolve to push forward even if YCombinator decides we aren’t the right fit for them. We have the funding to get all the way to a beta version, and I feel we’d then have little trouble getting more. So we’re definitely optimistic about YCombinator, but most importantly we’re optimistic about The Project either way, and that’s a good spot to be in.

This entry was posted on April 18, 2007 at 10:29 pm and is filed under Startup . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed Both comments and pings are currently closed.