MattMaroon.com

YCombinator’s winter applications are now open. I thought I’d write a few tips for those who were considering applying. I’ll give you the old top ten list that you crazy netizens seem to love.

1. Apply early. I’m guessing something like 75% of their applications are submitted in the last few days. That’s usually how those sorts of things work. Doing it earlier can only help get you a little more consideration time.
2. Spend a good amount of time on your application, preferably spread out over a few days. Be clear and concise. People by nature equate communication skills to intelligence, especially when they’ve never seen you before. If the wording in your application is great, you’re going to create a favorable impression right off the bat. If it’s poor you’re highly likely to get round-filed instantly. This of course applies to much more in life than YCombinator applications. Take a day away from your writing and go back to it, look it over again. Do this with your cofounders. Make it as good as you possibly can.
3. Show a strong working knowledge of your industry. Are you doing a live music site? Tell them how big the industry is, how big you think it could be, why, and what you plan to do to get it there. This will all function as research for when you interview anyway, and even if you don’t get an interview, it’s just good business practice to know your industry.
4. Make a business, not a feature. This isn’t necessary, as they’ve funded a lot of groups I consider to be making a feature. For instance Zenter, which is obviously much more suited for integration with an online office suite like Google’s than as a standalone business. But I think a company like Reddit or Loopt, which has the potential to be a free-standing smash hit, is more likely to be funded. If you’re trying to do something I consider a feature, it better be damned good one (like theirs is) and you should have a seriously impressive prototype to show.
   My personal test is to ask “could this company eventually IPO?” In the current batch, I’d say roughly half are businesses and half are features. (I’d also guess that 4 have billion dollar plus market cap potential if they work out well.) That doesn’t seem like much, but I’d guess the ratio among overall applicants to be much, much smaller.
5. Have 2-3 founders. This is ridiculously important. Unless you’ve already built Photoshop in Flex or something else amazing, you’re not going to get accepted as a single founder. Seriously, if you haven’t been Tech Crunched, just don’t even try. You probably want a second person anyway, regardless of YCombinator. I don’t know if they’ve ever funded groups larger than 3, but I would guess that it’s more likely they’d pick a 4 man team than a solo founder. Either way if you’re over 3, you might want to pare it down.
6. Plan on proceeding even if you don’t get the interview. As Paul says, the trick to getting people to invest in you is to make them think that if they don’t, they’re going to miss out. And there’s no better way to make them think that than for it to be true. If you think your idea and team of founders are good enough for their serious consideration, then you also think it’s good enough to try on your own. We were definitely planning to go ahead with ours (though probably at a slower pace) even if we weren’t funded by them.
7. Start building your prototype now. Regardless of how great you or your idea might be, a good prototype is probably worth a lot in the interview. (I’m actually speaking more from other people’s experiences, as we didn’t even get to show ours.) And if you don’t get the interview, it’s good for your business anyway since it starts the evolutionary process in motion.You’re only going to get a couple weeks between when you find out they want to meet you and when you have to interview, so if you spend the preceding month or two building your product, you’ll be way ahead of the curve.
8. Make yourself easy to research. Contribute to news.ycombinator.com. Write a blog and make sure Google has it as the top link for your name (chances are that’s not going to be hard for you to do). Toss any past projects you’ve done up online if they’re no longer live and include them in your application. I have a strong suspicion that if they find your idea at all enticing, they take a look at the links you submit to them.
9. Read all of Paul Graham’s essays. He likes people who already know everything he’s said there. For one, it means he has to repeat himself less. And for another, it means you’ve already got a solid foundation from which to work. Jessica Livingston’s Founders at Work is also a great resource.
10. Be honest with them and yourself. There was a section in the application that asked founders something like “why would your project be hard for one of your competitors to clone.” Our answer was that technologically it wouldn’t. And unless you’re building something like Zenter or maybe Loopt, that’s going to be largely true for you too. There isn’t much Yahoo or Google programmers couldn’t pump out in a relatively short period of time, and anyone who says otherwise is either lying or delusional.
    And that’s fine, because we can all name ten times they’ve made a technologically equal (or even superior) clone of some popular website only to watch it flounder. So explain why, even if they did clone you, you really wouldn’t be hurt by it.

Bonus tip:

11. Suck up to Jessica. She’s the organization’s full-time member. I’ll ask her if she’s into flowers or candy or anything of the like (I know she likes wine) and report back to you. I don’t know if bribery will help, but hey, it can’t hurt. (And yes Jessica, I want a cut of anything tasty that is sent to you because of this.)

If there’s a common theme in the above tips, it’s that they are all things you should be doing anyway if you want to succeed in the startup space (especially sucking up to Jessica). That’s not a coincidence. People want to invest in companies that they think will succeed. Build a company that seems likely to thrive and YCombinator will probably want you. Don’t and they won’t.

And as a last and final note, I should mention that you can safely ignore the myriad of “YCombinator rips off founders” posts you read around the tech blogosphere. They don’t. I’ve heard numerous stories from alumni of them putting their founders’ interests before their own, and not one of the opposite.

They’re truly good people who want, more than anything, to help young entrepreneurs and, I think, test some of Paul Graham’s theories. They do so much for their founders that those outside don’t see, and they bring far more value to the table than the small percentage of the company they purchase. They’re not a charity by any means, and I suspect that they will make plenty of money over time, but they don’t steal it. They earn it. So I don’t mean to evangelize or sound cultish, and anyone who knows me will tell you that I’m not one for drinking the Kool-Aid, but anyone who thinks YCombinator rips people off is probably either jealous or ignorant.

Later I’ll give a few tips for those who get to the interview stage, and then some for those who get accepted. I’m still learning a lot about the last one, but I have a few pretty good ideas already.