Premise is right, headline is wrong. If you look at the businesses that made people billionaires, the other point they have in common is that the owners aggressively pursued opportunities. So yes, Bill Gates slaved away for 6 years, with a variety of other products, before IBM came knocking. However, if he had turned them away, or been out of the office flying his plane like Gary Kildall, we'd be talking about the "Digital Research Monopoly" instead.
My startup initially wasn't going to apply to yCombinator. We have a solid team, a product that I really want to see exist, and we're making steady progress implementing it. But I figured that if we have a decent chance of success without yCombinator, we'll have an even better chance of success with yCombinator. So why not spend 4 days or so putting together an application and see if they accept us?
If they turn us down, fine, we go back to our original plan and keep working on the product. But if they don't, great! It's advice, connections, a set timetable for when I leave my day job and work full-time on the startup (for me, this is a question of when, not if: yCombinator would just make the decision for me), and a cool hacker environment where you get to bounce ideas off other equally-smart people.
I posted over at scribd, but I see the intelligent conversation is here, so I'm going to repost. I hope no one minds:
You're making the right points but drawing the wrong conclusions from them. Yes, users need to be your highest priority, yes you need to have the drive to succeed that is reflected here by not relying on Y Combinator to be your ticket to wealth, Yes you need to get out there and actually DO; actually BUILD. But these are precisely the kinds of people and ideas that y combinator IS GOING TO PICK.
The fact is that Paul Graham says these same points time and time again in his own essays, and so anyone that is applying to y combinator without these things in mind is obviously not very bright. But your conclusion is not very bright either. Someone who really had all the qualities you describe would recognize that while y combinator doesn't mean success or failure, it provides a number of extremely valuable resources (of which money is only one of, and not #1 of, the list). I certainly wouldn't want my competitors to be in a y combinator group that I was rejected from -- that is a bad sign.
To reiterate, good points; bad conclusion.
My first time at news.ycombinator, but i've been reading paul graham's essays for a while now and am increasingly impressed. I'll be back
Same here. I already left my job a few months ago to work on my project, but my cofounder is still employed at his. We were moving along great and decided to apply for YC the day before the app was due. Why? Well, seriously because it just sounded like fun. We are doing our project regardless, but to be involved in a fun team like what we imagine the YC SFP will be, just sounds like a blast. Sure we'll be working our tails off, but we're doing that now anyways. If we get accepted we'll have the network of the other SFP founders which is priceless. Really, it can be challenging to find other hackers that are fun, not jaded, smart, and humble enough to actively seek feedback and correction. Not that all the SFP founders will necessarily fall into that category, but probably most of them will if Paul and Jessica are vetting them.
For more on the money aspect of the decision - see my post on 'Outside Money and Irritable Bowel Syndrome' at http://blog.nanobeepers.com
This is exactly what I got from the article, and I totally agree with you that the headline is malformed. What it boils down to is that you should not be waiting for YC funding in order to begin work on your startup. Just work on it when you can, put something interesting together, grow it slowly (i.e. over a period of months instead of some huge launch), and go full-time when the opportunity presents itself.
I also have to agree with the others that the writer of the article kind of missed the point of the environment and guidance that YC provides. But then again, perhaps some of the applicants are only applying because they think they need the money.
My startup initially wasn't going to apply to yCombinator. We have a solid team, a product that I really want to see exist, and we're making steady progress implementing it. But I figured that if we have a decent chance of success without yCombinator, we'll have an even better chance of success with yCombinator. So why not spend 4 days or so putting together an application and see if they accept us?
If they turn us down, fine, we go back to our original plan and keep working on the product. But if they don't, great! It's advice, connections, a set timetable for when I leave my day job and work full-time on the startup (for me, this is a question of when, not if: yCombinator would just make the decision for me), and a cool hacker environment where you get to bounce ideas off other equally-smart people.