I have to admit that it is actually refreshing and enjoyable to see the YC application process come and go without being an applicant this time. I applied for the W'11 batch and was all I could think about was the application, the possibility of an interview, and obviously the ultimate possibility of getting into YC.
I couldn't look at others' demos and ideas without viewing them as the competition. I was judging the other projects instead of actually being interested in them. Since I'm not applying this round (not because I've become disillusioned with YC or don't think it would be a good opportunity, I've just determined that I'm at the point in my life where I need to focus on taking care of more immediate needs than swinging for the fences), I'm actually enjoying seeing what everyone is bringing to the table. It makes me smile to see everyone's enthusiasm to get into YC. Good luck to everyone out there, and if you have something that you truly believe in, make it happen, YC or not.
yup, there are way to many biases that will impact you data.
Expect at least 1000 applications. However, with all the popular press YCombinator and PG himself have received over the last 6 months, I expect this to be by far the largest applicant pool so far.
I image that the applicant pool with be bimodal. Apparently every year the applicant pool has become much more competitive, however I also expect a lot of people that are naive about what it takes to apply because startups are the hot new thing. I'm curious to know if in the end this is both the strongest and weakest YC pool so far.
Yesterday, PG said that each partner reads about 800 applications each, so expect at least that many.
http://groupcourse.heroku.com We allow anyone to create a class in their local community about anything they love to do. With this demo you can sign up and post courses. Full application will be launching in June.
If there are other startup mentors, not VCs, lurking here who'd be interested in discussing a SaaS offering that will likely create a destabilizing event for the ediscovery market, please drop me a line. I've got five years in that market and a fair number of influential people interested.
But what's up with the multiplayer example at the end...no cofounder to play with the second iPhone with you? Or are they too busy holding the cam ;) ?
Good luck, looks really promising even if you don't get into YC!
Thanks, ha yeah I'm a single cofounder. I'm getting a lot of help now since announcing it, but technically still a single cofounder.
I was living in Chapel Hill/North Carolina at the time and didn't know many people there. I moved to SF on the 1st. Here to raise money and find cofounders for sure. All my good friends are up Vancouver/Canada where I'm really from.
Cool that you're representing Chapel Hill. I've always been very bearish on the startup potential of the RTP as a whole, but there are some shining stars in Chapel Hill. Durham and Raleigh are produce decent talent with Duke and NCSU, but only CH has a culture analogous to the West Coast.
(FYI, I'm an NCSU grad myself and spent high school and college in Raleigh)
I say no matter what you need to move here. Not coming here is like an Actor trying to get big without putting in anytime in Hollywood. It's orders and orders of magnitude more likely that you'll get funding here. You can always run your Company from back home to save costs or because you have more of a network.
It's not that complicated to move to another place for a while. Just get at least 10K together and go for it.
I'm in Chapel Hill - making plans to head out to SF myself in a few months. I applied to S11 with this: http://tribefind.com - it's like eHarmony for friends.
I used an Flipcam(~$80) mounted on a cheap camera-stand($30). recorded all the demos separately. Then used iMovie to clip them down as short as possible and then used the iMovie text transitions to create the Chapter text. Finally I used youtube's free music from their AudioSwap feature.
Note: Some of the mini-clips are slightly sped up to make them less boring. Which I think lends a subtle exaggerated energy to the scenes.
It would be better to specify the target audience. (People looking to start a startup). Because lot of HN readers are students, workers, freelancers...
No I live in the Netherlands, Europe and my co-founder and I are in no option to leave school since we have a loan provided by the government. And by leaving school that means we have to pay it back. So sadly that rules out the question of applying to YC.
I'd rather spend the money on the company than putting it back into the gov. pool. I'll do that with my own money, when I earn it.
It would be nice -- after the deadline is done -- to have stats about the applications ; i.e. how many applications have been submitted, how is the distribution of application submissions by time/date, geolocation, etc.
I couldn't look at others' demos and ideas without viewing them as the competition. I was judging the other projects instead of actually being interested in them. Since I'm not applying this round (not because I've become disillusioned with YC or don't think it would be a good opportunity, I've just determined that I'm at the point in my life where I need to focus on taking care of more immediate needs than swinging for the fences), I'm actually enjoying seeing what everyone is bringing to the table. It makes me smile to see everyone's enthusiasm to get into YC. Good luck to everyone out there, and if you have something that you truly believe in, make it happen, YC or not.