Geoff Ralston and Adora Cheung Discuss Startup School

Program Evolution & Scope

• Startup School has evolved from Sam Altman's online "How to Start a Startup" course into a Stanford-taught 10-week open online course (MOOC) designed to maximize global innovation and reduce barriers for founders outside Silicon Valley.
• The 2019 iteration introduces new content delivery methods while maintaining a publicly accessible library of materials from previous years.

Course Structure & Tracks

• Audit Track: Participants receive access to live streams, recorded lectures, and course notes without additional obligations.
• Advisor Track (Full Participation): Full-time founders can apply for assigned advisors, weekly group meetings, community forum access, and exclusive partner deals (AWS, DigitalOcean, Stripe Atlas, Clerky).
• Grants: 100 companies completing the course will receive a $10,000 equity-free grant, selected based on progress and advisor feedback.
• Eligibility Criteria: To qualify for the grant and presentation day, participants must attend at least 9 of the 10 weekly advisor meetings and watch 9 of the 10 weekly lectures.
• Target Audience: Primarily early-stage founders ranging from pre-idea to any user count; while useful for later stages, the primary goal is lowering the threshold for starting a business.

Key Personnel & Speakers

• YC partners Paul Graham and Jessica Livingston are confirmed to participate and share insights.
• YC President Sam Altman and CEO Michael Seibel are scheduled to deliver talks.
• The initiative relies on unpaid volunteer time from YC founders who act as advisors, a key factor in the program's success.

Curriculum & Timeline

• Duration: 10 weeks, beginning the week of August 27, 2018, and concluding in late October 2018.
• Curriculum Arc:
  • Foundations of starting a startup and initial mechanics.
  • Product development with a focus on achieving product-market fit.
  • User acquisition, growth strategies, and hiring.
  • Fundraising mechanics, including cap tables.
  • Dedicated lecture on optimizing applications for the Winter 2019 YC batch (admission rates cited as 1–2%).
  • Advanced topics covering "thinking big," failure analysis, and the psychological/emotional challenges of founding.
• In-Person Component: A live event is planned for Mountain View, CA, at the original YC offices; attendance is optional and not required for completion or grants. Local founders are invited, but travel is discouraged to prevent distraction from company-building.

Outcomes & Incentives

• Past Results: Last year's cohort yielded 38 companies accepted into the core YC program (approx. 10% of the batch), with success stories including Connection IP.
• Completion Rates: The program aims to improve upon last year's 56% completion rate, significantly higher than the typical 5–20% MOOC completion average, driven by the grant incentive and group accountability.
• Community Focus: The program emphasizes the "forcing function" of a 10-week group commitment to foster focus and growth, rather than just passive content consumption.

Operational Details

• Applications: Open immediately with thousands of applications already received; high demand anticipated.
• Technology: The platform is built and managed in-house by YC software engineers (Ramon and Kyle) to handle scalability for thousands of participants.
• Strategic Rationale: The $10,000 grants serve as an experiment to prevent promising startups from failing due to a lack of initial capital, aligning with YC's goal of maximizing global innovation rather than solely filling their investment pipeline.