Interview
Updates for Startup School 2019 and Office Hours with Kevin Hale
- Startup School 2019 will serve as the primary pipeline for Y Combinator, aiming to source the largest batch of accepted companies, building on 2018's outcome where 391 interviewees led to 60 accepted companies (30% of the batch) largely from pre-launch, traction-light backgrounds.
- The 2019 participant demographics will likely mirror previous cohorts, with 83% starting pre-launch, 52% working full-time, 63% as single founders, and 59% international, necessitating specific focus areas on idea validation and co-founder matching.
- Curriculum updates include shorter 20-minute lectures, tools for evaluating pivots and idea viability, and a focus on teaching founders to assess ideas with an investor mindset, all remaining free and available on YouTube.
- A free co-founder directory will be launched to assist the 6,000+ single founders, utilizing a matching program based on time zones, progress levels, and preferences, with meetups hosted in the top 18 cities from the prior year and group sessions changing weekly.
- Registration for the program remains open until July 22nd, with an orientation video released that same day, the first lecture recorded on July 25th, and publicly released on July 26th.
- To qualify for the $15,000 equity-free grant, applicants must complete eight out of ten weekly updates, and participants are matched into groups of six to eight people for Thursday evening sessions designed to improve narrative and storytelling.
- The program encourages founders to treat co-founding like dating, start with small favors, limit equity grants for introductions to two individuals, and does not require teams to be solidified during the school, only to begin relationship building.
- Case studies of Wufoo highlight a strategy of building in unsexy spaces, using "friendship" design principles, generating organic SEO traffic via a form gallery, and raising only $118,000 total ($18,000 from YC) before a five-and-a-half-year acquisition by SurveyMonkey.
- Historical data from Wufoo and recent YC batches suggests that pivots are common and often occur late, including just before demo day, with investors frequently supporting teams that demonstrate sound ideas despite significant pivots.
- Strategic advice emphasizes bottom-up market sizing to calculate customer requirements for $100 million in revenue, with two recent batches failing this test, and warns that founders must definitively assess if their company is a "rocket ship" by nine months of runway.
- Financial and operational risks include the difficulty of sustaining growth without being a "rocket ship," the challenge of finding passionate founders who can attract others, and the necessity of treating every fundraising event as potentially the last.
- Wufoo's exit yields were triple those of some peers due to retained equity from an employee-focused stock policy (rather than options), a small team size of 10 at acquisition, and a refusal to hire aggressively or spend on paid marketing.
- Founders are advised that entering unsexy spaces with fewer competitors benefits great technical teams, while energy levels and passion are critical; low-energy founders are unlikely to attract investors or co-founders, regardless of the idea's initial appeal.
- Specific milestones from the Wufoo origin story include code written in January 2006, a demo launch in early February 2006 that garnered over 100,000 signups, and a blog built with 100,000 subscribers over two years that attracted YC founder Paul Graham.