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Image Credits:The Economic Club of Washington, D.C. / Garry Tan speaking with Teresa Carlson at The Economic Club of Washington, D.C. event
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Image Credits:The Economic Club of Washington, D.C. / Garry Tan speaking with Teresa Carlson at The Economic Club of Washington, D.C. event
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If you ’ve ever wanted to apply to Y Combinator , here ’s some inside max on how the iconic accelerator conk out about choosing companies from someone who do it skillful : Garry Tan , chairwoman and CEO of Y Combinator .
The Economic Club of Washington , D.C. hosted Tan Wednesday for a one - on - one consultation with Teresa Carlson , a General Catalyst board member .
It ’s widely known that Y Combinator accepts less than 1 % of the applications programme it get — the last batch was pare down from 27,000 applications , Tan said . age group these day tend to be around 250 society . So Carlson wanted to recognise , among other topics , what is the “ underground sauce , ” if you will , to getting accepted into Y Combinator ?
First , it might be one of the few post where you do n’t have to know anyone to get in , Tan say . Anyone can go to the website , apply and submit a one - minute television . YC ’s 14 partners read the applications to empathise a few things : Who is the applier ’s potential customer and what have the founder establish in the past tense ? Top applicants then go on to answer a fistful of question from the partners .
“ So many venture capitalist are taking coming together , week - to - hebdomad , and saying ‘ no , no , no , no , ’ and then maybe a few times a year saying , ‘ yes , ’ ” Tan read . “ YC turn that on its head . ”
One of the matter YC is looking for is founder who can make a market , that they see a technology no one has envisioned yet , he said .
Tan used Coinbase ’s Brian Armstrong as an example of someone who created a grocery store . When Tan first play Armstrong , he was still working as an anti - fraud engineer at Airbnb . Armstrong had record theSatoshi Nakamoto white report , and had an estimate .
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“ He said , ‘ Nobody believes this yet , but I conceive it , and I want to exploit on software that would manifest this crazy idea that you could have a self-governing cryptocurrency , ’ ” Tan said . “ This was a very fringe melodic theme at the mo , but that ’s what we ’re appear for — a interference fringe thing . ”
He endure on to explain that the “ bang thing ” is a raw applied science “ that deeply expert people are obsessed with ” and one that depart on to “ touch all of order . ”
After the YC partners interviewed and accepted Armstrong into the program , Tan recollect mold with him each week . And during those chats , he realized that if something like Coinbase existed , “ that ’s gon na be really heavy . ” Then came the discourse about how to build it out .
“ The cool thing about what he was doing was that it was really punishing to even get Bitcoin , ” Tan said . “ I personally experienced that . These outskirt things can essentially turn into something very bounteous . ”
He also tell that Armstrong was an example of another matter that YC partners wait for in candidates : “ He was a first rationale thinker . ” By that Tan meant that Armstrong not only believe what no one believed yet , he put about estimate out what the necessary things were to build , whether that was software or distribution , to create this affair that no one else saw . It ’s not enough just to recognise a novel thing , you have to understand some of the steps toward building it and have a program to validate that what you built is solving the trouble you originally set out to solve , Tan said .
YC went through a round of interview last workweek , and Tan said all of the founders that he chose to fund “ get along in with some new uncovering that they had discovered interact with the engineering itself . ”
“ Like sit on a workbench realise , ‘ Hey , did you know there ’s a robotics maker that ’s making a humanoid robot now for $ 16,000 . It ’s arriving on my desk on Monday , and we ’re going to strain and be the first the great unwashed that commercialize that , ’ ” Tan enunciate . “ That ’s an exemplar of a first principle insight that is a very interesting orbit . ”
