Every company at any stage is a good fit for Y Combinator. If you're wondering if you're too early, or too far along, or too good for YC, you're just making things up. Even if you're well funded, making tons of revenue, or are some hot shit programmer with some amazing business guy with an MBA on your team, you'd still want Y Combinator. Our dream was to take a company through Y Combinator, but with Fanvibe, we already had funding and had a good group of users, we didn't think we needed it. Sure we might not have died as a company, but we wouldn't be anywhere near where we are today.
Let's cut to the chase, why was it so good for us? Fast forward 3 months, you have 300 of the world's best investors intently listening to your pitch all in the same week. Even if you don't want their money anymore, which is almost never the case, you want to show them what you have. Your pitch is also pretty damn impressive at this point because of all the mentoring, rehearsals, brutal feedback, and collaboration with an amazing class of other brilliant Y Combinator company founders. There is almost no way your pitch can suck by demo day, unless you're a total lame-o who didn't take Y Combinator seriously. If you are that kind of person, you wouldn't have made it into YC in the first place.
Now let's get to the 3 months that helped you prepare for demo day. It's sort of an artificial deadline, yes, but it's a really good deadline to have. Launching something new from scratch, or adding more features that are big enough to impress in 3 months is only going to help. The constant motivation during each Y Combinator dinner, helps you reach those goals. Making sure you impress Paul Graham every week, and other YC co-founders is probably the best way to go about your company.
Paul Graham challenges everything you do on purpose. There is no sugar coating involved, and he has so much experience and data in his head, that he has a pretty good idea of what's going wrong with your company. You learn to fail on an hourly basis, so you become very skilled at bouncing back and making good choices in how to move forward. No need to wait 3 months to figure out something you've done totally failed. Paul will always make sure you know you're about to fail on something the first time he sees it. When do you ever get someone like this to give you hard questions all the time? He's invested in you, and he actually cares enough to make you better.
The whole team behind Y Combinator are amazing. Jessica is the nicest person in the world, has great feedback, and just makes you feel happy. Harj works hard for us, getting us contacts, responding to questions right away, and gives amazing feedback. Kirsty does an amazing job at everything as well! Listening to Harj and Kirsty's accents alone are worth it. Trevor, John Levy, Kate, and the rest are just as amazing.
Y Combinator is fun. I've made amazing new friends, met celebrities (both tech and hollywood), become more successful and legitimate as a entrepreneur than I've ever imagined, all because Y Combinator kicked my ass and made me realize how much I harder it really is and what it takes to be successful.
Bottom line is, there's no way for anyone to tell you how much you actually want Y Combinator. The experience is epic.
Also, if you've read this far, here's a treat for those who know Harj. Took this video after the last session of demo day, after all the investors had left and we were just hanging out. It was a tough 3 days, but in the end it was a lot of fun:
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