đ§ When YC?
Exploring the lesser asked question: when is the right time to do an accelerator?
I have done YC twice. Each under vastly different circumstances and for different reasons. Iâve also talked to hundreds of founders over the years - in coffee chats, in office hours, in YC application reviews.
And I see now that apart from the question of âIs YC right for me?â, there is a lesser discussed question of âIs this the right time to do YC?â
It might seem almost silly to ask - because itâs so hard to be funded by them, it feels like the default is: take it if/when they offer it.
But YC (or other accelerators of its type) are a bullet. Used to vanquish some number of startup killers. So as a founder, you have the ask the question: when do you want to use that bullet?
Use it too soon and you waste it on the relatively more trivial ways to die that you could have/should have figured out on your own. Use it too late⊠well, perhaps you set yourself up on a trajectory that has a lower slope than it could have had, or perhaps you die, bullet safely nestled in its chamber, wondering what might have been.
So how does a founder go about assessing this question of âwhen is the right time?â
Iâll digress for a moment to say: this is not a commentary on whether you should apply. You should always apply. Every batch. Itâs free. Itâs less than 20 questions that should take less than an hour to complete if youâre doing it right. Applying is a great 6 month check in with yourself and your founding team. A forcing function to see if youâre making progress or if what youâre doing is indeed âmaking something people wantâ.
Stop taking yourself out of the running by trying to figure out if youâre what theyâre looking for and just apply. Hereâs the application. Apply now, even after the applications have closed. Batch doesnât start for another couple of weeks.
But, should you get a funding offer, you should ask yourself: is it the right time for you to take it? Or more likely, if you get rejected for not having enough traction or the right team yet, donât take home the rejection but the message that itâs not yet your time.
I say this because I realize now, that I did YC the first time exactly when I should have. Any earlier and I didnât have anything to accelerate. Any later and Iâm not sure we really would have gotten off the ground or the same investors in the same way. Our trajectory would have been less stellar.
How can I know for sure? I canât. But I also have the experience of having done it again. And the second time? I think I did it too soon.
So when I say: âthere is a timeâ to best deploy this bullet, itâs because Iâve been there, lived that.
In that light, I offer these questions to ask yourself, in all honesty:
1. Do I have a spark of something that needs to be turned into a flame?
Early stage start-ups are notoriously hard because there are just so many ways to die before you ever really get a chance. You run out of runway and therefore time, you donât have the right team, youâve never done sales/marketing/operations/hiring etc before. But there is only one thing that matters: are you making something that people want? Doesnât have to be a lot of people. But it does have to be some people.
If yes: is that number of people growing consistently for some period of time (eg. 10-20% weekly, over 12 weeks). If the answer is yes, then congratulations! You have a spark. Doing YC now will help turn it into a flame.
If you donât have this spark, youâve got nothing, going into a pressure cooker. High pressure environments like that arenât really conducive to nurturing itty bitty sparks and baby flames. Of course if youâre talented and eager enough you could do YC. But I wouldnât. Founders are competitive by nature. Being thrown amidst 300+ founders hustling and delivers crazy numbers is not the place or the headspace for spark.
2. Do I have the team and structure to help me turn this plane into a rocket ship?
The first time I applied for Poppy it was just me. I see now that had they funded me then, I would have crashed and burned. There would have been zero way I could have grown the business while also finding a cofounder and setting up the systems for fast growth. I was still running on spreadsheets and my cell phone.
By time we were funded the next batch, my technical co-founder had built the base platform and connected up a Twilio-based messaging system (thank all the gods). And we had hired our Head of Caregivers and transformed my manual vetting process into the earliest versions of our caregiver vetting funnel.
When we did YC we were able to keep up with the impossible growth targets because we had the team and the structure to actually service the growth. We were all on this fast moving plane that we were able to disassemble and reassemble into a rocket ship together.
Doing YC before I had all that would have had me putting jet fuel into my sweet little prop plane I had just gotten off the ground, and accelerating my way into certain death.
(Btw this also goes for too big teams that are too costly and too slow to move and iterate quickly - find the bare minimum sized team where it feels uncomfortable and where everyone is wearing at least 3 hats. Itâll give you the best chance of earning the privilege of hiring more).
3. Does the application write itself, in an active tone, with more numbers than adjectives? No jargon or flowery phrases. Just the cold hard facts.
The first time I applied with my first, short-lived company, we spent way too much time on the application, trying to wow them with our business idea genius. Writing stretched over weeks, multiple revisions to get it âjust rightâ.
The second time I applied, it felt different. I had 4-5 weeks of early data with Poppy and I could already tell I was onto something. I thought: if I could just âget intoâ YC, all my problems would be solved - engineers would line up to work with me, investors would trip over themselves to fund me. All I needed to do was convince YC.
So I applied. With early data and clear insight, I spent a week or so penning the thing. Lo and behold - an interview invitation. And so, down to Mountain View I went, by myself. I made my case to 3 partners and walked out feeling hopeful. It didnât feel great then, when I got the rejection email later that day.
But this was my first clue on timing: team and traction. I didnât have much of either. So that summer, I went to work on getting both. I found a technical co-founder and brought on our Head of Caregivers. And we keep proving we were making something people wanted by way of steady, consistent growth.
That fall when we reapplied, the application basically wrote itself in a couple of hours. Another 20 minutes to record the video and boom we had applied. We didnât have to use fancy words because we had user insights and results. If your application is more descriptive words than action-ladden numbers, it might not be time.
4. If I didnât get into YC, would I keep going because we have users to serve, a bigger mission and a growing business?
Ironically, one of the best ways to know you could use YC is when youâd keep going without YC. A lot of times founders will apply as a search for validation, a sign to quit their day jobs or so they donât have to go salary-less once theyâre funded. I get the need to pay bills and how straining it is to go months without pay. But none of those reasons prove that you have something that the world needs.
Instead, once you start serving even a handful of users, you see that that is the real purpose and North Star. YC becomes just another tool in the toolbox along the way (exactly as it ought to be). And so the desperation shifts from âI have to get in to be validatedâ to âI have to get in to keep doing right by my usersâ. Validation through users, not pedigrees and programs.
5. Do I have a slope thatâs notable vs. superficial absolutes?
One of the most misunderstood things of early stage startups has to do with metrics. Too many founders believe that if they show âbig numbersâ - eg a waitlist with 10,000 emails or 2,000 app downloads or 5,000 conversations from IG ads, that thatâs what gets to PMF and/or funding.
When the hard truth is: it doesnât. Those are vanity metrics at best and distraction/death metrics at worst. Instead, what matters is the slope of your growth. Do you have a consistent rate of growth, week over week. It might start with the tiniest numbers. Mine started at 5. But grew each week to 7, 12, 14, 20. The point was the consistency of growth, not the absolutes.
Because it is much easier to believe that Iâll get to the big numbers if I keep doing what Iâm doing (talking to users, building) to deliver the consistent growth, than it is to believe Iâll develop consistency and discipline and insight after posting unsustained big numbers post press or a Product Hunt or Hackner News launch.
If you have a solid slope - something in the 10-20% weekly growth range, then youâre likely in a sweetspot of having the spark and the discipline to build on that during YC. Even if the absolute numbers are small.
If your slope is not so great - write the application. See if you can pinpoint what you might need to do to deliver 8-12 weeks of consistent growth.
6. Is the biggest rate limiter focus and capital?
I have a favourite saying with my teams: âIs this the thing thatâs going to kill us next?â. It means, when weâre fighting over priorities, we need to choose the one that is most limiting our growth. That if we donât fix/eliminate, will be the cause of death. If youâre clearly building something people want, growing quickly and consistently but youâre struggling with getting early funders to take you seriously, then use your bullet. YC is a great way to prevent this death - because what is most important is you prove some growing number of people need what youâre building and that you have the team to grow it even faster, if for a bit of early capital.
Then use the 12 weeks to focus and cement that trajectory so that at the end of those 3 months your company most naturally stands out of the pack and efficiently raises the capital it needs for the next phase.
7. Is YC and its network aligned with the my values of building?
This question is ultimately less one about timing but can be helping in deciding what help, when. YC can be polarizing because it is built upon a pretty specific philosophy of building. Itâs not for everyone. Founders should choose to be funded by YC because they believe that this investor is values aligned with how they want to build. Founders have the endless opportunity to consume podcasts and articles that tell them exactly what the philosophy and approach is. Donât âdo YCâ under some superficial notion of âbestâ. Choose them deliberately because you want to be surrounded by a community and network of founders that are values aligned with ideas such as âdo things that donât scaleâ and âbuild for the 100 that love you instead of the 10,000 that like youâ and âlive in the future and build whatâs missingâ and âbe a cockroachâ. Itâs a less glamorous philosophy that doesnât leave a lot of room for speaking on panels and fancy offices but itâs the one where Iâve best found the founders that build for the purest reasons of serving their users. (And yes, though the YC of today is quite a bit different than the YC of W16 and before, the core remains and should feel aligned).
In any case - there you go - 7 questions to ask yourself if youâre gearing up to apply, if youâve applied and been rejected and if youâre wondering if you should apply.
Iâm grateful I did YC the first time when I did. I realize now I probably could have been more patient before doing it the second. You canât accelerate what you donât have.
In the end itâs pretty simple. Dreadfully hard, but pretty simple:
Talk to your users.
Build something they want.
Do that in tight weekly loops until you have consistent growth even on itty bitty numbers.
Apply.
Get back to talking to your users and building.
Oh, and a final note: Iâve noticed how the verbs I use has changed over the years. In the early days, I thought about YC as a continuation of my Ivy education - a chance to be selected by the upper echelons of startups and have their knowledge and networks and insights be bestowed up on me. I talked about âgetting intoâ YC.
Now I say âfunded by YCâ. Because thatâs absolutely what it is. Theyâre investors making a bet on you and taking a hefty chunk of your company for it. Never forget that. Both in your duty as a founder to honour the investment but also in being clear itâs always still your company to do what you feel is right. No investors/advisors / mentors can ever change that.
Make sure the 7% is worth it for you and your company. If you go through this consideration set and have been nodding, then I can assure you the 7% will be well worth it.
Itâs when founders donât think about all this that the question of âwas it worth itâ come back to haunt.
Itâs worth it if you make it worth it. And finding the right time in your companyâs early lifecycle is a critical factor.
So above all: use this bullet when you have something to accelerate.
Youâll know if itâs time.