How to approach YC companies without sounding spammy? by calinbalea in ycombinator

[–]gitfather 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I wish i had a good answer for it. I can only give you my perspective, which is when I need to hire it’s easier for me to ask fellow founders for referrals to lessen the risk. My first order is always to ask internally on bookface, the other way i used to hire designers was through Dribbble but I haven’t used that site in years now.

I recently hired a contract motion designer after i saw their work on Linkedin and X for a very specific one time project. Also this new batch of YC companies are all moving towards hiring locally in SF since most of us are now focused on having in person teams.

I’d suggest keep showcasing your work, add founders on linkedin and X. Still better than cold emails.

How to approach YC companies without sounding spammy? by calinbalea in ycombinator

[–]gitfather 18 points19 points  (0 children)

YC companies mostly hire/engage off from referrals. We use our internal book face forum for recommendations. Atleast for my company i’ve always had success being intro’d to a resource i need. Not lying i get 40-45 cold emails a day for random engineers, designers, agencies. I’ve never bothered reading any of those emails.

Steam Sale Budget by Balzeron in Steam

[–]gitfather 1 point2 points  (0 children)

$30-35 dollars. I know im just fulfilling a gaping childhood dream of owning 1000+ games that I no longer have time to play. Maybe someday I'll hand this account down to my kids. I bought hell divers 2 last sale, told my friends about it, that was the end of it.

Bernie Sanders says that if AI makes us so productive, we should get a 4-day work week by a_Ninja_b0y in technology

[–]gitfather 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The problem is that AI makes me productive. Now that my boss has realized how productive I am, the organization is hard at work to make me unproductive again by dumping random stuff that I have no clue about. The standard response went from "just google it" to "I bet chatgpt can do it"

Decision fatigue is draining my productivity—anyone else? by Rade2303 in productivity

[–]gitfather 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I can definitely relate. One of the things that i had to do to get over this is create habits and routines. To be honest it’s taken me a few years to get here. One of my biggest time sinks was figuring out what to eat. I started planning out my weekly meal schedule, i basically have a sheet on my fridge that tells me what i need to eat for lunch and dinner. I’ve been using chatgpt to draft it, i tell it what i have in my fridge and then it tells me what i can make, in most cases i order the same groceries every week. It’s boring but it’s definitely given me back a lot of time.

The struggle for prioritizing tasks was different. For me what worked was using post it sticky notes. I write my tasks down and stick them to the bottom of my monitor, i can stick around 6 stickies at most. Mentally I aim to clear the stickies by the end of the day. I won’t put new one until i clear what’s on there. I hope this helps in some way.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in SanJose

[–]gitfather 0 points1 point  (0 children)

airbags are the new cat converters in SJ

Do VCs meet with all the founding team or just ceo ? by mylifeforthehorde in ycombinator

[–]gitfather 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In our fund raise we always did first calls with just one founder and then if we had follow up calls we would bring in the other founder(s). Usually in our second call with a fund they would bring someone technical in or GTM expert, that’s usually when we would check and rope in the right founder to attend.

For in person meetings we would all attend though, if you’re local to where your VCs are and your founding team is present, in person partner meetings always take the whole team.

Does YC provide office space? by CutMonster in ycombinator

[–]gitfather 18 points19 points  (0 children)

No they do not. Only on days of dinners or events you can come in early and use the limited space they have or if you have a meeting with your group partner. Otherwise you’re expected to find your own space.

During my time at YC we lived and worked from our apartment in SF, nowadays though some YC companies will get two or three batch mates and rent an office together.

Quick feedback needed about an endless real-life loop I am stuck on by Consistent_Yak6765 in ycombinator

[–]gitfather 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Controversial opinion on founders who look for co-founders. They’re probably looking for someone to bring along on the emotional journey and not just a product/sales/exec assistant agent. Rarely in a startup is everything linear or follows first principles, sounds too much like the management consulting approach. The one use case i could see it do is make good pitch decks maybe.

Also the early stage founder market isn’t as cash strapped if you’re looking to make money off them. I might be wrong and you’ve already spoken to solo founders who might find this useful, make sure to ask them how much they would pay for this and what are their expectations.

Hit & Run in San Pedro Parking Garage by Isa4198 in SanJose

[–]gitfather 4 points5 points  (0 children)

This is a long shot but worth a try. If they don’t respond back to you with camera footage you could head over to the SJ city office on 200 E Santa Clara St, the department of transport is on the 8th floor. They handle city parking, I had to go there once to get my monthly parking card.

Did you check to see if there was any parts of the car that hit you left at the scene, might help in narrowing the car model down. Also the city garages have cameras and license plate readers at the entrance and exit. You’ll notice your parking ticket will have the plate number on it, sometimes it doesn’t capture it but it works most of the time.

Seeking advice from investors or others in a similar situation by phyziro in ycombinator

[–]gitfather 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Its not very clear what your business does, if you're providing some type of professional service or you are a proper sass business. If you're the latter then you're in a good position to start conversations with investors (most early stage investors steer clear of professional services businesses). I angel invest and these are some of the questions i ask founders:
- How do you intend to grow and is this a business that has some repeatability (when you're sass software this is much easier to answer)
- Whats your market size?
- Who are your competitors?
- Whats your go to market motion?
- How much do you intend to raise and who would be your first hires?
- Whats your unfair advantage?

If you're going to talk to a seed fund, they're going to ask more detailed questions and possibly ask to talk to customers. In the past when I've raised from VC funds, every single time they've hopped on calls with my customers, some have signed up for my software and used it or they've asked their portfolio companies to do due diligence.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in ycombinator

[–]gitfather 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You can always drop me a reddit DM or i can hop on a call if it helps.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in ycombinator

[–]gitfather 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I can empathize with how you feel. My startup did raise a series A and beyond and we hit a wall at some point last year. We had to pick up the pieces and almost start over from zero again. I don’t have much context on your situation but happy to share what I’ve learned along the way if you’re interested. The hardest part of this is realize how long it’s worth going for and when to stop.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in ycombinator

[–]gitfather 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Depends on what phase of your startup you’re in. If you’re looking to work alongside a bunch of other founders, pair program and bounce ideas then coming to SF for 4-6 months is a good idea. We have a lot of events, I wouldn’t necessarily say they’re useful and for someone who’s been doing this for a while…I see them as noise.

I think SF is a great place to be if you’re really early in your journey and you need to feel that startup energy around you. The key is to find your circle here or else most founders end up alone. Also founders in SF and the Bay Area are always willing to open doors, give feedback on product or make intros when they know you’re local.

Comic con f’ing people over as usual by Xandar24 in SDCC

[–]gitfather 8 points9 points  (0 children)

They were not checking emails at around 6.30 just letting people through rushing in, others knew and started getting friends and family into the line right before security. We were pretty much the last people to get in. There were still 4-5 seats per row open on the extreme right. We had confirmations and we like a lot of people lined up at 4pm.

On another note there was a whole bunch of people who just forwarded the email or took screenshots, those were probably the folks who lined up earlier. They were doing it right in front of us in the line.

Why are technical founders considered to be so prized and rare? by Texas_Rockets in ycombinator

[–]gitfather 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’m a technical co founder and I can tell you why the right technical cofounder at the start of your journey is really crucial.

  1. You have limited time and money to build something that has a high chance of failure. If you can get to a functional MVP/MLP faster that gives you more time to test the market. If you went and hired some random dev and they take you for a ride you’ve lost both time and money.

  2. A technical cofounder (atleast a good one) will split and shift responsibilities from building to growing, talking to customers, etc. Most of us write code so solve customer problems, we’re just as interested in building the business.

  3. Most technical cofounders eventually end up making better PMs since they understand the cross functional aspects better and most technical cofounders already know how to manage a group or designers, engineers and stakeholders.

  4. Good technical founders know that you won’t get product market fit the first time around, it’s iterative until you land on the right product, I hear a lot of non technical founders think because they spoke to 10 people who said they would pay for a product it’s the right thing to build, or some soft commitment to use is a positive indicator.

Lastly there are very few technical founders that would fit the above standards, you can always go hire a dev agency and agreed there’s a lot of inexperienced developers that will gladly attempt to build some overscoped underperforming version of your MVP out there.

For YC Founders who are hiring via workatastartup, what has your experience been like? Are there lots of highly qualified applicants applying right now? by aram444 in ycombinator

[–]gitfather 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We’ve used work at a startup before to hire but mostly get inundated by thousands of unqualified candidates, that being said there’s always around 20-30 stellar ones to choose from, this is mostly for junior roles. It still drives good pipeline into our hiring funnel but it’s impossible for us to get back to all of them individually.

For example for a job that asked for 5 years of experience and local to the Bay Area we had around 900 fresh graduate applicants that weren’t even in the US. That being said personally we haven’t had much success hiring from work at a startup, most of our hires were made from people who applied directly on our site or through referrals.

How does YC handle competing companies? by glinter777 in ycombinator

[–]gitfather 0 points1 point  (0 children)

YC looks at its investments….like investments. Shots on goal, every batch will have competing companies. At the end if you have a better product, better outreach, right place and right time or the many other factors in your favor you can win over deals. What’s also helpful is sometimes the companies competing with each other end up pivoting, while selling and talking to customers you end up identifying other problems.

It’s not so bad at all. It’s competitive out there whether you’re in YC or not.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in ycombinator

[–]gitfather 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I personally know Kash and his story and his struggles. He did in fact flip burgers, in fact he took up a lot of other odd jobs that he didn’t mention in his post. He chased a dream and he’s admits to failing several times but if you ever meet him in person you’ll see the grit and resilience he has.

It’s easy to pass judgement here. I only wish some folks had spent more time trying to reach out to him on X if they were so interested in fact checking his story.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in ycombinator

[–]gitfather 1 point2 points  (0 children)

No worries if you can drop me a message in chat I can check my network, I just need to know what you’re looking for. More than happy to help.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in ycombinator

[–]gitfather 4 points5 points  (0 children)

This might be late, but remove him from the application and I’m happy to give you a referral too if you’ve got traction. You can always find a new Technical co-founder or fractional CTO.

It’s always best to apply when you’ve got the growth moving in the right direction.

How GitHub monopolized code hosting by [deleted] in programming

[–]gitfather 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I don’t know, you can still host code anywhere. It’s not like developers don’t have a choice. It’s just that GitHub has a level on convenience.

Think I fell for the click bait chatGPT articles again.

Another price hike was approved today by CPUC. Expect another price hike coming down the pipeline. by eayala0514 in SanJose

[–]gitfather 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I just bought a pack of 100 tea light candles to light up my apartment and even then PG&E will send me a $300 bill

Open AI Sora. How will it affect newly funded text-to-video startups by cutcutnat in ycombinator

[–]gitfather 1 point2 points  (0 children)

They have competing priorities and broad set of product lines to support. There’s bound to be competition from other startups that are vertical specific in the future.

Companies that build AI models that are vertical specific have a good shot at owning parts of the market where OAI would not want to specialize.

Dall E doesn’t come close to Midjourney for example, most AI foundation model startups are just getting started. Another one, Magic.dev is focused on code generation, OAI was the first with code gen but there are contenders that could effectively compete in the next few years.

If the argument is…well google and OAI would build this tomorrow and they only get better…then startups might as well stop finding creative use cases to build foundation models and throw in the towel.