Summer 2008 Funding
|
The application deadline for summer 2008 funding was April 2.
|
|
The summer 2008 funding cycle will take place in Cambridge, MA from
June through August 2008.
- If you want to apply, please submit your
application
online by 10 pm EST on April 2, 2008.
Groups that submit
early have a slight advantage because we have more time to
read their applications.
- We'll review applications by April 9
and invite the groups that seem most promising
to meet us in Mountain View on the weekend of April 25-27.
We'll reimburse up to $600 per group for travel expenses.
-
We'll decide who to fund that weekend.
Yes decisions will include the amount we'll invest and the
percent of the company we'd want for it. We usually invest
$5000 + $5000n, where n is the number of participating
founders (i.e. 2 founders get $15,000, 3 get $20,000), in return
for between 2% and 10% of the company. The median is 6%.
- If you accept our offer, we'll write you a check immediately
for as much as you need to cover your initial expenses.
- If we invest in you, your group is expected to move to
Boston for June through August 2008. (You can of course
leave afterward if you want, but it's a good place
for a startup to be.)
- After you're accepted, we'll set up all your paperwork for you,
including getting you incorporated.
- Once your company exists, we'll write a check to it
for the rest of the money. You can spend the money however you want.
- Y Combinator is not an incubator. We have space you
can use if you need to, but we expect you to work out of wherever
you find to live. It is no
coincidence that so many successful startups have started this way;
it's the ideal setup for the initial phase.
- From June through August we'll have dinners every Tuesday for all
the founders. At each dinner we'll invite an
expert in some aspect
of startups to speak.
- On Thursday afternoons we'll have an open house at YC for
founders who want to demo their latest work or talk about strategy.
You can arrange to meet with us any time during the week,
but the open houses ensure no one has to wait too long.
- You're encouraged to ask the founders of other YC-funded
companies for help. There are now about 200 of them, and they're
usually very willing to give advice or make introductions.
- About 10 weeks in, we'll organize a pair of investor days at
which you can present to later stage investors,
one in Cambridge and another a week later at our office in Silicon Valley.
You can of course
seek additional funding from any investor whenever you want.
- YC doesn't really end after three months; only the dinners do.
We continue to give advice and make introductions
as long as founders need—and so does the informal
network of YC-funded companies.
How do we choose who to fund?
The people in your group are what matter most to us. We look
for brains, motivation, and a sense of design. Experience is helpful
but not critical.
Your idea is important too, but mainly as evidence that you can
have good ideas. Most successful startups change their idea
substantially.
We're more likely to fund people we know are smart from
their submissions and comments on
Hacker News. In fact,
that was one of the main reasons we wrote it: so that we could
get to know people before they applied.
The ideal company would have two or three founders. We'll
consider those with four or five. We're reluctant to accept one-person
companies, though we have funded a couple.
We don't expect you to have a formal business
plan yet. All you have to do is fill out our application.
$5000 + $5000n is not a lot, but it turns out to be enough.
It will cover at least 4 months' living expenses, and that is enough
time to build something nontrivial.
It's in your interest to take little money in the
earliest stages, because you give up less control for it.
The original motivation for Y Combinator was benevolent,
but this is not a charity. If our investments pay off, we can
invest in more startups, and if they don't, we can't keep doing
this indefinitely. So we're looking for startups we think will
succeed.
|