Hey, how's it going? This is Craig Cannon, and you're listening to Y Combinators Podcast. Today's episode is with Jeff Ralston and Adora Chung. Jeff and Adora are both partners at YC.
In this episode, it's about Startup School. Startup School is a free online course we're offering that starts on August 28th. We're also offering equity-free grants of $10,000 to 100 companies that participate in the course. Anyone can sign up for the course at StartupSchool.org.
All right, here we go. All right, Jeff and Adora, thanks for coming in. Thanks for having us, Craig. We're here to talk about Startup School.
So, Jeff, could you break down what's happening this year with Startup School? Sure. Startup School began a couple of years ago with a course that Sam taught online called How to Startup Startup. And last year, we evolved it into a course we taught in Stanford called Startup School.
And we're continuing that this year. It's an open online course that is a way for us to reach as many companies as possible throughout the entire world to help maximize really the amount of innovation and the amount of value created by startups everywhere in the world. And Adora, how is the coursework differing this year from any previous version? Well, there are a lot of similarities.
So, it's a 10-week course, and you can either audit the course or you can actually be part of the course. And to be part of the course, you get, obviously, access to materials and lectures. You're put into a group. You get an advisor who you will need once a week to go over the obstacles that you're having.
But more importantly, to talk with other founders as well who are dealing with similar challenges. And then also, you have access to a community, which will be a forum in which you can talk to everybody else who is taking Startup School. So, it's really great because, at the end of the day, what we want to do is reduce the barriers to starting a startup. And I come from the middle of nowhere, personally.
And so, it's near and dear to me because I didn't learn about startups until very late. I'm considered a bloomer compared to people who are from here. And so, I think that what's important is to give people out there who are not in Telecom Valley access to community, access to mentorship, and access to really great knowledge to build a startup. So, the amazing thing about Startup School is it's not just the content.
This is really unique. It is about the community and the mentorship that every single one of the founders in this advisor track, where you can assign an advisor and you meet with them on a weekly basis. Now, it's also true that the content this year is going to be different than the content last year. All of the content from the last two years is available online, will remain available online, and is relevant and useful.
But it turns out also that the content relevant to starting a startup is both broad and deep. There's a ton of things to cover. So, we're going to cover everything a little bit differently. We're going to go over similar areas of a startup, how to get going, what the mechanics are, how to think about product, how to think about growth, how to think about fundraising, but we'll do them all in new and different ways that I think will be valuable additions to the set of content that we've already actually made available in a public library that you can get at at StartupSchool.org slash library.
And the speakers for this year, is that list public yet? Well, the list is about to be public, I think, simultaneously with the publication of this podcast. So, we can start to talk about it. One of my favorite speakers is going to be Adora.
And we're really focusing on YC partners and YC founders for this startup school. So, a number of YC partners are going to be participating. I'm really excited to say that Paul Graham and Jessica Livingston will be taking part in the course and giving some of their wisdom, which is also brought to founders everywhere in the world. But we're also going to have other YC partners.
Sam Altman, who's the president of Y Combinator, will be giving a talk. Michael Seibel, the CEO of Y Combinator, will be giving a talk. So, we have an amazing lineup of folks who are going to be out there talking. Okay, cool.
So, we should just clarify all these questions around the tracks right now. I think that isn't necessarily clear for folks who have maybe participated before or just heard a little bit about it. So, Adora, could you explain the different paths of going through startup school? Yeah, so there are two paths.
One is you can audit the course, in which case you just get access to the live stream and lectures and the notes. Or you can be, if you're a full-time founder, you can just apply and be part of startup school initially, which means, like I said before, you get access to mentor advisors, you get access to the forum, you get exclusive deals like Amazon, straight outlets, and so forth. And you also can qualify to receive a $10,000 equity-free grant from us if you complete the course. And we're going to choose 100 companies that get that grant based on how they can do the course and the information we're going to get from the advisors and the privacy that company makes.
So, we're going to judge how promising that company is, what those companies are. Yeah, and those companies, could they apply at any stage? Like, who are the founders that you guys are looking for? I think the most interesting are people who are early-stage founders.
So, either they have an idea and they're ready to work on it full-time, or they are currently working on it. And anywhere from no users to, you know, any number of users is fine. I think we can be helpful along those lines. I think startup school is, it's fair to say, is certainly targeted at very early-stage companies.
There's knowledge in the knowledge base that we built in the past and are continuing to build with this year's startup school there. It's probably useful to companies in later stages as well. But for the most part, this is, I think, Adore put it well. It's about lowering the threshold for people to get started to really get your startup going.
Gotcha. Do you guys recall, so from last year, were there any success stories that kind of stood out to you? Ooh, so we had 38 companies who actually got into our core YC program after going through startup school. And so, I think, for the most part, most of them did a lot of their iteration and talking to users during startup school, and they learned a lot how to do that.
Which, I should just pause you and say that. That's a very high percentage of the batch. Oh, there's 38 across two batches. But still, you're going to cross that.
You're going to 10%. Yeah. And success stories. I mean, I'm very excited about a few of those companies.
So one of them is actually I worked very closely with in my group. It's Condition IP. They actually went through MOOC with something in the legal space, which they're still in, but they iterated towards their current product during startup school. So I think that's really exciting.
Condition IP is their tech-enabled patent law firm. So if you need any patents, you can go to them. I should just add Adore through this term MOOC, which we often use internally to talk about the course. That stands for Massively Open Online Course.
And it's sort of a, most people know that term, but this is how we think of startup school. It's a MOOC. It's for everyone. We do have a limited number of advisors, so we can't take everyone, but you can still take the course.
Everyone who applies can audit the course, can go through all of the lectures and scale the content. And at the end of the course, as we said, all of the content is going to be available online. Got you. So given the success of last year's MOOC, which Jeff, you were organizing, why did you decide to do the grants this year?
It was already working. We want to maximize the amount of innovation in the world. And it's just a hard fact that starting a startup takes cash. So to be honest, it's a bit of an experiment, right?
Certainly, it helps to attract companies to come do startup school. We think startup school is good for them. We drive no benefit unless they apply to Y Combinator and get into Y Combinator, except we think it makes the world a better place to have more startups. So it's good if more new startups will.
And we think that the most promising startups that don't get into Y Combinator but still have a shot, have a better shot if they have some capital to work off of. So our fervent hope is that by giving $10,000 to these 100 startups, we'll have startups that might otherwise die, not die, and succeed, and thrive, and become viable companies. Got you. Okay.
And so just to clarify the deals you mentioned earlier, what are they explicitly so people know? The exclusive deals? So we have cloud credits from Amazon Web Services and DigitalOcean, and there may be some others. And then every company that comes through, we'll be able to incorporate and create an account through Start Atlas.
They're an amazing company to work with. And the key for integration? Yes. And we'll have a bunch of others, but those are the highlights.
Cool. So applications are open right now. They've been open for a week. They've been open for a week, or more, when this podcast comes out.
Two weeks. Yeah. Yeah, once the podcast comes out, it'll be two weeks. And I do want to really encourage people to get their application in.
It turns out this is a really popular thing, and lots of people are applying. We're already thrilled by the response. It's great. We have thousands and thousands of companies already applying.
And when will the course begin? The course is going to begin the week of August 27th. It's going to actually have a live in-person component in Mountain View, California, at the original YC offices on Pioneer Road. Pioneer Way, excuse me.
But also, obviously, we can't take everyone there, since there will be many thousands of people taking the MOOC. So all of the lectures and the slides will be made available online shortly after each lecture. And who can attend in person? How does that work?
We're actually working through that. So we think the demand is going to be super high, and we want to be as equitable as possible. It's really interesting. The startup companies in circle are companies from around the world.
But it's also true there's a good number who are in the Bay Area. So we don't expect or really recommend people travel to come and try to come to the course because that actually will probably detract from your startup. You should be focusing on the startup itself and building your company and talking to your users and building your products, not traveling out to Mountain View. But for people who are local and who want to come in, we'll have some mechanism for them to reserve a spot and come in and actually attend the lecture in person.
And just to clarify or respond to that is the live is just an option. It's not a requirement for course completion or to qualify for the $10,000. But there are requirements. I'm sure Edward was about to say that, but to be eligible to take part in a presentation day at the end where you can present your company, and hopefully there will be an audience of investors in the community to take a look at what you've done, what you've accomplished, but also to be eligible for the $10,000 grant.
You need to attend 9 out of 10 of the weekly group meetings with your advisor, and you need to consume at least 9 out of 10 of the... 9 out of 10? Yes. 18 out of 20?
That occur on a weekly basis. Okay, gotcha. So the course... I don't want to mention this.
The course runs through 10 weeks starting on the week of August 27th, and it runs through the end of October. Not coincidentally, that is right in the application period going into the interview period for our winter 2019 batch. So we actually will help people apply to YC. We'll give you maybe not insider information, but accurate information about how to think about creating an application and having your best shot at having your company considered for membership in that batch.
There's a lecture dedicated to that. There will actually be a lecture dedicated to helping people do that. Look, it's hard to get into our core YC program. The admission rate is somewhere between 1 and 2%.
So we think that alone is a great reason to come to startup school. The main reason startup school will help you get into YC, however, is not because we have a lecture dedicated to that. The main reason it will help you get into YC is because we sincerely believe it'll make your startup better. Right.
And you'll have a forcing function of working with a group over 10 weeks. Well, that's part of it. It turns out that the forcing function of working as part of the group and having a community over 10 weeks makes your startup better. It makes you focus.
It makes you achieve. It makes you grow. So we expect those things to really be relevant to the companies that are applying. So in addition to this session on applying to YC, what else is in the curriculum?
Like, let's go from the beginning of the first course and then just go from there. Yeah, this is hard because we have to do it from memory and it's 10 courses. But if I was an ARC that I think will be pretty familiar to folks, we're going to start off by talking about some of the really basic ideas behind starting a startup. Why you do it.
How you should think about it. How you should even mechanically go about doing what you need to do. Some of these things, every part of doing a startup is hard, but sometimes just getting over those first, you know, small steps is the key thing to actually getting on the road to building your startup. Then we'll spend a fair amount of time talking about product.
What is a startup without? What is any company without a product? YC's motto, it turns out, is make something people want. So we'll spend a fair amount of time talking about what it really means to make something people want to find sort of the proverbial product market fit.
And then we'll go on to talk about, well, how do you think about getting users and growing once you start to have a product that's reasonable? And then, you know, we'll spend a fair amount of time on that and we'll spend a fair amount of time on things like how to think about running your company and hiring people. And then we'll transition to talking about fundraising, how that works, how you think about cap tables. And then as we get towards the middle part, we'll talk about applying to YC, which is sort of right in that.
A lot of people think about YC as a mechanism for fundraising, although I tend to argue it's much less about fundraising, that's a piece of it, and way more about making your startup more likely to succeed. And then we'll have some cool stuff at the end that will revolve around both thinking big, thinking big, thinking about the key things that make startups succeed and fail, and even psychological and emotional things. Because as anyone who's done a startup, Adora's been through this in as intense a way as you possibly can. I started this emotional rollercoaster.
It's really complicated and hard. And coming out the other end as good a person, whatever you enter at the beginning, is really a hard challenge. What about those sessions with advisors? Around YC, we talk about office hours and group office hours and advisors and all that stuff.
I think it's not always clear what actually happens during those meetings. And to be clear, these are online sessions with your advisors. And so they're happening weekly, correct? What's actually happening during it?
Because following the coursework is interesting, which is like the traditional model if you're working with a TA, for example. But in reality, they're more talking about what? Product growth during the whole course? I would say the coursework is a little bit more on the theory side and abstract and an attempt to teach everybody something relevant to what they're doing.
And then in group office hours, it comes down to more tactical things and very specific things. And so we're going to try to group you with fellow founders who are working on similar type, similar industries, and obviously, hopefully, similar locations. So you don't have to get up at lucky times for this. But most importantly, I think the general structure is you come in and you describe what has happened briefly, what has happened in the past week, can you meet your goal?
If not, what was the main obstacle and how can the group help you? And so the mentor actually is not there to, I would say, tell you exactly what to do. They're there to facilitate a conversation. Because I think in most cases, a lot of the things, a lot of the problems you run into, other founders have run into in just very different forms.
And so it is other founders who will probably help you the most. And so that's what we're hoping for. The important aspect of the hours, even though they're done in group, is that they're actually individual attention for each company. Each company gets to spend time talking about what they're working on, what progress they're making, what...
problems there or barriers are running into and it's both the advisor and the other founders within that context who can help and you know take part in the community of startups trying to be successful it's actually the coolest part I just actually it's worthwhile saying just a word on the advisors who I think more than anything make this work and it's really a testimony to the power of the YC network that YC founders are so interested and I don't know how open I should be about this but I'll just say we don't pay these folks to do this they volunteer their time for a free course to spend time with companies that they've never heard of before and to help them be successful and these folks are amazing they're in many or most cases working on their own startup at the same time but they dedicate their time their very valuable time to help these strangers make their startup work and it's really more than anything else what I think makes startup school powerful and interesting beyond sort of any online course you can follow and you know and any book you can read about how to start a startup this is way more real way more effective and I would say way more substantive to the future success of your startup yeah well I think it really helps you stay locked into the course because that's been you know churn has been a huge problem with many MOOCs right I think it's not uncommon to have less than 20% of the class 5% and last year 56% finished and our goal is and I think Adora pointed out you only get a chance at the $10,000 if you finish so we expect that is one of the reasons we put this in place at the tail end of the course because we think that is going to send people to finish because we think it's good for them to finish and your startup then has a better shot right so before we move on I think we should also shout out the people at YC that we're working on this with you guys because it's not just you two who else is working on it with you well Stephen Tham Stephen's the main Stephen does more than anyone he's amazing he worked on it with Sam last year and I think he worked on on startup school too as well but he's amazing he recruits the advisors he puts everything together he makes it work when it works so he's the guy and we have two engineers who are working with us as well Ramon and Kyle otherwise he's a software team because there's a whole software side to this obviously yeah for the most part we build this ourselves we use our own software and we manage this with our own software it's actually non-trivial to put together software that makes it scalable to work with thousands and thousands of companies obviously we have smaller scale but even within YC when we have hundreds of companies we're working with we need software to help to scale at this level we need it all the more so and so they've done an awesome job last year we're improving it again this year we get lots of feedback from companies and from the advisors on how to make the software even better so yeah Kyle and everyone have been amazing yeah right on so on a personal side for you guys when you were startup founders which of these classes do you think would have been most valuable to you like what was the thing you knew least about where you could have learned the most probably all of it when starting off oh my gosh like I mean I'm from a slightly different generation and when I wanted to start a startup there was nothing available and we've said this before but it's worth repeating the content's awesome like just if you go to that URL line agent of the library and you start going through there it's incredible there's also a lot of startup content that's been put together both that way so it's a mix of startup school content and other content that's been generated and some external content that we think is actually particularly good and we point to but that coupled with the community and the mentorship that startup school represents like that alone is worth the price of admission which is great but that alone is amazing and game changing as far as I'm concerned you haven't answered the question no my question is my answer is the community and the focus and having that for me like again the content is great is fantastic but you didn't know what around you I think I answered the question you're right you did answer the question my bad same I think you know when you think about YC it's a community of high quality entrepreneurs and you can't get that anywhere else and so we want to do this for startup school as well you can live anywhere and plug into a network this will be the highest quality place you can be at to talk to people about startup alright thanks guys thanks a lot it was fun alright thanks for listening so as always you can find the transcript and video at blog.ycombinator.com and if you have a second it would be awesome to give us a rating and review wherever you find your podcast see you next time