Very informative post!Thanks for taking the time out to write this.

Will you be able to share the ratio of companies that took part in YCF remotely vs moving to the Bay area?

I think around 1/3 of companies in our batch were remote, but as far as I know, now it's almost entirely remote to accommodate more companies.

Assuming one gets in the fellowship program, would it still be beneficial to go to the US in person if almost every YCF is remote? Or doesn't it really matter whether other YCFs are remote?

(Apifier co-founder here) It will be less beneficial now than it was in the first YCF batch. Other fellows really motivated us during the group office hours and other events. And still - main thing is to focus on a product which you can do anywhere.

Hey! I work on Fellowship -- definitely would encourage you to stay where you are if accepted; office hours are done over video chat, so you wouldn't be at a disadvantage.

Nice post. Just wanted to ask about the funding situation after YCF. Are the companies in a position to receive funding or is too early? And does YC help in introducing you to investors?

Were there any single founders during the first batch?

Yep -- 6 companies from F1 went directly into YC W16, and a few others have raised seed rounds independently.

Nowadays, Fellowship ends with a virtual Demo Day for investors; the first one for that will be happening next week, so it's too soon to say exactly how it will go. We're pretty optimistic though.

Yes, there were single founders!

I wish there was a job and kids version of the Fellowship. Make it 12-16 weeks, and allow founders to keep their day jobs. I am in Georgia Tech OMSCS right now and people put 30-40 hours a week into that and keep their day job.

It would be very encouraging to be able to test out one of my ideas for a semester but the work load these guys talk about in the article is pretty crazy. Is the expectation of the Fellowship that the founders are putting in 12+ hour days for 8 straight weeks?

At least in our batch we felt we should really only focus on our product. That's why we've got the grant - to be able to work on our startup full-time.

Pretty cool post, kind of motivated to apply :) Can you provide a bit more info about the exit office hours/final event? You write that they made it clear that you kind of have no official ties to YC. Was there any advice given other than "apply to YC"? Did you get any advice on going forward if you don't get into YC?

The apifier site looks pretty cool. I like the art style, did one of you draw the robot?

Thank you, we didn't draw it ourselves, but our friend is a great artist :)

Yes, we got other advice too, primarily about funding and dealing with investors, but there's only so much you can squeeze into 1-2 hours.

This looks interesting, but I kinda wish there's something like this for no-moonshot, low-key business models, with lower return but higher chance of profit. As I understand it, YC is still geared towards high-risk, high-return ventures, is that correct?

I can't speak for YC in any way, but I can quote from http://fellowship.ycombinator.com/faq/: "We'll consider anything we can imagine becoming a very significant company."