Applying to Y Combinator as an undergrad

Re:Applying to Y Combinator as an undergrad by gyro_robo on Tuesday July 10, 2007 @11:02PM (#33593)

If you feel strongly about something, you have to strike while the iron is hot. You'll do better with enthusiasm but no experience than with experience but no enthusiasm. Most of the big success stories have junky back-ends anyway (Flickr is PHP; YouTube's player can't skip forward; MySpace is a pile o' tinker toys and duct tape). A tin can that does something beats a perfect blueprint that just sits there.

Oh, and the point of college, actually, is tagging co-eds. Comp. Sci majors tend not to realize this at the time.

And human biological feedback loops ensure that stays interesting. Hacking doesn't, so do it while you still find it novel and exciting!

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Re:Applying to Y Combinator as an undergrad by dhouston on Thursday July 12, 2007 @01:41AM (#33791)

+1 to above...

also, you can start a startup whenever, and have the rest of your life to live the 'startup life' (i.e. worksleepworksleepworksleep until/while good things happen :)), but only 4 years of college.

i would argue that tagging coeds and having a social life also helps you later as a founder to get along with the non-engineers, who often bond over drinking and talking about tagging coeds :) (not to mention the recent spate of articles about parallels between dating and startups..)

and taking time off is good (i took a year off but still lived with my college friends) but the longer you take off, the more coming back sucks, because all your friends have graduated.

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Re:Applying to Y Combinator as an undergrad by jamongkad on Thursday July 12, 2007 @01:08AM (#33783)

Totally unrelated to the author of this post. My apologies! now going back to what gyro said. You mean to tell me Flickr, YouTube and Myspace have junky backends?? Makes me feel a little bit better about the app I'm working. How'd you know about this?

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