That said, if you wanted to apply to the normal YC W16 batch after YCF, you'd still be asked to make the move.

What advice do you have for such ideas?

It's OK to be working on something that's hard to imagine how it would grow to be a really big thing, that's how most ideas start out. (Apple made hobbyist computers, Google was another search engine of 1000 -- how big of a deal could they have thought these would become?). It's important to be open-minded to the pathways of how your idea could become something big as it keeps growing though, and it's good to stop and think about those ideas every once in awhile.

What kind of progress do you expect founders to make by the end of the Fellowship? Put another way, if the goal of participation in Y Combinator is for companies to build enough traction to become top-tier candidates for an institutional fundraise, what is the outcome that participants in the Fellowship should hope to achieve?

Question: my organization is a nonprofit co-op. I know YC recently started accepting nonprofits - what's your opinion on them for YC fellowships?

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1: http://qz.com/455109/entrepreneurs-dont-have-a-special-gene-...

We would put full-time focus on this, but we can't really close up shop completely, we could put projects on hold, but we'd need to at least lightly manage/delegate tasks when things come up occasionally. Is that going to work?

I am a grad student working on a purely research based concept that I feel could make a good start to a company. However, I'm fully committed to the research at the university for the next year. The YCF would be used to get this project from just a thesis to an applicable concept. Would this be a good start to what YC is looking for?

0% for $12k is obviously a great deal, but my main stumbling block has always been the loss of income from dropping paid work, and $12k over two months is barely half an engineer's salary - let alone to cover multiple team members.

That said, it may well be enough to make someone like me think "well, at least I won't be earning zero dollars..."

Plenty of people who could create great things are also saddled with families and expenses that run to 80+% of their disposable incomes. It's all well and good to suggest that an individual can live on ramen noodles, but a family and young children cannot and should not have to. That leaves only a few options left for such people to start a company: do it on the side in evenings/weekends; and save up a nest egg then quit/reduce your job to work on the startup.

Suggesting that willingness to forgo having a family is a pre-requisite for entrepreneurship is fallacious.

My company released lots of products, all of them had critical acclaim and high user reviews, but we ran out of money before releasing our main product, and we never had marketing money, so our sales are nowhere interesting.

I am wondering if you consider this early enough or not. (we had no investment beside from extra money from the original founders).

If you still have successful ancillary products and just want to develop your flagship product with YC's help, consider applying to YC W16. Applications for that will open up in August.

I guess the "YC Fellowship Application" is a link to it? I wasn't sure where to click besides 'submit' and was a bit afraid it'd submit a blank form and lock me out of a real submission later! (It didn't, of course – the submit button is just an anchor tag pointing to https://yc.submittable.com/submit/44764)

edit: we've changed it to link directly to the application form now. Thanks for pointing this out.

"Can a single person apply for funding?

Yes, but the odds of being accepted are lower. A startup is too much work for one person."

I'm pretty sure you don't mean it is "too much work" for success to be a possible outcome, but that's what your copy says at the moment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-S83fysRwn4&feature=youtu.be

  Apple - Steve Jobs
  Amazon - Jeff Bezos
  Microsoft - Bill Gates
  (Google - Larry Page)

    Apple:     Steve Jobs      | + Steve Wozniak + Ronald Wayne
    Microsoft: Bill Gates      | + Paul Allen
    Google:    Larry Page      | + Sergey Brin
    Facebook:  Mark Zuckerberg | + Dustin Moskovitz + Chris Hughes + Andrew McCollum + Eduardo Saverin
    Uber[1]:   Travis Kalanick | + Garrett Camp + Ryan Graves
    Tesla[1]:  Elon Musk       | + JB Straubel + Martin Eberhard + Marc Tarpenning + Ian Wright

I don't understand why there are so many downvotes on something that is, indeed, a verifiable statistical fact. Can you downvoters write a message that elaborates on why you have such a strong reaction to this data?

Apple would not exist without Steve Wozniak

Google started as a partnership

Allen sold qdos to IBM which established Microsoft

Also, Larry was always the primary driver behind Google; it started out as his thesis project, PageRank is named for him, and he'd already started crawling the web by the time Sergey joined. Sergey's initial startup idea was to order pizza via fax machine. Google obviously wouldn't exist without both of them, and Larry was smart enough to share equity and credit equally, but a startup at the YC fellowship stage is much more likely to look like Larry's thesis project than Google when it took VC.

I'm not arguing against single founders, it's perfectly possible, but most companies are not started by a single founder, they are collaborations and are all the better for it.

1. What are the tax implications of these fellowships for non-US citizens? The reason I ask is anyone with any experience of the IRS will want to avoid dealing with it if at all possible.

2. Will accepting such a grant mean the recipient will have to file a tax return with the IRS?

3. What about withholding taxes? Will the non-us recipient need to file a W-8BEN or W-8BEN-E form?

For remote teams with viable ideas that YC is interested in funding, how remote can such teams be? Can teams apply from outside the US; from Europe, Asia or Africa?

I'm currently on F-1 (student) visa, and I'll be graduating soon. And I think this may represent some other people's situation as well.

In order to maintain the visa status after graduation while working, I'll need an OPT (Optional Practical Training). OPT is supported by the school AND a company that hires the person full-time, and is commonly used before the employee gets an H1-B. Clearly if I work on an idea full-time, I won't be working for a established company in full-time. Will YCF be a able to help in this case if accepted? For example, by hiring the team as YC employee in paperworks for the 8 weeks, but allowing the team to work on their own ideas?

You don't need any help from YC to do this - talk to your international student office, they process lots of OPT applications. Read the instructions on the USCIS website. They are very clear on this, you can start a company, you don't even need to incorporate to satisfy those requirements (although, this is not legal advice, talk to your international student office, and their lawyers).

Our company makes open source sex toys, and we've got an ever-growing list of places that just won't work with businesses related to adult products (stripe, square, mailchimp, kickstarter, ...). Fingers crossed that YC doesn't care.

e.g. "We've been working on this project() for over a year on evenings and weekends, collectively contributing >1500 effort hours, and we have spent $75k on rent and expenses. To keep that going, and have each member meet their familial costs, at least some of us need to earn money from consulting. However, if sufficient follow-on funding can be found, we'd be very glad to answer yes, and focus on this exclusively."

It's a hardware project requiring a fair amount of warehouse/build space, hence the expenses.

Two questions:

1) If we are still looking for / selecting technical co-founders, can we apply?

2) Does the entire team need to dedicate itself full time to this? Alternatively, if the "paying bills" job is quite light (2-3 hours per day), and we are willing to forego some sleep, can we still apply?

Cheers

2) We prefer that you are able to work full-time on the product for the 8 weeks of the program.

The same way students can take a semester off, could employed people take a sabbatical to focus on this?

Cheers

I was wondering what is the expected next 'round' of investment after successfully finishing the program.

Could one join the usual YC program or should he raise a larger amount of money after the program?

Can I still apply?

Would YC Fellowship be open to later stage startups?

We've already gone through a previous accelerator, done some fundraising (below series A) and have employees. Moving would be difficult for us since our key business is in fashion (we're in NYC) and also employees. As founders we're happy to go down to SF once in a while, but the remote option would suit us perfectly.

thanks!

I'm just concerned if they're going to cut out later stage startups who have fundraising but re-launched or pivoted.

Can you let me know the timelines for the following,

1. When are we likely to have our interview? 2. When are we expected to kickstart our work?

We are currently working in a company. Answers to the above questions will help us to plan on quitting our regular job.

The main thing is to save money while you are working! It gives you freedom.

If your school policies are as flexible as mine (I was at CMU, which is awesome when it comes to leaves), definitely consider taking a semester off.

5 years down the line, it won't matter that much. So it's not the big battle you should be fighting.

This program sounds amazing. We took 30K from a good friend and they took some equity. Can we still apply? We would be willing to forfeit on the 12K

We hope accepted teams will still apply to YC (the timeline for that will be a little bit later than the normal application period.

If you aren't accepted to YCF, you're definitely welcome to apply to YC W16 with no penalty as well -- try to make good progress though in the interim period.