cornbreadfed614
New member
Yesterday, Y Combinator made its decisions—tens of thousands of rejection emails went out... and a few hundred invitations.
I’ve seen this take a lot around here: To get into Y Combinator, you need to have gone to an Ivy League school, live in San Francisco, and have had a FAANG job.
It makes sense from a certain viewpoint: YC admits a good amount of founders with those backgrounds.
But that narrative doesn’t help anyone. If anything, it discourages founders with other backgrounds, careers, diplomas, passports, etc. from applying.
I ended up finding and talking to 5 YC founders who had none of those advantages: They didn’t go to Stanford/Ivy League, aren’t from the Bay Area, and don’t have Big Tech on their resume.
Here’s the advice they had for founders who don’t fit the YC founder stereotype:
Eight Sleep’s (YC S15) Alexandra Zatarain
Alexandra is from Mexico and has a non-technical background in communications. Growing up, she wanted to work in politics, not tech. Here’s what she said:
“Almost no one in this boy’s club is trying to keep us out in a premeditated way. My feeling is I have been given an opportunity to get inside. Now it's my chance to bring other people into these circles—to do that job of diversifying. Because it won't happen on its own.”
(admittedly, this is from an Inc magazine profile but I really liked it).
Localyze’s (YC S19) Hanna Marie Asmussen
Hanna Marie Asmussen lives in Hamburg, Germany. While she lived abroad much of her life, none of that was spent at Stanford or a Google campus. She doesn’t think there’s a founder stereotype YC looks for:
“I think it's not about a profile, but rather unique insights and really knowing your customers - so I would encourage everyone to apply.”
Abstra’s (YC S21) Bruno Vieira Costa
Born and living in Brazil, Bruno has always been an entrepreneur, starting to code at 7 years old and building businesses throughout high school and college.
He believes he got in because he was the exact person YC started to serve:
“I fit some traits of "hacker entrepreneur". But besides not studying in a US Ivy League school or working in Big Tech, I think my past entrepreneurial experiences + early traction were key to my acceptance.”
Archbee’s (YC S21) Dragoș Bugulean
The Romanian founder had one thing working for him: Sheer tenacity.
“I applied 4-5 times before getting accepted. When I got into YC it was because I had tons of traction. After getting #1 on Product Hunt, having reviews on G2, and being mentioned in newsletters, we had a lot of inbound. That gave me much more confidence with the YC interview.
In interviewing and studying these founders, I realized a few things:
I published the full interviews with more stories and insights here: https://www.commandbar.com/blog/sta...hese-yc-founders-got-in-without-any-of-these/
I’ve seen this take a lot around here: To get into Y Combinator, you need to have gone to an Ivy League school, live in San Francisco, and have had a FAANG job.
It makes sense from a certain viewpoint: YC admits a good amount of founders with those backgrounds.
But that narrative doesn’t help anyone. If anything, it discourages founders with other backgrounds, careers, diplomas, passports, etc. from applying.
I ended up finding and talking to 5 YC founders who had none of those advantages: They didn’t go to Stanford/Ivy League, aren’t from the Bay Area, and don’t have Big Tech on their resume.
Here’s the advice they had for founders who don’t fit the YC founder stereotype:
Eight Sleep’s (YC S15) Alexandra Zatarain
Alexandra is from Mexico and has a non-technical background in communications. Growing up, she wanted to work in politics, not tech. Here’s what she said:
“Almost no one in this boy’s club is trying to keep us out in a premeditated way. My feeling is I have been given an opportunity to get inside. Now it's my chance to bring other people into these circles—to do that job of diversifying. Because it won't happen on its own.”
(admittedly, this is from an Inc magazine profile but I really liked it).
Localyze’s (YC S19) Hanna Marie Asmussen
Hanna Marie Asmussen lives in Hamburg, Germany. While she lived abroad much of her life, none of that was spent at Stanford or a Google campus. She doesn’t think there’s a founder stereotype YC looks for:
“I think it's not about a profile, but rather unique insights and really knowing your customers - so I would encourage everyone to apply.”
Abstra’s (YC S21) Bruno Vieira Costa
Born and living in Brazil, Bruno has always been an entrepreneur, starting to code at 7 years old and building businesses throughout high school and college.
He believes he got in because he was the exact person YC started to serve:
“I fit some traits of "hacker entrepreneur". But besides not studying in a US Ivy League school or working in Big Tech, I think my past entrepreneurial experiences + early traction were key to my acceptance.”
Archbee’s (YC S21) Dragoș Bugulean
The Romanian founder had one thing working for him: Sheer tenacity.
“I applied 4-5 times before getting accepted. When I got into YC it was because I had tons of traction. After getting #1 on Product Hunt, having reviews on G2, and being mentioned in newsletters, we had a lot of inbound. That gave me much more confidence with the YC interview.
In interviewing and studying these founders, I realized a few things:
- Most of them got rejected at least once before being accepted. Successful founders will usually weather far harder things than rejection emails—lawsuits, pivots, key team members quitting. Having resilience and tenacity are important entrepreneurial traits.
- All of them built the business anyway: Y Combinator wants to back entrepreneurs who can’t be stopped. When they were rejected by YC, these founders all built the business anyway and returned when they had traction to show.
I published the full interviews with more stories and insights here: https://www.commandbar.com/blog/sta...hese-yc-founders-got-in-without-any-of-these/