james_conor
New member
It is about that time of the year again when there are a lot of questions about what YC invests in and doesn't invest in. I've been trying to help out in comments, but I think my experience with YC runs contrary to the assumptions most people seem to have about YC so I thought I'd just go ahead and share my entire application.
Background: I'm the solo founder of Courier (courier.com). We build APIs that help developers easily build notifications for their products for any channel - email, SMS, Slack, push, inbox, etc. These days we're ~40 people, Series B, with almost $50M raised from Google Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Matrix Partners, Twilio, Slack, and a bunch of amazing angels.
Highlights of "but YC doesn't do that?" from my application:
Background: I'm the solo founder of Courier (courier.com). We build APIs that help developers easily build notifications for their products for any channel - email, SMS, Slack, push, inbox, etc. These days we're ~40 people, Series B, with almost $50M raised from Google Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Matrix Partners, Twilio, Slack, and a bunch of amazing angels.
Highlights of "but YC doesn't do that?" from my application:
- Solo founder
- No college degree (let alone "prestigious") or FAANG job
- Late 30s, with spouse & kids
- Zero revenue, zero customers
- No working product
- Technical founder - I could & would build it myself if I never raised a dime of funding
- Already lived in San Francisco (I don't think this mattered much then, and matters even less now)
- I'd incorporated and was going full-time on Courier whether I got into YC or not
- I had professional experience in the space I was building in