Do you (generic you) think this could scale with something like a franchise model?
Consider: there is a local Startup School "Dojo" where a number of founders come together to watch the lectures.
Instead of passing through all the questions, they try to solve the problems themselves and then escalate some common problems to office hours.
I am just trying to think of ways that you -- or anyone -- could spread the startup gospel to all 50,000 and eventually more.
Someone might say: You can always start your own study group. Response: True, but you want feedback from people who have gone through a few successful startup cycles. Ycombinator has credibility.
I think it's hard. With YC, the ongoing benefit from the founders' end is really the network. I think a franchise type model would really dilute that, and you'd end up with the "real" YC and everything else.
To provide an example, consider law schools and the ABA versus medical schools and the AAMC:
There are many ABA-accredited law schools, from which a degree will allow you to sit for the bar exam in a given state. The "real" law schools (let's say the Top 14 for now, with full disclosure that I attended a much shittier law school) provide a very similar education to everyone else even down through Tier 4. The network gets you hired into the big firms with greater ease from HLS and the rest of the Top 14. Everyone else has the same law license (provided they pass the bar), but the opportunities are markedly different for most. And before any fellow Tier 3/4'ers want to flame me for this, come on, you 100% know it's true. I think I've done pretty well, but I also stopped practicing law to do it.
Now, an AAMC-accredited education, on the other hand, provides a lot more parity out of the gate when it comes to opportunity. Med school slots roughly match up with the number of residency slots in a given year, and more or less everyone matches. Not everyone gets to do Ortho/Plastic, but that has more to do with how well you did in med school, versus which med school you attended. The school itself still factors for some specialties, but not nearly to the degree that it would in law. You can be a pretty average med student and still walk out with a residency, license and reasonably good income.
> Now, an AAMC-accredited education, on the other hand, provides a lot more parity out of the gate when it comes to opportunity.
The medical guild used The Flexner Report (1910) [1] to eliminate opportunities for people to train as doctors:
The Report (also called Carnegie Foundation
Bulletin Number Four) called on American medical
schools to enact higher admission and graduation
standards, and to adhere strictly to the
protocols of mainstream science in their teaching
and research. Many American medical schools fell
short of the standard advocated in the Flexner
Report and, subsequent to its publication, nearly
half of such schools merged or were closed
outright. Colleges in electrotherapy were closed.
The Report also concluded that there were too
many medical schools in the USA, and that too
many doctors were being trained. A repercussion
of the Flexner Report, resulting from the closure
or consolidation of university training, was
reversion of American universities to male-only
admittance programs to accommodate a smaller
admission pool.
The Guild has been fairly successful at keeping the number of doctors educated just below the number of needed. Foreign-educated doctors are imported to fill the gap.
Let's say I agree with you that there is a lot of value in the network and the brand.
The question remains: is there any residual value left in the advice and the "training"?
Or, more importantly, is there significant value in the advice?
Because if the answer to that question is affirmative, then even if I agree with you, it is a worthy pursuit.
Note that value in advice is context sensitive. What might be amazing, valuable advice in 2009 may be standard stuff that you can get off many different courses in 2019.
But while there are many places where you can learn to put the customer first and do some prototyping, there are a limited number of places you can learn what is happening now. ("Sure, in 2011 you could get funding by showing your user studies, but not an investor expects the product to be smart enough to learn the user's preferences on the fly" or whatever).
The advice is probably valuable, but YC (and countless others) make the advice pretty available already if you're willing to analyze what's already written and recorded and synthesize their advice with your own facts. I say that to mean it's out there, but not with any kind of hand-holding, but I would also wonder how a decentralized/franchised type of YC would really accomplish that.
Beyond that, these sorts of things exist in many cities, they're just not called YC. I'm not against it or anything, I just think that what you're proposing exists in some form already, just without the brand. If YC could add to that experience on a larger scale, it's a great idea. Not trying to talk you out of it or anything.
1. I am in a tiny out-of-the-way place, and nothing remotely like this exists here (hint: there are three meetup groups, two of which are defunct, and one of which caters to moms who want to meet with kids).
2. It doesn't have to be YC. Who else can do this kind of thing? Onemonth.com? Udacity? They don't seem to be as current as Ycombinator.
Hi Steven, I understand you're putting together the Startup School MOC with Finbarr and Sam.
I'm a London based startup founder who loves the idea behind the course and is interested in getting the most possible from it. My interest lead me to hitting the Startup School Radio podcast where I heard this sentiment from a fellow London founder, YC alumni and ex-YC partner Harj Taggar "Just psychologically it's a big deal to be around a lot of other people going through the same thing you are, and just not feeling like you're crazy". I took Harj's words to heart and went about finding other London founders who were in a similar situation to us, told them about the upcoming MOC and started organising us into a YC inspired network of support. After one week of reaching out and attending non-stop Meetup events for tech startups (7 so far, 4 more to go!), I've collected a brilliant group of 18 founders. It turns out they loved the idea of doing the course together just as much as we did. First YC lesson learnt: build something users love and they will be very happy to engage with you. We're currently organising our first weekly dinner (it's tomorrow and I've never cooked for 18 people - here's hoping everyone likes pasta!), and our attempt at office hours will commence with the first lecture.
Any advice or assistance you'd be able to offer us would be brilliant and most appreciated. Is emailing you guys at startupschool@ycombinator.com the best place for that?
Thanks for your time reading a rather long message! Lots of love from the London YC gang to the MOC team in Mountain View.
Seriously interested in this. Was looking over the partner benefits and noticed the Clerky bit mentioned access to the fundraising beta for people who use Clerky for incorporating. So ... if someone already did the work a month ago to incorporate, and was chosen, they'd lose access to that service?
10:1 (I'm guessing) sounds like pretty a high contention ratio for a MOOC.
I'd be fascinated to see how this compares with the ratios for YC proper (as well as others like the Fellowships).
[Edit note: I misread the post originally, and got 50:1, which I found more surprising.]
Oops - I misread "several thousand" as "about a thousand". Comment now corrected. The ratio is a bit less eye-popping now, but I bet it's still high by MOOC standards.
One clarification: is the Startup Founder track form out now or will it be published later on. By the text of the blog, it sounds like it's all ready to go - but no link to such a form can be found.
Consider: there is a local Startup School "Dojo" where a number of founders come together to watch the lectures.
Instead of passing through all the questions, they try to solve the problems themselves and then escalate some common problems to office hours.
I am just trying to think of ways that you -- or anyone -- could spread the startup gospel to all 50,000 and eventually more.
Someone might say: You can always start your own study group. Response: True, but you want feedback from people who have gone through a few successful startup cycles. Ycombinator has credibility.