Before you go to YC, read this essay from leanstack

Written in 2020

Just as I’m getting prepared to complete my application to YC for dietician.ai, I stumbled upon leancanvas from leanstack.com and this 3-part essay titled In Search of Unicorns.

Re: leancanvas…just wow.. what an awesome tool to put into my toolbox. I started using it right away and it immediately gave me some key insight that I didn’t see before (revenue streams).

The essay about incubators has fundamentally changed how I feel about YC. I might not even complete the YC application now.

Reading In Search of Unicorns has some light on something I couldn’t quite put my finger on when I was watching many of the YC videos on Youtube:

  1. There seems to be an unhealthy sense of urgency at YC to get the startup to move as quickly as possible.
  2. The few “office hours” videos I watched were entertaining, but if I were in the founder’s shoes, I would feel quite unsettled.

But maybe YC is right, and leanstack is wrong. The article at leanstack seems to suggest that its the founder that is transformed, not the startup.

Have you been to YC? What do you think? Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

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