I applied to Y-combinator and didn’t get in. (Part 2)

Here’s what I learned from the experience.

“Siri, play Innerbloom Radio on Spotify.”

If you read Part 1 of this post, you’ll understand what setting I’m in at this exact moment. Hint: It’s COVID and saunas are closed.

Alright, where did we leave things yesterday? Oh yeah, the Bangkok and Y-combinator part of the story. Cool, so there I was… just kidding! I’ve always told myself to steer away from that type of opening line, but come to think of it is the most appropriate opening given the story. So, there I was *wink*, it my last working day in Amsterdam before the Christmas holidays, but not before we had to fly to Bangkok for the annual affiliate marketing conference.

This conference was the place to be if you wanted to do business and build relationships in the industry. Wait, allow me to clarify, what happened after every day of the conference was when you’d close the best deals. After each day of tending to unwanted “interested parties”, joking around with industry friends, meeting random new people at the show, and warming up the people you were interested in doing business with, everyone would head back to their hotel to freshen up and that’s when business took off.

Dinner was round 1. It involved inviting and entertaining your business partners at a great restaurant in town. From there on, we’d meet up with yet more people from the industry at a partner’s party in one of the clubs in town. On one of the nights of that trip we went to a friend’s party at Singh Singh club in Soi Sukhumvit 45. I arrive there, greet people, notice my danish friends at the back of the room, and head over to them. One of my friends and client introduces me to his business partner and we immediately hit it off. This dude was interested in shit that I loved — from biohacking to entrepreneurship, business podcasts to prototyping ideas, and from having a few drinks to exercising religiously.

At one point in our conversation he mentioned that he’d been participating in the YC Startup School Program. I knew about YC on a high-level, but wasn’t the most well-versed in everything they were doing and their founders. However, I was intrigued. He proceeded to explain how they hold a free 6-week course that guides you through the entire process of getting the barebones of a start-up, you’d learn of the mistakes many start-up founders do when starting off, and you’d get connected to aspiring founders from around the world.

Fast forward to when I was heading back from Bangkok to Amsterdam. I was on the plane back to Amsterdam and my mind was going crazy thinking about my idea and all the ad hoc processes and “solutions” I had to learn and implement to get as far as I’d gotten by then. The prospect of learning first-hand from experts in the venture capital, entrepreneurship, and start-up founders themselves was just what I needed to accelerate the pace of development and learn through others what I’d have to otherwise learn on my own. It was a no-brainer and I had made up my mind.

I got to my apartment in Amsterdam and went straight to my laptop to check YC’s site. I saw they had the option for the Startup School or the option to apply for YC’s accelerator program. (Side note: when it comes to these decisions I tend to let my ego get in the way and go for what’s more challenging to prove to myself that I can.) It was all straightforward. You apply to YC on either of the two tracks: Startup School or YC’s Summer 2020 batch. In the case of YC’s official accelerator program, if you were selected you’d receive 125k dollars in return for 7% of your company. You’d move to Silicon Valley for three months during which you’d develop your idea with the guidance of the YC experts. It would all culminate on a demo day, where you’d have a few minutes to pitch your startup idea to an audience of the top investors in Silicon Valley.

I was hooked and my decision was made: I was going for the big ticket, I would apply to YC Summer 2020 batch. Now, here’s when things get interesting because (1) the application didn’t appear to be that daunting and (2) the deadline was March 16 and I was at the start of December, so that gave me a solid 3 months to complete the entire application process. Did I underestimate the situation? 100% percent YES! I began to research past applicants and see if I could find their application to YC, while the majority are not public there were groups created on Reddit and on a platform called Openland, where YC participants and applicants had a group to help future applicants in the, unbeknownst to me, gruelling and super competitive application and selection process. My obliviousness went so far that I didn’t even know that there would be over 7.5K applicants per batch and even harder to imagine that the number would double to over 15K applicants for that year’s batch. Thinking back to it and writing this now, I realise how unprepared and blindly optimistic I was. I would’ve gone for it in any case, but I should’ve done a better job at knowing the playing field before making the commitment.

From that moment on, I went into a supercharged version of myself. On my last post I reminisce on my family trip to Italy and how I would wake up between 3:30–4 am to work before my family would wake up. That was merely the surface of the behaviour I adopted. The following three months I pushed myself to consume, digest, and produce as much material, content, design, and growth as I could. I had never gone head-first into an idea or project as I’d done with my project and YC application. The closest thing to that was the decision to leave my home, Honduras, to come to Europe back on July 7, 2015 with 3K euro on my pocket, no job, and a shit ton of hopes that the universe would play in my favour. I must say, the first month didn’t point to that since after 2 weeks of working at UPS unloading and loading containers from 3 am to 8 am in the morning, I got fired! That’s a story for another time.

Alright, now I want to tell you about how I burned over 5K euro in less than 3 months, found a co-founder, lost a co-founder, quit my job, used up my savings, built a base of 300 early adopters through a viral campaign, had to rethink on-the-go what my next moves would be, and what I learned in the process

But for now, I leave you with some cool and chill musical vibes for your day!

Oh, and remember — LESS IS MORE!

FM