Thirsty Finance Official Blog

Lessons from a Y Combinator participant

March 17, 2014, 11:19 am

Based in Mountain View, CA, Y Combinator is the leading seed accelerator program in the US for early stage companies and their founders.

What is Y Combinator

Founded in 2005, Y Combinator is a competitive accelerator program for early stage companies. Running 3 month programs in the winter and summer each year, Y Combinator provides its founders capital, training and guidance, and connections to top Silicon Valley investors in return for about 6% of the early stage company's stock.

Participants of the program are often 20-30 years old, frequently college age students, seeking to live the Silicon Valley dream. Graduate companies of Y Combinator include Scribd, reddit, Airbnb, Dropbox, and Disqus. According to co-founder Paul Graham, 37 of the over 500 companies they have founded have a valuation of $40mm of greater, which in total have a value of over $13bn.

Lessons from participating in Y Combinator

Founder and Summer '13 participant Zachary Townsend has written about his lessons learned from the program, distilling the experience into 9 lessons:

1. The program is challenging, but worth it
2. Be comfortable pushing the boundaries of your knowledge
3. Avoid distractions and stay focused
4. Don't avoid all human contact while working hard
5. Always listen to paying customers and take seriously what they ask
6. Set deadlines so progress can be measured
7. All early stage companies are dysfunctional and threadbare
8. Take advice -- ego is not your friend
9. Have fun!