Learnings from YC Start Up School #SUS2018

You’ve Graduated from Startup School 2018!

Whoopee! It’s been a while since I threw that graduation hat; it's not every day that you get to one-degree separation from Sam Altman or Paul Graham or be any of the amazing partners at YC.

Y Combinator famously known as YC is a seed accelerator program. Startup School is the online pre YC program, where you get a near to similar experience, despite being a remote member. Incase you have not come across them, you’ll get a bunch of Lectures on Youtube ‘How to start a start up or ‘How to win’ or ‘How to find product market fit’.  

I stumbled upon a ton of Startup School lectures last year, when I was channel surfing on YouTube, wanting to learn a thing or two about running a startup. In July this year, I remember a conversation with my co-founder Kashi about applying to Startup School, ‘Would you know how many apply and get in?’  ‘I dunno, doesn’t matter, does it?’ came that rhetorical reply with a smile. So, we applied! And then we waited, and then it happened. 

The infamous Y C Startup School tech glitch, ‘A reject notification’ our hearts sunk. Very quickly followed by the ‘You are now in the Startup School! Advisor Track!’ OMG! From the 15000 applications, we were the chosen 4000.

As we look back, the 10 weeks behind us, we thought it would be useful to share our experience of being part of Startup School 2018.

So, here goes. 

Orientation to Start Up School

Our first learning was to learn a bunch of new terms- allocation to a group (Group 40), AMA (Ask Me Anything) where you get to interact with experts, Forums for peer learning, Office Hours and Demo Day!  A very informative lecture by YC partner Adora Cheung and Geoff Ralston kicked off the rest of the sessions. (You can still catch this on YouTube).

Office Hours:

As part of the Advisor track, our group was associated with a YC Alum.  Chris Field, Co-Founder of Clerky was associated as our Office Hours Advisor. Our Sub group got the red eye hour to Office Hours, where 11:30 PM TO 12:30 AM IST. So, think of it like a bunch of Video chat windows on your screen, where a Sub group of 8 start up co-founders dial in and share progress and learnings (this could be on customer acquisition challenges to partnerships to how do I go to market and many more founder dilemmas. 

‘What happens in Office Hours stays in Office Hours’, so we are under an unwritten oath to not share what we discuss.  But something which landed on me, is an analogy about what Start Up Founders can learn from Trapeze artists. ‘There is a safety net below, and they do know it. But as start up co-founders, you are not thinking about falling into that safety net, but how to get higher and higher.’  

Start Up School also got us into this habit of recording week on week progress. This is one practice we would be taking forward, which keeps us true to our milestones.  

 Pitch Practice:

Pitching is probably first nature to early stage start ups. And be it in friends and family circles, I just can’t stop myself! Much to the amusement of my Familia J

Start Up school makes you do this a lot more. So, we had this rule as part of Office Hours ‘Start by introducing your start up’ to your group. A ton of peer and mentor feedback would follow, which would just force you to re look at how well you pitch, and what can be done a lot better.  Goes something like this 'Our Start up Fitbots helps mid sized enterprises build internal talent pipelines. The way we do this is by personalizing careers for employees' At the end of Week 10, you cannot help but get better at this!

 Watch out for the weekly Lessons:

A set of well curated lectures were hosted live at the Y Combinator office at San Francisco. The Startup School team records the lectures and uploads them every Tuesday for the rest of the members to view. So, each week, we have like a bunch of lectures to view.  Top of my list are Ooshma Garg’s Business model pivots and ‘How to get Users’ by Gustaf Alstromer.

Check out these awesome videos on You Tube; For the aspiring startup peeps, It’s a treasure trove out there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tA5J79on7Vg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9ikpoF2GH0

Finally, Demo Day

All start ups get to pre record their pitches and upload it for demo day, where your pitches get voted. Going before the camera and re playing your pitch gives a ton of learnings on how to improv.

Am sure each of us took away something from the program; as my Co Founder Kashi puts it ‘This one kept us going’.  A BIG SHOUT out to the YC team for a great experience, to our Sub Group 40 team and to our mentor Chris.

We totally recommend those who are out there to apply to the next batch.  

Hope you found this useful and ignore the doodles J