50 Founders Share Why They Applied To Y Combinator

Why did you apply to YC? Good question. The brand, community, mentorship. I think the perception is that YC is the batch and the fundraising, but really there's so much more than that.

We applied to YC for the mentorship and support towards the mentorship. Top-notch advice, advisers who have your back, accountability and advice. I mean, we wanted to get roasted by Cble and the other group partners. I think, like talking to friends who did the previous batches, that direct, honest feedback and being able to, you know, quickly iterate on your business very fast in that short 3-month period was very helpful for them. And we wanted to go through that same level of pain. So here we are.

I was really excited to work with the partners. You know, it's kind of rare that a VC firm actually has partners that have gone through building a company. The best people to learn from are the people who've done it before and who've made all the mistakes. We knew some people who had gone through the experience and really just spoke about the community and kind of the support and resources that are provided in this environment.

I saw YC as a great way to have a community of like-minded people, being part of this network in this community. A great community. The community, community. You know, starting a company is hard. It's a long, arduous road that very few people traverse on and actually have the ability to persist. The amount of people that you find that can relate to your problems is very little. Now, like my friends now don't really relate, so just having that network of people that actually really understand what you're going through is super helpful.

We obviously follow Y Combinator and had looked up to it for several years. I've been reading Hacker News for a while. I've been kind of reading Paul Graham's essays since I was like 14.

Why did you apply to YC? Mostly because of the reputation, the track record and reputation, the name, the recognition, the power that comes with the YC network. I think as two female founders launching in construction and fintech, we needed all of the support and kind of raw, raw around us that we could get. I think the brand did well, right?

I think for us, we want to attract the best people in the world. We know the best people in the world want to work for YC companies, so being one helps. It gave us the right amount of money, the right amount of time, a fresh start. Three-month time-boxed target with demo day at the end. So it's just setting us up perfectly in this environment where funding is becoming challenging.

Sort of the validation that YC brings is very important, especially for founders in emerging markets where funding is not as readily available as it would be in San Francisco, for example. We're also not in the Bay Area, so we thought there'd be a huge advantage in building up a network, meeting some folks out here, and learning from some of the group partners that are here.

So we are building Gusto for the Middle East and North Africa. There are very few SaaS companies; it's very niche out there, and tech is also very niche. YC has funded some of the best and brightest minds out here, and we want to learn from that community and the network that came before us.

I've always known of YC as just a fantastic place to build something and kind of unparalleled in the world of startups.