Startup School

I'm currently a founder of a high-tech consumer hardware startup.

As such, in the past few years, I've been actively involved in various learning experiences related to the topics of entrepreneurship and launching own venture.

In a nutshell, here's what I think are the biggest pros of the YC Startup School (SUS) program:

1. Weekly activities that help participants to stay motivated and active throughout the entire course: being assigned to provide weekly updates on a pre-defined metric as well as being responsible for joining the weekly group office meetings were 2 of the many initiatives that were supported by the program.

2. An experienced leader who provides deep expertise in a specific domain and practical advice: our group was led by a great professional, who is not only a YC alum but also deserves a great credit and admirations for taking the quest of organizing the meetings and providing insightful tips on how to become better in what we do.

3. An access to a HUGE professional network of specialists on various topics: every week of the course there is a special "Ask-Me-Anything (AMA)" forum thread where a practitioner answers questions on matters like startup sales, marketing, formation and incorporation, etc.

These activities helped us develop and gain a first-hand experience on what is it to work in a real startup in a real environment. Being pushed out of your comfort zone and becoming a proactive entrepreneur requires a lot of discipline, self-motivation, and drive and this is one of the most important things the YC SUS MOOC taught me.

However, I believe that - although the MOOC is very well organized and being delivered to us - a few things could be improved in the next SUS batch:

1. More personalized approach: a small number of participants could have been accepted at the beginning since not every startup team is highly committed to participate but only to audit the course content. I believe the less the number is kept, the higher the quality bar of the forum discussions, the outcomes, the weekly updates, the interaction among founders will be.

2. A better communication when an organizational change occurs.

3. Investor relations and opportunities for startup founders: SUS might be a proper option for participants to get connected with investors in order to introduce themselves and their project. YC may want to provide such kind of opportunity only to the most actively engaged startup founders.

I provide the above-mentioned suggestions for improvement because I'm a critical thinker and doer. Although all the course's activities were pretty good, I believe that they can become even better. I don't strive for perfection, needless to say, but I do see in details things that might be tweaked for a better outcome.

I strongly recommend every entry-level entrepreneur to take the course in order to immerse her/himself into a great startup juggernaut and learn how to increase the chances of a startup success.

Start Up School : (The MOOC version)

This is the best place to
A) learn If you are cut to be an entrepreneur
B) question whether your product fits with what market wants
C) get inspired to do more faster
D) get funded!

Method
The course runs ten weeks touching on aspects of funding, VC, product management, startup founding dilemmas and examples of proven strategies through conversations with successful startup founders and lecture pedagogy.
The course delivery is through lectures or if you are selected for the advisor track, your company is allocted a mentor.
The first Mooc version ran through August to October this year. Each week lectures were added.
The forum allowed you to interact with the YC team, other entrepreneurs, share resources and experiences. Often Experts were invited for AMA (Ask me anything) sessions.

Information Resources
The StartUp School library is an open resource. It is advisable to go through the earlier lectures, which may take 20-30 hrs or more of your time, much before the course starts.
A lot of resources, tips and experiences are shared through these videos and to benefit completely, do watch till the end.

You have to be enrolled, not just auditing; to be able to access the current course and resources. Weekly lectures take 2-3 hours to watch and a couple more if you’d like to browse through the forum. The rest of the time you are expected to devote to your startup, with time kept aside for sleep, health and family too!

Culture
The culture at SUS is impressive, they have a “No spam” policy.
The school was quite approachable to the participants through email or forum. The lecture conversations about how to generate millions of dollars are held in a comfortable environment exuding casual ease.
To support the mooc participants, we were placed in groups of 5-10 companies.

An experience worth taking if you are a startup or aspire to be one.

Downside: The lectures remain relevant till mid course for early stage startups ideas. The last few weeks are relevant once you have found your product market fit or your magical idea.

There are five good aspects of this course: the content, the deals, access to mentors, the chance to win a bulk payment, and the on-road to larger venture capital through entry to the YCombinator accelerator.

The content is available anyway (search Youtube for YCombinator). The deals are good (USD$1000s of value in hosting deals alone, also banking and company registration in various jurisdictions, etc.) and worth the time alone. Access to mentors is limited: the majority of the interaction occurs through weekly one hour phone calls which whilst having some value are a hideously time inefficient and problematic means of checkbox collaboration I would recommend are removed from the course. In 2018 100 companies are to be gifted USD$10K, but only if they apply to YC. This is the motivation for YC, whose business model means they are always looking for 'deal flow' (ie. new startups to put through the program and pitch to third party investors).

The drawbacks to the course as taken in 2018 are largely the demand for weekly telephone calls, the generally low quality of peer companies in the 2018 intake (they made a mistake and accepted all applicants, which I believe seriously affected the course cohort), and the perhaps legacy over-fitting of course content to US scenarios and SaaS businesses.

As it happens, we applied and were flown to Beijing for an interview for YC China 2019. No news on results yet.

I would recommend taking the Techstars 'Venture Deals' course as an adjunct to this one more focused on venture deal legal mechanics.

I have taken many MOOCs to improve my skills, but this is the first MOOC I've taken to improve my life. In particular, this course got my company to private beta.

I had been working on my startup's product for a while with no specific launch date in sight. SUS changed that through social pressure. Every week there was a "group office hours" where everyone in a group has to talk about his accomplishments and what issues are looming. Additionally, there was a weekly written "status update".

With the two weekly checkins, I ran much faster than I had before; I tried to write enough features and talk to enough users to make my checkins. Y Combinator calls itself an "accelerator", which is an accurate way to describe how much faster I had gotten through the social pressure to deliver.

Additionally, SUS emphasized launching. I had been putting off the private beta, but decided towards the end of the course to just do it. I approached every potential customer I knew and got them to look at what I had so far. The feedback was staggering! People generally understood where I was headed and often wanted to help out. Now I'm on the path towards the public beta with a target date in mind.

My company probably would have been successful without SUS, but it would have taken far longer than needed. SUS has greatly improved the trajectory for my company.

This is not a course so much as a condensed apprenticeship. I was lucky enough to be assigned a group with an experienced YC alumni, Mark, who proved to be a great listener and provided very thoughtful and helpful advice.

If you're after a qualification, this is probably not for you. Completion of the course is automatic as long as you provide regular feedback on your company's progress. So the qualification on its own is not necessarily valuable: I don't think anyone else assesses whether you should be granted completion.

If you're after advice for getting your startup up and running, this is definitely for you. The lectures/videos on their own are awesome, and the advice and accountability you'll get with the group office hours is invaluable.

It's a great course, I will definitely be applying again.

Due to an email error, they accidentally invited over 15,000 people when they only intended ~3k. That mistake unfortunately decreased the quality of the community because the forum was inundated with low quality posts, so there was never really a feeling of community IMO.

The group sessions were amazing, my advisor was amazing - that part gets 5 starts from me.

The video lectures were really useful, but the first 5 weeks were a lot more useful for me than the second half.

My least favorite part of the course was the choice of video conference software - it was one of the worst I've ever used in terms of UX, but the discussions were so useful that it didn't really matter.

Once upon a time there was a little girl name sina , she's a polynesian girl ,she lives in the capital of Western samoa Apia . Sina wake up in the morning and went to brush her teeths and wash her face , after that she went and say to her mom and dad"Good morning mom and dad" her parents said"good morning".So when they were all awake Sinas uncle came to take a good air .On the next day Sina went to wash her face down a water that is same as the ocean she saw a eel was watching her while washing her face,after that Sina told the eel "Va'ai i mata o le alelo"so Sina run home and tell her dad that there is something that is following her..So her dad went and hold the neck of the eel and killed it, after that her dad and uncle went and plant the eel so that eel was turning into a big coconut tree.So Sina drink the coconut and she does'nt even know thats she is kissing the eels mouth.

THE END

For us with only a basic idea and no product in the beginning, it was the perfect fit to learn and profit from the experience of successful founders. We also liked the way YC works with their own startups and the hands-on approach they take. The video/courses were very helpful and offered a real value for a course that is free! Weekly office hours within your group and weekly KPI updates for Startupschool forced us to constantly work on the product to show progress on a weekly base and also helps because you suddenly feel accountable for your progress/KPIs. Although Startupschool ends after 10 weeks we will continue our office meetings within our group, because we love the interaction and the feedback from the group members and it really helps with the product/company you are building.