YC Fellowship launch
Altman announces the launch of YC Fellowship, a program aimed at prep-seed ventures that have not received any prior funding. The eight-week program will give out advice to participating startups and $12,000 in grants — although regular venture investments could become the standard in the future. Companies will not have to move to the Bay Area. Applications open July 27. Altman writes in a blog post:
Ten years ago, Paul Graham said there could be ten times as many startups if more people realized they could try. Thanks to the work he, Jessica, Trevor and Robert helped do, that’s become true. We think there is still room for another ten-fold increase in the number of (good) startups. But even now, a lot of good founders never get started because they can’t scrape together a relatively small sum of money at the idea stage. So we’re going to try a new experiment, which we’re calling the YC Fellowship. This is targeted at teams that are very, very early…Although this is an experiment, if it seems promising we’ll iterate quickly just like any good startup. Our goal at YC is to enable as much innovation as we can. Someday if it works, we’d love to fund 1,000 companies per year like this.
Thanks for helping the early stage startups and the minorities, we need more of this kind of program
This is so cool. I wonder if we’d still qualify ? We’ve already seen some revenue !
I hope those $12K help someone who uses it wisely to do something cool.
In exchange for what ?
I think it’s obviously a case by case thing. I’m working on a software startup at the moment and I’m currently a solo
founder with no employees. For someone like me $12k could add a really long time to my runway. I don’t think YC intends for the money to fund a startup long term or anything like that and that’s why it’s a grant rather than an
equity purchase. But they’re also looking for startups in the idea stage and not really ones that are further along.
Good to see more opportunities for super early entrepreneurs around the world.
Seems promising! Brilliant opportunity.
I see this as an experiment for Altman to scale YC. Unless there are more good mentors around I don’t think it will work because YC seems to be diluting its manpower and community.