I'd swap 2 and 3. We'd rather fund good people in a small market (since they can change what they're doing) than bad people in a big market (since they can't change themselves).

And since 1 is not usually something applicants can dictate, it comes down to 3.

To me the most important thing is whether the founders seem impressive. If I find myself thinking "these guys know what they're talking about, and they get stuff done" I give the application a good grade. So the most valuable thing you can do in the application is to convey that.

If there's something you can tell about yourself that demonstrates you're an effective person, tell us about it, whether it has anything to do with this idea or not. And if you have some insight about the problem you plan to solve that shows you understand it deeply, be sure to include it. We ask leading questions designed to elicit both; you can probably pick them out pretty easily.

Sometimes people can change themselves. That just tends to be much less likely than changes in traction or market.

It's not less likely, it's just much much slower.

It's both, really.

so if we don't have phenomenal growth (ie "$100k in revenue in your first month or 10k users in 24 hours") we still have a chance?

Does anyone know examples of YC companies who are in small markets? I was under the impression they only liked larger markets (since they are more fundable by vc's and the like).

Of course you don't need phenomenal growth. Most of the best companies we've funded didn't have it when they applied.

Looking for YC cos in small markets could be misleading. By the time you know they're YC cos, they've been exposed to YC and so would have been encouraged to reconsider their market if they were in a bad one. There may be some that are still in what seem to be small markets, but if so that's probably because they're in the Altair Basic phase.

A few like Wakemate and Octopart come to mind where they seem to serve small markets now, but it's easy to see how they could branch out into huge adjacent market space - not necessarily as obliquely as Microsoft starting from Altair Basic, more like Amazon starting out as just an online bookstore.

In that case, what's your #1? Some ideas like Wikipedia, SocialAV might have sustained with very thin initial user base.

I can see how it can be misleading looking at small market YC companies. Though I'm still wondering what's considered "small" by YC's standards. Someone mentioned Octopart and Wakemate as smaller market companies, but as a consumer/retail play it seems still like a decent potential market.

This is a long about way of me asking if people consider the adult entertainment market small/big. That's where our startup is "disrupting." It's one of those industries where you hear talk of the "billions" being made, but not many share their numbers. One of the few well known exits in the adult space was AdultFriendFinder being sold to Penthouse for $500 million...and interestingly they grew the site from little to no outside money.

You always have a chance, but certain things will definitely improve your odds. If you don't have the users/revenue, focus on your market size. Without either of those, showcase your amazing team. If you don't have an amazing team...spend 6 months locked in a basement coding, and become an amazing team.

Browse through http://yclist.com/ to see if any companies were small-market. Version 1 doesn't have to cater to a giant market, but you should have a plan to get there eventually (and be able to concisely express your plan).

One shouldn't spend months in basement coding, instead go and execute something simple, release, get metrics and feedback and learn how to iterate with an aim at product fit. With experience and good examples of launched products, that would get you an amazing team and good track record.

(Usual caveats: I'm not a YC partner and I'm just generalizing based on my limited observation.)

The "things the partners generally look for" seems very big VC and doesn't actually match up with what I've seen.

When YC says they prefer to back smart founders they mean it. You should either be demonstrably smart (winning-the-putnam, twice, smart), or have amazing traction, or both.

Since you've probably had a lot of time to prove you're smart the best advice you can follow now is this: start hustling to build your business.

(Incidentally "gets shit done" is probably the most common trait I've noticed across YC founders.)

If you're thinking of quitting your job to do a startup, you should probably quit. If you don't have a cofounder, finding one should become your fulltime job. Etc. Generally find what's going wrong and work around it.

YC alum are amazingly responsive and willing to help (keep in mind they're really busy). You should definitely seek them out during the process.

See also: http://ycombinator.com/howtoapply.html

I'd recommend every applicant read it twice, parse out the 'rules', then iterate over each question in their application ensuring that each 'rule' is applied. And remember:

PG: I suspect for every group we invite to interviews, there are one or two more that are just as good but that we pass over because they don't manage to convey how good they are.

Thanks for pointing that out; I meant to include it at the end and completely forgot. In there now!

I was (lord knows why) asked to do a series of brief how-to business videos for SoCal startup DocStoc and one topic I did was Writing an Effective YC Application. Pretty much reiterates everything from this article and PG's comments in video format: http://www.docstoc.com/video/96634238/writing-an-effective-y...

I guess I'm going to have to add "entreposeur.com" to the list of domains I wish I'd thought of first.

The least emphasized, and I think most important, point here is that the application will help you better define your business and why you're doing it with your current cofounder(s). Much like an AngelList profile, I'd say it's worth a few hours of your time, if only for the exercise of thinking hard about your business rather than just executing on it.

Absolutely, I should have emphasized that more (maybe an edit). Being forced to confront each of the questions in the app is an amazing exercise for any startup and will do wonders for you direction and understanding of the business.

Ironically, I submitted my app with the some sort of thinking, and my startup is trying to compete with them.

Actually YC partner Harj said at the HN London meetup last Thursday that traction is less important than the team. I was surprised by that, as it seems to be against "make something people want". As a single unknown founder, traction was my only bet. If my personality matters more, then it's down to whether they like what I say about myself.

Cool article...very specific to YC which is nice. Not to sound negative, I feel like I've heard a lot of this stuff before (like when I used to follow Guy Kawasaki on twitter), but its relevance to YC apps is especially useful.

Thank you.

Most people who are in the Bay or follow YC happenings should be familiar with most of this, but I thought it might be helpful to new applicants or those teams who don't know YC alumni and could benefit from a bit of inside access.

Any demand for adding a panel session "tips for applying to YC" to the startup conference (next one is in Los Angeles)?

I think that is a great idea; as jconley pointed out, the YC app is first and foremost a great way to deep-think about your startup and how you'll be successful. Any time spent understanding the reasoning behind the questions and how to concisely what you're building can only improve your company.