• 申请：

Y-Combinator一年有两期，每一期3个月。1月到3月是冬季班，6月到8月是夏季班。

Y-Combinator每一季会收到上千的申请，包括国际申请，曾经也接受过来自中国的创新企业。他们没有投资的公司目标数量，也从来不公布录取的名单，据说录取率不到3％，但总体数量随着申请的增加也是不断增长，去年夏季班的学员公司超过80家。他们看好多人创业团队，特别是2到3人的。最不受欢迎的是创始人只有1个的，因为Paul不相信1个人创业能有多大潜力。

递交申请，需要通过他们的网站注册一个账户，回答申请表里的问题。你不需要有一个完备的商业计划书，或者已经注册成公司。但你要回答一系列关于你未来企业基本架构的核心问题，每个问题尽量不超过120个英文单词，包括创始团队每个人有多牛，你们的想法有多么与众不同，为什么人们需要你的公司，你未来要如何挣钱等等。

虽然Y-Combinator接受各行各业创新公司的申请（包括非营利组织），但是更集中在网络／手机应用。

想申请的请看这里： https://apply.ycombinator.com/

• 你将获得什么？

首先是资金，从2014年夏季班开始，Y-Combinator会给每个入围公司12万美元的启动资金，置换7％的股份。

Y-Combinator不会为你提供办公空间，但偏向你可以在这三个月搬到硅谷。每周2的晚上会有固定的晚餐，每次会邀请一个嘉宾，可能是其他创新企业的创始人，投资人，甚至大型科技公司的高层。每次晚餐上，每个学员都会总结一周当中的收获，同时嘉宾会给学员分享自己独家的创业故事。Y-Combinator称这些演讲都是“Off the table”（不公开），绝对比媒体中报道的故事更加有趣和使用。晚餐后常常会有嘉宾参与到一些公司的投资，以及宣传中。http://ww2/large/57798950jw1eoskltymfuj20p00e23zn.jpg

Y-Combinator还设有固定办公时间，现在有包括Paul Graham在内的12个全职导师和8个半职导师，每期学员可以随时来提问，寻求帮助。另外还提供两个律师给予免费的法律指导。同时Y-Combinator培养过的创业者也将成为学员们的外援，Y-Combinator会安排进行一对一的指导，以及一些额外的活动给创业者们最大的帮助。

Y-Combinator对创业者的指导帮助主要在两方面：一是在想法，除了帮助你把你的“Big Idea“一起梳理得更加清晰，还会带着你去发现把想法变成有增长的企业中需要回答的问题的答案。二就是告诉他们和投资人进行展示，融资和谈判的很多技巧。

在每一期快结束的时候，Y-Combinator会安排所谓的“Demo Day”（展示日）。届时，会有各路投资人到场，现在每场得规模据说已经达到450个。Y-Combinator表示并不是没有创新企业都需要几轮融资，但是如果你想，它建议学员在展示日后，去联系和在展示日认识的投资人。同时未来还会又不定时的活动，建立强大的创业者团队。

• 成功率

Y-Combinator很牛，但也不是经受的所有公司都一定会成功。同时Y-Combinator也承认，就算被他们拒绝也不代表这些公司就是没有潜力的。根据2013年的数据，经过Y-Combinator后的公司在“展示日“后成功融资的比例时72％，最后的成功率还有大的多。不管从哪里起步，创业依然是个高风险的事。

难怪硅谷流行这样一句口头禅“Fail fast,fail often”(快速失败，经常失败）

• 这里分享一个2012年冬季班的学员公司的成功申请表，给那些有兴趣的同学一点参考

• （或者英文阅读小练习）：

• Your YC username:

  KMinshew

  
  

  Company name:

  The Daily Muse

  
  

  Company url, if any:

  http://thedailymuse.com

  
  

  YC usernames of all founders, including you, KMinshew, separated by spaces.

  KMinshew ACavoulacos MMCreery

  
  

  YC usernames of all founders, including you, KMinshew, who will live in the Bay Area January through March if we fund you.

  KMinshew ACavoulacos MMCreery

  
  

  What is your company going to make?

  The Daily Muse is building a massive community of job-­seeking women to rival The Ladders. We curate high cache job opportunities across fields that reflect the varied interests of today's professionals: finance, start­up, tech, media, fashion, and global public health, just to name a few. In addition to pay-to-­post career opportunities, we offer smart content and soon to be ­launched professional development courses. We want to corner "career" for professional women.

  
  

  For each founder, please list: YC username; name; age; year of graduation, school, degree and subject for each degree; email address; personal url, github url, facebook id, twitter id; employer and title (if any). Put unfinished degrees in parens. List the main contact first. Separate founders with blank lines.

  • KMinshew; 25; graduated 2008; Duke University; B.A. in International Relations and B.A. in French; kathryn@thedailymuse.com; http://www.tumblr.com/tumblelog/nyc­to­kigali; facebook.com/minshew; @KMinshew1; The Daily Muse, CEO

  • ACavoulacos; 25 years old; graduated 2008; Yale University; B.A. in Political Science; alexandra@thedailymuse.com; facebook.com/acavoulacos; Twitter ID: @acavoulacos; Employer and title: The Daily Muse, COO

  • MMcCreery: 25 years old; graduated 2008; Harvard University, B.A. Chemistry & Physics; (University of California San Francisco; PhD in Biomedical Sciences); melissa@thedailymuse.com; http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=14623 ; @melissa_quino ; Employer & Title: The Daily Muse, Editor in Chief

  
  

  Please tell us in one or two sentences about the most impressive thing other than this startup that each founder has built or achieved.

  • In 2010 KMinshew worked on the national strategic plan for the introduction of the HPV Vaccine for the Government of Rwanda, including the development of a comprehensive plan for cervical cancer screening and treatment. As part of her role, she supported negotiations between the Rwandan Ministry of Health and Merck that led to a quadrupling in the amount of vaccine donated by Merck, from 500,000 doses to 2 million, and the introduction of the vaccine to Rwanda in April 2011 as the first sub-Saharan African country to offer it via the public health system.

  • After millions of Americans lost their retirement savings in the 2008 economic downturn, ACavoulacos created the first holistic model that computed by age and income group ­ how far from retirement security each demographic segment would be on the day they retired. With that complete picture into our (dire) future, she was able to model the effects of 10 potential laws being considered by a lobby in DC, to ensure that bills presented to lawmakers would in fact have the positive impact on our country that they hoped. The best of those are currently making it through Congress.

  • Under MMcCreery's leadership, our previous start­up PYP Media was named a Forbes' Top Website for Women and lauded for the sharp content and avid following it had earned. She was also the former Executive Editorial Editor of the Harvard Crimson.

  
  

  Please tell us about the time you, KMinshew, most successfully hacked some (non­computer) system to your advantage.

  I spent 77 days traveling around the world and only paid for a hotel room once; instead I stayed with friends from the year I spent living abroad, former colleagues from my time working at the UN, families I met en route, and a few shared hostel dorms when the first 3 options fell through. I spent time in Oman, China, and Ecuador as well as France, Australia and Sweden, and a lot of places in between. In Belize, I once managed to talk my way onto a plane that departed 12 minutes after I arrived at the airport. Traveling light and cheaply is all about hacking systems, finding work­arounds, turning strangers into allies and not giving up no matter how zany things get. I freaking love that stuff.

  
  

  Please tell us about an interesting project, preferably outside of class or work, that two or more of you created together. Include urls if possible.

  For several months in 2009 and 2010, all three co-founders co-­led a team that tackled the 10­-year strategic review for Sesame Workshop (aka Sesame Street)'s South African production, Takalani Sesame. We created a strategy and operations project that focused on key strengths and weaknesses of the organization's partners (broadcasting, production, and funding), as well as areas for Takalani's growth in the future.

  Starting in September 2010, all three cofounders began working on a venture called PYP Media, which was the predecessor to The Daily Muse. We had two co-founders at the time who were not a good fit, which led to a split in July 2011 after which we formed The Daily Muse (see below).

  
  
  

  How long have the founders known one another and how did you meet? Have any of the founders not met in person?

  All three founders met while working together at McKinsey & Company in the summer of 2008. We have worked together on numerous McKinsey-­related projects throughout 2008, 2009, and 2010, culminating in the Takalani Sesame 10­-year strategic planning and review described above.

  In September 2010, KMinshew and ACavoulacos founded their first company together, PYP Media, with two other ex-­McKinsey women. We quickly brought MMcCreery in as our first employee and Managing Editor. PYP grew quickly and won a Forbes' award for Top Websites for Women under Kathryn and Alex's leadership and Melissa's editorial direction, but some jockeying for control by founders #3-­4 led to the disbanding of the founding team (pre-­funding) and the formation of The Daily Muse in July 2011, with KMinshew, ACavoulacos, and MMcCreery as co­founders. It was a painful and an expensive learning experience but a great one for us to have so early on. Needless to say, we've learned some pretty incredible lessons from the failure of our first company.

  [For reference, we worked closely with Bo Yaghmaie at Cooley LLP to make sure our new company was 100% legally kosher, and we're good.]

  
  

  Why did you pick this idea to work on? Do you have domain expertise in this area? How do you know people need what you're making?

  We picked this idea because we are our customer: ambitious, confident women who don't want to find our next job on Monster.com; who are equally likely to consider a tech start­up as the Gates Foundation as a hedge fund; who spent years searching for smart content that doesn't dumb down career issues for women.

  Among the members of the founding team we have domain expertise in recruiting; in content creation and promotion; and in directly engaging with women ages 20-­35. What's more, we've been working in this specific field (job opportunities and career advice for professional women) for the last year, and the response from women has been unbelievable. Our user testimonials sometimes verge on the fanatical.

  
  

  What's new about what you're making? What substitutes do people resort to because it doesn't exist yet (or they don't know about it)?

  Members of our target demographic are currently finding jobs primarily via personal connections and occasionally via high­-touch recruiters who charge 20% of starting salary per hire; a small minority uses sites like the Ladders and an even smaller percentage turns to Monster.com, SimplyHired and the like.

  The skewed ratios of men to women on these sites is reflective of the research on transactional vs. relationship-­based networking, which is why the content arm of The Daily Muse is extremely important towards attracting and retaining a large pool of qualified women.

  No one is currently tackling the "smart content for women" space, and it's one we can begin to capture with front runner advantage. Marie Claire is releasing a special issue on career, which they are consulting us about, and sites like ForbesWomen and Excelle at Monster.com are desperately trying to capture the younger demographic. We have it and we're growing quickly.

  
  

  Who are your competitors, and who might become competitors? Who do you fear most?

  LinkedIn will always be a fearsome player in the recruiting space, but its approach and interface will always leave room for other players in the space. The Ladders is another likely competitor, though we believe they are limited by the banker­-esque brand they've created and the fact that many young professionals do not solely define themselves by the ability to make over a certain salary; more and more, individuals are drawn to tech start­ups or global development in addition to, say, corporate strategy.

  On the media end, Marie Claire is moving sharply in our direction (professional women, career content) but because of its strategy and the limitations of its mass-­market, print-­focused model, it is likely to become more of an ally than a competitor. We are in frequent touch with Marie Claire's publishers to talk about how we can work together.

  LearnVest is another potential competitor, should we decide to move into personal finance or should they move strongly into career.

  
  

  What do you understand about your business that other companies in it just don't get?

  We understand the demographic, inside and out. Most of the people trying to hire these women, market to them, and entertain them are well outside of it. They may have the "fashion advice for women" angle down pat, but we have a deep and nuanced understanding of the ambitious professional that makes our fans rabid and our voice distinct.

  
  

  How do or will you make money? How much could you make? (We realize you can't know precisely, but give your best estimate.)

  We have a clear step-­by-­step sense of how we could make $40M/year and market data that suggests a much larger opportunity if we can figure out how to monetize it. Currently, we're interested in:

  Recruiting:

  - Email newsletters targeted by industry containing a mixture of content, paid job postings and sponsorships;

  - A dynamic job board organized by industry and location, with additional predictive abilities telling candidates who possess certain skills or are looking in certain niche areas to consider [ X ] job in an unrelated field which fits a similar profile;

  - A large resume database which recruiters and hiring managers can access and search for a fee, again with predictive and skills-­based abilities to suggest that a certain professional in finance might be a very good fit for a lead dev role at a burgeoning start­up

  (To go bottom up, we believe email newsletters can get a $250 CPM for targeted job listings and a $2500 finders' fee for successful hires; job boards for our demographic can charge roughly $350/post, and resume database access runs roughly $1000 per recruiter per month ­ more if predictive functions are added. Top down, there are 7.5M women in our demographic changing jobs every year. If the top 10% are worth $20,000 each time that happens, the overall addressable market for recruiting alone is $15B.)

  Training & Professional Development:

  - Direct to customer or business / white labeled training program (a natural extension of our core content which we've already been approached about by several companies)

  (To go bottom up, we believe individuals will pay $15 per course or, as LearnVest & Lynda have demonstrated, $120-­$250 for a year of access to courses. Businesses, on the other hand, spend over $55B every year on training and development in the US alone, and this market has a 9.8% CAGR).

  Advertising & Branded Content:

  -Examples here include content branded by Dove's self esteem campaign; sponsorship of our "Finance" vertical by CitiCards, or an AmEx and Dell sponsored Women's Symposium

  
  

  If you've already started working on it, how long have you been working and how many lines of code (if applicable) have you written?

  Our beta site is up and running at http://www.thedailymuse.com with a minimum viable product based on attracting the userbase necessary to hit the ground running with our job products. We are launching our first career newsletter Wednesday with a paid placement by Uber and are working on the outlines for our predictive job products.

  
  

  How far along are you? Do you have a beta yet? If not, when will you? Are you launched? If so, how many users do you have? Do you have revenue? If so, how much? If you're launched, what is your monthly growth rate (in users or revenue or both)?

  We had 22,000 users to our beta in September with 25-­30% growth predicted for October. We've done our first revenue deal, a recruiting contact with Uber, which was a flat fee for the job posting / "Career Concierge" newsletter plus a performance bonus for each hire sourced through The Daily Muse. That newsletter and contract begins the day after tomorrow (10/12/11).

  
  

  If you have an online demo, what's the url? (Please don't password protect it; just use an obscure url.)

  We don't have an online demo for our more sophisticated job products yet; they're still in the whiteboard stage.

  
  

  How will you get users? If your idea is the type that faces a chicken-­and-­egg problem in the sense that it won't be attractive to users till it has a lot of users (e.g. a marketplace, a dating site, an ad network), how will you overcome that?

  We use content as a lead gen to attract users: our content is currently syndicated out via Huffington Post, Forbes, Business Insider, and Inc, and we're working on closing a video deal with HuffPost that will drive additional thousands of users back to our site. One of our strategies that has been very successful has been having inspirational and influential women write original content for The Daily Muse.

  Arianna Huffington wrote the lead article for our launch in September, and she's been followed by women ranging from Cindy Gallop and Rachel Sklar to the head of the U.S. Geological Survey. Marissa Mayer from Google and Nicole Lapin from CNBC have agreed to write as well.

  We've also agreed to a partnership with Refinery29, a global fashion newsletter with 500,000 subscribers, to provide information & plugs for The Daily Muse to all of their subs in November in exchange for awesome tailored career content from us. If it goes well, we plan to extend it.

  
  If we fund you, which of the founders will commit to working exclusively (no school, no other jobs) on this project for the next year?

Myself and ACavoulacos will be working exclusively, with no other commitments, for the next year. Probably the next five years, whether you fund us or not, but we hope you do fund us! MMcCreery is getting her PhD in Biomedical Sciences and is therefore only 1/2 time on the company, a fact that is reflected in her equity stake. She was full­time for the first several months and we've seen smooth sailing with the combination of her as Editor in Chief and our one FT employee Adrian as Managing Editor. All of our Associate Editors (8) and writers (75-­80) are volunteers.

For founders who can't, why not? What level of commitment are they willing to make?

See above.­­ Melissa still spends 40 hours per week running Editorial for The Daily Muse, which frees up myself and Alex to concentrate on everything else. In the rest of her time, she is getting a PhD in cancer research at UCSF.

Do any founders have other commitments between January and March 2012 inclusive?

Nothing other than previously described above (MMcCreery).

Do any founders have commitments in the future (e.g. finishing college, going to grad school), and if so what?

Nothing other than previously described above (MMcCreery). We are otherwise all yours!

Where do you live now, and where would the company be based after YC?

We live in New York City, and the company would be based here after YC.

Are any of the founders covered by noncompetes or intellectual property agreements that overlap with your project? Will any be working as employees or consultants for anyone else?

No, we will not be working as employees or consultants for anyone else, nor are any of us covered by noncompetes or intellectual property agreements.

Was any of your code written by someone who is not one of your founders? If so, how can you safely use it? (Open source is ok of course.)

We brought Alec Turnbull, a close friend of mine and a great web dev, onto the team in June to build our minimum ­viable ­product. He's a great guy but in September we mutually decided that his heart wasn't in staying with us long term, so we've been helping him find his next move and he's been helping us interview developers. We have narrowed the field down to two highly awesome, amazing female developers, one of whom we would like to bring on as soon as we close a round. (We like male devs too! We just happen to be finding females at the moment).

Are any of the following true? (a) You are the only founder. (b) You are a student who may return to school when the next term starts. (c) Half or more of your group can't move to the Bay Area. (d) One or more founders will keep their current jobs. (e) None of the founders are programmers. (Answering yes doesn't disqualify you. It's just to remind us to check.)

E

If you had any other ideas you considered applying with, please list them. One may be something we've been waiting for. Often when we fund people it's to do something they list here and not in the main application.

Nope :)

Please tell us something surprising or amusing that one of you has discovered. (The answer need not be related to your project.)

91% of women feel advertisers don't understand them.

Also, honey badger don't care.