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Kat Manalac

Startup School 2018 — Y Combinator’s free online course for startups

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Startup School 2018 - from Y Combinator is a free online course for startups.

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Kunal Bhatia

You'll be surprised with what you can accomplish in 10 weeks. I wrote about my experience in last year's Startup School here: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/startup-school#comment-484477

Pros:

The mentors (mostly YC alum) and small group sessions with other founders are so valuable.

Cons:

None

Andrew Rasmussen
Wow! Can we do it again? (serious question) I wrote a blog post about our experience from last year's Startup School. Might be worth a read if you're considering it! https://canny.io/blog/what-youll...
Steven Pham
@a13n Hi Andrew! Yes, of course you can! You'll just need to fill out the form again :)
A.Fairiz
@a13n @svkpham Seriously, we can do it again?
Ramon Recuero
Hi everyone, Startup School course is back! Startup School is a free, 10-week, online course. It’s designed for any startup founder who would like to get help through the earliest, most difficult challenges of starting a company. The course will begin on August 27, 2018 and applications are now open at StartupSchool.org. For the first time ever we are going to give $10,000 in equity-free funding to 100 of the most promising companies that join and complete the course. You can check the full announcement here: https://blog.ycombinator.com/ann... Any feedback is appreciated! Thank you
Vivan Jayant
@ramonrecuero Ooh, the website has been completely redone since yesterday! I was signed up for the mailing list for when registrations opened, but never got a notification. I guess PH is a better source of info!
Ben Tossell
@ramonrecuero applied and finally Im working on something thats full time and generating revenue! Looking forward to it! Will the course have the same lessons as previously? How will the program actually work?
Ramon Recuero
Thanks @bentossell. The course will have completely new lessons. You can also head to the content library to check past material.
Ben Tossell
@ramonrecuero oh great, have seen the past material so was just checking! :)
Ramon Recuero
@vivan Yep, we completely redesigned the site ;) We just published it today Notifications will kick in once we near the application deadlines
Shaomeng Zhang
As someone who has subscribed to the podcast and Youtube playlist.
How much of the video course will be new vs old content/lecturer/strategies? Thank you!
Ramon Recuero
@randomor 100% new. We will post the new curriculum in the next couple weeks
Naya Moss

I didn't feel comfortable applying for the classes starting on 8/27/18. But so far, ive spend most of my down time following this: https://startupclass.co/courses/..., and reading articles throughout the startup school library, https://www.startupschool.org/li....

I believe it's older material than what is most likely to be offered in the 8/27/18, but definitely very applicable. So far my favorite lecturers are the video from Steve Jobs "Excerpt from Steve Jobs’s 1995 interview with Computerworld’s Oral History Project", and Peter Thiel's "Business Strategy and Monopoly Theory".

If your serious, it feels like you are actually in class, and some lectures have students that have contributed responses recently via disqus.

Pros:

Online, steady/self paced, resources are very informative, kinda feels like free mini mba.

Cons:

none

Wasim Ullah
@nolimits @gralston Received a confirmation email for advisor track. A few minutes later, says apologies and confirms audit track. Is the second confirmed or a software error again?
Osman Erdi Balcıoğlu
Juphy has been selected 🎉 Thank You to @ramonrecuero @svkpham @nolimits
Sarah Hum

We were in the first batch. The weekly syncs were great because we could ask a bunch of questions and get feedback. They also kept us accountable to driving out metrics week/week. We also keep in touch with our mentor, a year later. A few teams, including ours, got to participate in live office hours with Sam Altman. It was a great opportunity to practice speaking and get some exposure. We wrote about our experience here: https://canny.io/blog/what-youll....

Pros:

We met several other cool founders and had a great mentor. The advice is super valuable.

Cons:

20+ teams to 1 mentor is a bit much.

Alex Circei
Pleased to announce that Waydev (https://www.producthunt.com/post...) was accepted to YC Startup School Advisor Track!
Marek Dlugos
Why don't you allow access to forum for "audit users" as well? It might be valuable for people that want to start working on a startup.
Justin Zheng
This looks great! One problem, the character counts for the application questions are really small. The What/Why answer boxes are alright but the How Far Along Are You question only allows for 60 characters.
Ramon Recuero
@legionof7 Thank you. We increased the limits. Feel free to edit your answers under Settings
Shubhankar Kahali
My dream project Hyperpage (https://www.producthunt.com/post...) has also been accepted in the Startup School Advisor Track! Looking forward to meeting everyone who applied for it.
Michael Aubry
Just applied today. Ready to get started. My buddy in San Francisco just told me about this yesterday. Glad to be a part of the community.
Nigel Burke
@svkpham I was interested to read that last year over 13,000 companies applied to participate in Startup School, and 95 YC alumni volunteered their time to advise over 2,800 of those companies. Are you able to provide any background on how you decide which applications make it through the pairing process?
Dorena Nagel

I participated in 2017 in their first batch, was really interesting to meet other founders and discuss the lectures together & apply them to our startups. I had a nice mentor, but heard from others that some were less motivated than mine. But definitively go to the party!! That was awesome :D

Pros:

Meeting other founders is so important and helped me a lot

Cons:

The experience depends a lot on the quality of the mentor

Tom Parandyk
We are so happy to be part of the YC SUS, 🤩especially that we are so close to public launch of our new tools for designers, if you interested in more info and want to subscribe to get updates https://design.views.tools
Szymon Stasik
is it possible to prepare ahead? is it known is some past video classes will be same this year so I can spread a bit the involvement?
Spencer Bratman
@ramonrecuero this looks awesome, I can see a lot more progress has been made since the last startup school from a website point of view. Here's some feedback/idea. Have a 5/10 multiple choice survey that people can fill out which tells them if they're ready for startup school. It will help you weed out who to focus on, as well as inform you the type of people interested in startup school, as well as give prospective startups a good idea if they're a good fit for the program. Hope that helps.
Ramon Recuero
@spencerbratman thank you. We have definitely thought about automating the selection process. However it is really difficult to mark a clear line. As you know, with startups things are not black and white. We ended up just defaulting to a simple one: If you are already working on an idea, sign up to get access to mentors, chance to get equity free funding and thousands of dollars in cloud credits + Stripe. Otherwise, you can get to enjoy all the startup content anyway :)
Lauren H
@ramonrecuero I submitted my application last night but edited some of my answers to the questions this morning. Will you see the latest version when you review my app?
Ramon Recuero
@lmgj99 Yes, you can edit your application as much as you want until August 13th