This content was created by Max Brun. This content was uploaded by Max Brun. This is a YouTube video titled "Going Through Y Combinator As A Marketplace Startup" (uploaded 2023-09-04). The excerpt is a spoken discussion between two participants: Speaker A (moderator) and Speaker B (Aziz), who identifies as a two-time Y Combinator founder. Aziz discusses founder psychology and building conviction, weighing the choice of joining an accelerator like YC versus raising independently, and argues YC’s value in pushing hard questions early and de-risking the early stages of a startup. He emphasizes being honest about long-term commitment to a company and that YC helped him surface important challenges early.
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And Aziz, maybe we'll go back to you on this, which is kind of around your company financing strategy and everything, right? Yeah. So these days, I would say we tend to maybe— we'll invest in like 1 or 2 YC companies a batch, something like that. But it's not our usual focus. However, I know for you, you guys went through it, seemed to have a great experience. Talk about, would you recommend that for people? What's your take on going through an accelerator versus trying to raise money yourselves? And just talk about that kind of early decision.
Yeah, that's a good question. So I'm a 2-time YC founder, so maybe a little bit biased here. You're a super fan. But yeah, clearly I think I'm a super fan. I think the If we go a little bit back into the psychology of a founder as I think about it when I start a company, I think one of the initial fundamental things that I want to do is build my own conviction. And as a founder, you absolutely should know that fundraising and hiring and doing really nice campaigns and collaborations, they should always be a means to an end. And that end should be building a healthy business. And one of the hardest questions you have to ask yourselves when you have an idea is, do I want to work on this for 15 years? Because that's what it takes to build a really good, strong company. And it's not an easy exercise. And I think one of the best things I learned, I think, from my previous experiences starting companies is to be very honest with myself. And I don't think it was an easy journey for me to separate the excitement and the data points that get you excited and potentially convince others to hear your story and follow it to actually convincing yourself. And I think one of the really good things that I recommend YC for in general is they have a good energy of pushing some sort of hard questions very, very early on. So many successful companies will not go through YC and that's totally fine. One of the things I like about them is when I reflect on how I brought this psychology, I felt that I got a lot of this from the first time I did YC. So, when I got the opportunity to decide if I want to do it again, part of it is, look, building a company is extremely difficult. There's 100,000 things that can go wrong. And if YC can de-risk one element, which is potentially upfronting a lot of the hard questions for me and putting upfront is going to de-risk some of it, then it was a clear yes. For me, and this is generally how I frame it to people, but I think it's worked really, really well for me in the past.
