Getting into YCombinator’s Startup School
Well everyone that applied got in 😉
A tweet by Suhail Doshi advising anyone with current or future plans of running a business to sign up for YC’s startup school was all I needed to apply to join this year’s batch of startup school. I’ve been following him for quite a while now because he tweets good stuff.
Last year, over 13,000 companies applied to participate in Startup School, ….just about over 2,800 companies were selected.
Why I applied
I could definitely learn a lot more than I know now, I have a side project I’m working on, and finally, I felt I could afford to make time out to be a part of the program now, as life goes on and more responsibilities come it kinda gets more difficult to do certain things as time goes.
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.
I almost didn’t finish/submit my application because I was looking for co-founder(s) — you get to invite members of your team to be a part of the program and knowing that YC is heavy on having co-founder(s) it looked like having co-founder(s) might improve my chances of getting in. But since I didn’t have I just resolved to submit like that and thanks for the glitch I got in — I don’t think for startup school having a co-founder matters.
How it’s going
I’m most excited about being in this program majorly because of the community — group vibrant [young] people working on solving different problems and what I can learn and people I can meet. The weekly routine is simple every week lesson certain persons from the YC community take lectures on a number of topics, the videos (average of 3) are released on YouTube for those who couldn’t be physically present to watch — Anyone can watch them.
It’s been about 2 weeks into the program, I’ve learnt a number of things, missed one office hour — group meeting, read through the discussions amongst members and more pumped to keep improving on what I’m working on.
What am I working on?
A platform(Suno) to make it easier for people to move around Lagos by providing relevant information that would enable people to make better decisions, this came out a personal pain point that I still have up till today because the current products /services don’t solve that.
What have I done?
I’ve carried out an extensive research to validate the problem and feasibility of the problem, having to iterate what I thought was the solution or best approach a number of times over the past 3 months, I’ve come up with a fairly decent product overview that highlights the value proposition and product roadmap. More recently, a landing page that sorta explains the product and to aid signups before product launch. I’m bootstrapping so I’ve been taking it slow and steady.
If you’re interested in joining me, please reach out to me “@danieltadeyemi” on any social media platform(preferably Twitter) or shoot a mail to hello@suno.com.ng. Current needs are around Design, Web/Mobile Platform Development but nevertheless still say Hi if you’re interested in knowing more.
For me, this is all about learning/trying to make something people want.
Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.
Barack Obama
Please visit suno.com.ng to sign up to receive an update on when suno launches.
Extra
There’s an opportunity for people who have something they are passionate about and are willing to commit to working on it. If you’re interested checkout Pioneer.
Thanks for reading, I hope you learned something from my post. You can reach out on any platform @danieltadeyemi and visit my website where you can sign up for my newsletter to get monthly updates on my progress or what I’m learning.
