I am not 22 and I have never gone through YC, but many friends have. I would urge any young founders to try to do the same.
The reason most successful CEOs are older is due to experience and networks. YC, even if your startup fails, gives you both in spades. It also gives you some financial stability you might not otherwise have to attempt this moonshot. If you don't have capital to spend on pay-to-access communities let alone fund a startup then YC makes a good offer.
If you manage to fail and pivot multiple times, you've just had a crash course in multiple areas, maybe even multiple industries. If you can't get lucky, you can at least get wise.
So the "you" in this article might actually apply to me. I'm older, I could self-fund my own work for quite a while, and be happy with a modestly successful business. But the "you" in this article is not general. If "you" are young, hungry, willing to sleep on floors, eat ramen, and want to pursue your dream with a possibly naive passion, then yes. You should join Y Combinator.
I don't know. I can think of persuasive arguments that financial security helps and ones that financial security hurts a given individual's chances of being a successful CEO. My intuition is that there would be a correlation but that it's not causal.
I am not 22 and I have never gone through YC, but many friends have. I would urge any young founders to try to do the same.
The reason most successful CEOs are older is due to experience and networks. YC, even if your startup fails, gives you both in spades. It also gives you some financial stability you might not otherwise have to attempt this moonshot. If you don't have capital to spend on pay-to-access communities let alone fund a startup then YC makes a good offer.
If you manage to fail and pivot multiple times, you've just had a crash course in multiple areas, maybe even multiple industries. If you can't get lucky, you can at least get wise.
So the "you" in this article might actually apply to me. I'm older, I could self-fund my own work for quite a while, and be happy with a modestly successful business. But the "you" in this article is not general. If "you" are young, hungry, willing to sleep on floors, eat ramen, and want to pursue your dream with a possibly naive passion, then yes. You should join Y Combinator.