Stories

Just apply to YC. Here's why

Article news.ycombinator.com

Just apply to YC. Here's why

Just apply to YC. Here's why (even if you're late):

I quit my job June 30th and gave myself 60 days to build, 30 days to get customers. A quarter of the way through, I realized I'd accidentally recreated YC's 3 month timeline - so I used the August 4th deadline as my forcing function.

Results so far:

37 days of 15-hour days

Built a working SaaS platform that can be purchased today

Incorporated Delaware C-Corp, figured out cross-border taxes (I'm Canadian), filed trademark

Product is beautiful and functional

My edge: 8 years doing every role in tech - BDR, QA, dev, CSM, sales engineer, exec. At my first startup gig, I landed them a Pentagon meeting for a multi-million dollar deal 5 months in. Later built a CSM program to manage $2M ARR efficiently with over 20% YoY growth.

This diverse context means I can talk to customers in their language, then immediately translate to technical solutions. With LLMs proving context is everything - my context across the entire stack is my moat.

The reality: Without customers yet, my YC odds are slim. But I've aimed high before with remarkable results. By decision day, I'll have a feedback flywheel spinning fast enough to scale effectively.

Why applying to YC was worth it regardless:

The application forced me to get sharper. What started as "I'm building an AI tool" became "I'm building an AI-powered platform that replaces 5 different tools." That clarity alone was worth the time.

More importantly - YC's "you need customers" requirement pushed me to start customer conversations on day 45 instead of my planned day 60. Those 15 days matter and they are a forcing function for me to clear every remaining bug and get legal user agreements done ASAP. I already got Stripe Connect Marketplace setup yesterday so that was a good win.

(Yeah, I know - should've been talking to customers day 1. But after 8 years hearing the same pain points from dozens of potential customers, I knew exactly what to build. Sometimes domain expertise lets you skip steps.. and frankly I've needed to focus since I'm a solo founder and needed to build fast enough to have something worth using at least on par with competitors with core features and with my own differentiators that make me worth doing business with)

I dropped out of biochem and computer science in my second year, 8 years ago to work in tech. Built great departments everywhere I went but never felt fulfilled. It has to be building for me or nothing. Having been in customer success most recently it was frustrating to hear customer problems and not see solutions getting to the customer as fast as I'd like.. now its in my hands and lightning speed will define my companies. Aaron Epstein wasn't messing around when they said they wanted to see a $100 billion dollar company with less than 10 employees. Why not? You have the best force multiplier humanity has ever had since the invention of the computer.

Shifting to customer acquisition, next week. Let's see what happens.

Discussion 1 comments · 3 points · civitasinnovare · 2025-08-07
Open on HN
Loading the discussion…

Domain filters

Stories from these domains are hidden from every list. Subdomains match too: blocking substack.com also hides danluu.substack.com. Type a domain, or paste a link to block its site, and press Enter.

New collection

Delete this collection?

About YAVCHN

YAVCHN is a reader for Hacker News and Lobsters, with articles and discussions in separate windows or Classic pages.

Created by Paul Parks and built with PUDL.

YAVCHN source code on GitHub

Privacy policy · Terms of use

Help

Keyboard

j / k
Move down and up the story list. The arrow keys scroll whatever has focus.
Enter
Read the marked story in the article reader.
[ / ]
Read the story above or below in the list, in the same article reader. Back returns to the story you came from.
p
Pin or unpin the marked story, which keeps it in Pinned.
n / N
Move to the next or previous top-level comment in the window in front.
c
Collapse or expand that comment.
f
Hide or show the story list.
Esc
Close a menu or this help.
Access key m
Go to the menu bar. Most browsers take it with Alt on Windows and Linux, and Safari with Control and Option.
?
Show this help.

Windows

Each story opens in a window holding its article above its discussion; drag the bar between them to share the room differently. A window can be moved by its title bar, resized from any edge, snapped to a half or a corner by dragging it there, maximised, or minimised to the bar at the foot of the page. Use Window > New reader window to open an empty reader, or Story > Open in new reader window to open another reader for the current article. Docked readers keep their articles when you select another story from the sidebar. Minimized readers can be restored and reused for their site. A window's Previous and Next buttons read up and down the list in the same window.

A link in a comment or an article to another Hacker News or Lobsters thread opens that thread in a window too. A link to a single HN comment opens the comment above its replies.

While a story's window is in front, the Story and Discussion menus in the menu bar hold its commands: pinning, Previous and Next story, sorting, collapsing every thread, jumping to the first new comment. Each window also remembers where you were in its article and discussion, so a reload, or Back to a story that Next took you past, finds your place again. Closing a window forgets it.

The whole arrangement lives in the address, so a bookmark or a shared link brings it back, and Back undoes the last change. Moving between Hacker News, Lobsters, their lists, Pinned and Find changes only the list, and leaves the windows open.

The list

The pin at the start of a row keeps the story in Pinned, and the cross at its end hides it. Pinned can be narrowed by words in the title, site or author, by source, and to the stories you haven't opened yet, and ordered by when you pinned them, by points or by comments; the filters are part of the address, so a filtered view can be bookmarked. Scroll past the end of the list to load more. Domain filters, in the View menu, hide every story from a site.

Collections are named lists of stories. Story > Add to collection files the story in front into one or more of them, and the Collections feed shows them all or one at a time; the menu that chooses collections also creates, renames, and deletes them. A note is your own text on a story. Choose Add note in a story's toolbar to write one; it saves as you type. Rows with a note carry the note mark, and the Notes feed lists every noted story and searches the text of your notes.

Browsing view

View > Windowed and View > Classic select the browsing view and save your default in this browser. Window view reuses a reader for each feed. Classic view opens stories and applets as pages. Open as a page is a one-off action that does not change your saved default. Use the Windowed selector to return an article to a window. Direct page links always open as pages.

Applets

The Applets menu in the menu bar holds three tools, each a window of its own. Replies to me takes your Hacker News user name and lists the replies to your last thirty comments and stories, checking again every three minutes while it is open, and marking what is new since you last marked them read. Look up a user opens a profile on Hacker News or Lobsters, with their submissions and recent comments, as a commenter's name in any discussion does; the bar at the top of a profile looks up someone else in the same window, and Back returns to the one before. Who is hiring? filters the posts of HN's monthly hiring threads by the words you type.

They read only what the sites publish to everyone, so none of them asks for a login, and your user name stays in this browser anonymously and is included in retained applet state when signed in.

Find

Find takes any link and lists every time it was submitted to Hacker News and Lobsters, so you can read each discussion of it.

About

YAVCHN never sees your Hacker News or Lobsters login. The discussion is fetched from each site's public API; to vote or reply, follow the link above the discussion, or the arrow beside a comment, to the source's own site. Without a YAVCHN account, your data stays in this browser. When signed in, pins, collections, notes, blocked domains, and retained reading state are stored with your account and synchronized across devices. Hidden stories and layout stay in this browser. The privacy policy has the details.

Open source: github.com/paulmooreparks/yavchn. Built with PUDL.