The YC Experience
DryMerge has officially finished the Y Combinator W24 batch!
This has been an insane experience. Definitely one of the hardest periods in my life, with tons of ups and downs, wins, losses, and everything in between. I learned a ton. Here’s 3 takeaways.
1. You need to talk to, and understand, people.
I’m a pretty young founder – I dropped out of Yale to build the company and my cofounder Sam had just graduated from the University of Wisconsin. I knew very little about how people worked, what problems they had, or how to solve those problems — and importantly, I didn’t care — I figured it’d be enough to build cool technology and watch the users appear out of thin air. It wasn’t until midway through the batch that we realized ‘cool tech’ is a useless value proposition — it took talking to over 100 people from various segments like Customer Success, Support, other Founders, etc. before we had a concrete idea of what people’s actual workflows looked like, and it was only then that we began to build something valuable.
2. You really need to take care of yourself.
Sam and I have been working full time on DryMerge since September of last year. Initially, we spent a ridiculous amount of time coding with no breaks, outside social interaction, exercise, and limited sleep. Startups are really hard, but they are also marathons, not sprints. Counterintuitively, my productivity increased significantly as soon as I got back to a consistent health routine and got a full 8 hours of sleep; burnout is the startup killer.
3. You improve fastest by building with ambitious people.
Sam and I spent 3 months with people building what will become some of the biggest companies on planet Earth. Learning from them not just about their tech, but how they think, process, and work, was invaluable.
I have so much thanks for my cofounder Samuel Brashears for being incredible, and I also want to thank our group partners Jared Friedman and Nate Smith for the (genuinely transformative) advice and support.
Shoutout to every single YC founder I interacted with during the batch. Here’s a short list of people that were a joy to talk to and who I learned an incredible amount from: Adam Skrocki, Aditya Ganapathi, Aiden Bai, Alaz Sengul, Anna Monaco, Blake Rouse, Cameron Flannery, Chris Weaver, Claire Lee, Claire Oxner, Dallin Bentley, Daniel Farina, Deniz Kavi, Di Qi, Evan Kay, Hayden Housen, James Galbraith, Jenica Zhong, Jessica F., Josh Passell, Karun Kaushik, Kathleen Brandes, Martin Hunt, Matthew Wildoer, Mohamed Khalifa, Narayan Powderly, Owen Colegrove, Rachel Lee, Rosalind Shinkle, Ryan Ali, Ryan Tremblay, Sean Isom, Selin Kocalar, Sherry Liu, Umur Cubukcu, Yuhong Sun, and many more.
Conclusion
YC was a life-changing experience that taught me invaluable lessons about building a startup. By focusing on the right metrics, building something people want, iterating quickly, leveraging the YC network, and staying resilient, we were able to navigate the challenges and come out stronger on the other side.
If you’re considering applying to YC or are currently going through the program, I hope these takeaways help you on your journey. Good luck!