Why Y Combinator Made All the Difference
&gt; We convinced our friends in the current Y Combinator batch to let us stay in a closet at their East Palo Alto home office for $600 per month. If we spent $1,000 a month we would have 25 months of runway, which seems infinite.<p>I&#x27;m all for frugality and cost controls, but this is ridiculous. It&#x27;s things like this that brainwash a generation of fools into throwing their lives away at nonsensical ideas.<p>I&#x27;m not saying it&#x27;s never right to put it all on the line and bet on your idea. I&#x27;m saying the <i>vast</i> majority of the time it&#x27;s a terrible idea and doing something like this serially would make for a terrible existence.<p>&gt; As we walked out we remembered the National Geographic magazines. We handed each of the partners their National Geographic Magazine from their birth month and year.  I remember Denny handing PG his.<p>&gt;&gt;    &quot;PG, This is what science looked like when you were born.&quot;<p>&gt; Jessica ran after us and asked, &quot;How did you find my birthday?&quot; It turns out we got her birthday month wrong and gave her the January issue. Luckily we came with the backup. She is a February baby.<p>If I were in their shoes (YC interviewers) I&#x27;d be seriously weirded out by this. Knowing the approximate age of someone and getting an issue from that year wouldn&#x27;t be that bad. But this is just creepy.