What I Learned Going Through YC as a 17 Year Old
I have a lot of thoughts about this. I&#x27;m glad he&#x27;s seen some success! That&#x27;s great for him! I just don&#x27;t know that all or even much of what he&#x27;s learned is transferable<p>&gt; I was able to get a job in SF with a single cold email and zero connections<p>This seems like sheer dumb luck. For every one of him (or you, if you&#x27;re reading this) there&#x27;s a lot of people who thrash and struggle. I went through 80+ job applications before I got one offer last search, and that&#x27;s less than I thought I would need<p>&gt; You don&#x27;t need experience to get started<p>This one seems situational. Best example I saw recently (and I can&#x27;t find the twitter thread, I&#x27;m sorry) was weirdly shaped food startups. The large point was that there are stores for oddly shaped food, they&#x27;re just ones rich people don&#x27;t normally shop at (WinCo anybody?). And there are uses for damaged food, like juice. Sometimes you think you&#x27;ve found a niche, but you should still research it a bit<p>&gt; Silicon Valley doesn&#x27;t care about your background<p>Sure it cares less than other places. It still cares a lot. It&#x27;s not everywhere people would support you that way. My silicon valley high school wouldn&#x27;t have allowed folks to try and make scheduling software for them, not a chance.<p>&gt; Failure is acceptable<p>This one, I somewhat like. Avoiding failure is definitely prioritized. I think maybe we should emphasize fallback plans maybe? Some people just can&#x27;t afford to fail completely unless they have people who will support them through it