Why Y Combinator Made All the Difference
> 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'm all for frugality and cost controls, but this is ridiculous. It's things like this that brainwash a generation of fools into throwing their lives away at nonsensical ideas.<p>I'm not saying it's never right to put it all on the line and bet on your idea. I'm saying the <i>vast</i> majority of the time it's a terrible idea and doing something like this serially would make for a terrible existence.<p>> 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>>>    "PG, This is what science looked like when you were born."<p>> Jessica ran after us and asked, "How did you find my birthday?" 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'd be seriously weirded out by this. Knowing the approximate age of someone and getting an issue from that year wouldn't be that bad. But this is just creepy.