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Ask HN: Applying to Y Combinator if your company is already profitable.

by emiranda on 8/30/11, 2:47 AM with 13 comments

My partner and I started a mobile game company about 4 months ago. At the moment we are generating enough money to be able to pay ourselves a decent salary every month and have a couple grand left over to re-invest in our company. All while working full time at the company.

Would it still be worthwhile to apply for Y Combinator Winter 2012? We would love to accelerate our startup up to the point were we have more employees and are able to have more resources in order to develop more games at a faster rate. This is both mine and my partners first startup, we are both in our early 20s (24 and 23).

  • by martinshen on 8/30/11, 3:05 AM

    I have no specific experience with YC... but something I've observed over the years is:

    [length of time to decide to apply/email reporter, incubator or vc etc] is equal or greater than [length of time to actually apply]

    ... make your decision after you get in. At the very least the YC questions make you formulate better elevator pitch answers.

    For gaming people like yourself... why not CrowdStar?

  • by garry on 8/30/11, 4:22 AM

    As YC matures, more and more startups come with a fully built out product, traction, revenue/earnings. It's no mistake that these are the companies do find themselves accelerating their progress.

    Feel free to email me if you have additional questions!

  • by nibo on 8/30/11, 3:34 AM

    I spoke with a few YC alumni.In your case I think it would be great to apply. PG and YC partners are looking for companies they can mentor but they don't want to baby-sit you. Since you are already profitable, I suspect you already know what you are doing and you simply need some guidance. Moreover if you have a good product I think your chances to get into YC are quite good. Getting to YC is becoming harder and harder and "just having an idea" is not enough. Since you already have the product AND are profitable your chances are quite good.

  • by templaedhel on 8/30/11, 6:41 AM

    From "What Happens at YC": http://ycombinator.com/atyc.html - "If you think you might need YC, you need it. If you think you might not need YC, you need it. If you are ABSOLUTELY SURE you don't need YC, you probably still do, but maybe not."

  • by emiranda on 8/30/11, 4:42 PM

    The sentence "All while working full time at the company" seems to be unclear to some. What I meant here is that I'm working full-time at the game company that I started and mentioned in the first sentence. I am not working for another company at the moment, running thestartup is my full-time job.

  • by ashleyreddy on 8/30/11, 4:23 PM

    Check this out http://37signals.com/bootstrapped . There are people running companies without outside funding and are probably pretty happy doing so. Applying to YC is time consuming: making videos, writing bios etc.

  • by dgunn on 9/2/11, 6:01 PM

    I think Alexis said it best: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1938709

  • by icey on 8/30/11, 3:43 AM

    Do you think your chance of success / profitability will increase by a percentage greater than YC takes?