We Applied to Y Combinator 100 Times. Will it work?

Y Combinator has a lower acceptance rate than Harvard.

They accept 1 in 100 applications.

So if we applied 100 times, we should get in. Right?

Well.. that's exactly what we did (in more ways than one).

Y Combinator

Every year Harvard accepts around 3% of students who apply to the university.

Stanford? They accept around 4%.

We all know how impossible it is to get accepted into these elite institutions.

But they’re a walk in the park compared to getting into Y Combinator (”YC”).

YC is the most prestigious startup accelerator in the world.

Tech giants like Stripe, Airbnb, Reddit, Coinbase and Dropbox have all gone through the program.

In fact, YC has produced more than 100 unicorn startups since it started back in 2005, a truly incredible hit rate.

It’s a Silicon Valley institution and getting into YC puts a startup on the fast track to success.

Which is why YC’s acceptance rate is just 1%.

That’s right, out of 100 applicants, just 1 is getting accepted.

YC is like a girl on tinder getting hit up by 100s of guys, but only replying to a select few.

Which got us thinking…is there anything we could do to virtually guarantee that we get into YC?

We started to hatch a plan…

The Plan

We kept coming back to the 1% acceptance rate.

It’s hard to know exactly what YC is looking for in any particular applicant, all that we know is that they’ll accept 1 in 100 applications.

Most applicants spend days or even weeks agonising over every single detail of their application.

But what if we played a volume game instead?

What if we applied 100 times with 100 separate startup ideas all in one go?

It’s pretty bold (or maybe just stupid, could be both)

But does YC accept companies that are just at the idea stage?

You’re probably thinking that they only accept applications from companies with some real traction - customers, revenue etc.

But that isn’t true.

In fact, 40% of companies funded in YC are just an idea.

How do we know?

From YC themselves.

So if we apply 100 times then mathematically we’re guaranteed to get in, right? (I can already hear the mathematicians shaking their heads, but stick with us).

100 startup ideas.

100 applications.

1 goal.

Let’s do it.

Except there’s a problem. How on earth are we going to come up with 100 startup ideas for our application?

As luck would have it we have that covered.

The Ideas

Around 3 months ago we started Half Baked, a newsletter where we come up with and share novel startup ideas.

Over the last few months we’ve shared well over 100 startup ideas with our audience. So it turns out we’ve been accidentally planning for this for months.

Now we could have just gone and filled out 100 separate applications through YC’s portal, but rather than blowing up Garry Tan’s (YC’s President & CEO) inbox we decided to go old school.

Really old school.

We made them into a book.

That’s right, we got a printing company to turn our 100 startup ideas into a book which we posted from the Irish countryside to YC’s offices in San Francisco.

Don’t believe us? It features in a Twitter video where we called out Garry on Twitter, just to let him know our application is on the way. You can check out the video here.

The Results

We sent in our physical application only a few days ago.

Applications close for the next YC batch on April 22, so we’re cutting it a bit close.

So like all YC applicants, we’re anxiously refreshing our inbox awaiting a response.

But this is where you come in.

Unlike any other YC application you can help us by sharing this article or tagging Garry in our tweet, just to give him a nudge that our application is on the pile.

The second he responds, we’ll update everyone on our application and whether we get accepted or not.

Until then, we just have to wait.