Coming from abroad, part of the YC experience was, besides the program itself, renting a house in a residential area of Palo Alto where our team of 4 lived and worked. We didn’t have a car and the nearest bars & restaurants were at a 20 minutes bike ride. This set up felt like a retreat, and really pushed us to 100% focus on our startup. Basically the only things I did for 4 months is working, exercising in the surrounding parks and eating homemade food.
Had YC been located in SF it would have been a totally different experience. It’s a vibrant and exciting city specially for new comers.
However, I understand YC’s rationale: most local founders live in SF and the 1h commute is painful, the current building is not easily accessible, and doesn’t scale to bigger and bigger batches, etc.
Coming from abroad, part of the YC experience was, besides the program itself, renting a house in a residential area of Palo Alto where our team of 4 lived and worked. We didn’t have a car and the nearest bars & restaurants were at a 20 minutes bike ride. This set up felt like a retreat, and really pushed us to 100% focus on our startup. Basically the only things I did for 4 months is working, exercising in the surrounding parks and eating homemade food.
Had YC been located in SF it would have been a totally different experience. It’s a vibrant and exciting city specially for new comers.
However, I understand YC’s rationale: most local founders live in SF and the 1h commute is painful, the current building is not easily accessible, and doesn’t scale to bigger and bigger batches, etc.