McLarenF1

Very cool concept, just checked it out. Just email folks directly or apply to the programs. It's hard to do without internal references or warm intros nowadays for bigger initial rounds. Best of luck

100%, and you're not wrong to mention it.

It serves as a filter for both us and our users to ensure quality on the platform. In the meantime, though, we're more than happy to provide an access code that makes it free for early users like you.

Send us an email and mention HN. [email protected]

Just passed 20k (21k) users across 800 diff unis this past month. Super excited, thought i'd share. We applied to YC last year when we only had a few hundred users across our alma maters (Berkeley, Princeton, Dartmouth, Long Beach) and it was a v1.0.0, so we've come a long way through scraps and word of mouth.

We're launching our v2 pretty soon as well, just passed 2800 registrations for it. If you're interested, students eat free, professional version coming soon (must have a work email).

Cheers

I spent 6 months trying to find ways to growth hack our platform. For reference, we made a platform where student builders can post their ideas, discuss plans, and launch the idea as an MVP all in one place. We then take the exposure they create for themselves and help them get hired. But something happened a few months ago that was crazy- 256 users (give or take) every 20 minutes for a few weeks. We weren't sure what we exactly tapped into, but we knew the sign-ups were coming from a variety of schools, even emailing students asking where they were coming from. It turned out word of mouth is the best policy, as a team, we haven't spent a dime on marketing or ads, we've just been hammering Reddit and LinkedIn to grow grassroots users. Heck, we don't even have a LinkedIn page for the platform yet. You're probably thinking we're a YC company but we aren't, we applied once (late) and got an encouraging message back saying "Love the team, love the idea, but apply again because we're filled up" was the premise of the answer. So we applied again actually and... radio silence. So we got to building anyway because of our conviction that students want what we are building. All of this to say, do not waste time or money and do not let external decisions sway you in a singular direction. We now have over a few thousand registered users, and we're constantly working to improve the platform to prevent churn / improve the quality of service.