No Ivy-League Experience
I am Nigerian, with a co-founding team that is Nigerian. We have no ivy-league experience but we really believe YC will make our founding experience a lot more fun. Need morale boosters to finish my YC application what do you guys think? I think there are three things that concern me and none of them is a lack of "ivy league" experience. 1) If you need a morale boost to complete your application then I don't think you are properly self motivated with your current idea/team to apply 2) If you believe that VC funded startups are a fun time, then I don't think you have the correct framing of the SV startup experience. 3) YC accepts only about 2% of applicants and of those they do accept only about 2% are from Africa. That already puts you potentially in a tough spot and while they accepted a good number of African applicants in 2023, the 2024 winter batch apparently had only 3. I hope I am wrong and I wish you all the best of luck but my experience is that VC backed startups are very stressful particularly for the founders who now have to answer to disproportionally powerful board members who typically are looking for multiplicative not additive progress. This is good feedback. Two of us have raised in the past and have some experience working with VCs. I understand how stressful it can be, we do prefer the YC communal approach to things and will very much want to be a part of it. Best of luck my friend. Can you share your general area your team is working in? For example I know the African fintech scene if very vibrant Thank you Uberman, we are working in developer tools at the moment. Fintech seems a bit saturated imo. By no Ivy-league i mean we have only attended local varsities.