I believe in the product. And although I have been involved in startups previously, I've either worked for one or haven't been in a position to found one as serious as this. My personal risk is greater and I naturally question it more.
And you are right, I can still move to SF :).
How about you? Have you already founded a startup? With or without YC or anyone else for that matter? And why?
How about me. I'm founding a startup with a friend, we've been bootstrapped for 6 months.
We applied for YC, but didn't get in.
We dont need YC -- but it would have been great. We had other offers on the table (good offers, they wanted us to go thru YC and they'd invest with/during/after) -- those offers still stand post rejection so we're going to close very soon. Some of those investors are pretty big names in the tech world, so we're really excited.
If I was to informally tell you the roadmap of our startup it'd be: (now) small round (~$50k) of funding, prove our worth and take a larger round (~$300k) in ~12 months, go from there.
I'm 21, my co-founder is 28. We're young, we haven't done startups before -- we understand its a huge risk, so we're trying to break it down so everyone wins.
I like to think in a year we'll be in exactly the same position as if we had taken YC. We'll see, I really want to email them saying "we just closed Series A, wish we could have worked together, no hard feelings and I'd still love to buy you guys beers"
And you are right, I can still move to SF :).
How about you? Have you already founded a startup? With or without YC or anyone else for that matter? And why?