How much is enough?

It is really hard to justify quitting and not bringing in any money regardless of how much you have in the bank and how much you spend per month.

Ie. is 24 x monthly expenses enough?

Even once you have enough saved up shutting down that influx of cash is hard.

Enough is like 15k.

I'm developing the app now, and it's an app that people would (hypothetically) pay for. So cash should flow within 2-3 months(based off prev experience of selling things online) after I launch.

and if I need a cash infusion I can consult/contract for 1 - 2 weeks.

I'm in the same boat but I'm wondering whether I ever will. I gave myself a self imposed deadline so hopefully I have enough by then!

That's a good step. I'm setting a goal of how much money I need to feel secure and pursue the idea instead of a deadline because I can always develop it (part time) in the mean time.

Thanks, I already applied last year. Not going for the gold again this year. Would rather just do it myself.

YC means that you aren't doing it yourself?

No. YC is empowering, you are definitely doing it yourself with YC.

To be more specific, my idea hasn't changed, I have personally grown (before I felt YC would 'validate' my idea) and I don't believe that I would be accepted (in other words I don't want to be rejected again). I plan to 'just do it' myself and try to use the resources (my own money) and contacts( people here in the news.yc community) available to me to create something valuable that people will pay to use.

He might be thinking about the funding + network that YC provides.

Do you think it's really enough money to do 3 month full time commitment? (I have family, not enough saving)

No, it's definitely not. So where's the YC clone that does $80k per founder? I'd bet they will achieve a significantly higher success rate than YC does. More experienced, hungrier, stable founders who are highly motivated not to return to their cubes because they already know how much it sucks.

> More experienced, hungrier, stable founders who are highly motivated not to return to their cubes because they already know how much it sucks.

I conjecture that these kinds of people will tend to be more risk averse and that the group will have a better median result (and higher success rate).

But startup successes can be massive and a better strategy might be to chase the blockbusters with younger people.

Hey New Haven, are you listening??

that amount of money is that ridicusly small in order to attract only students out of school. I can't think of anybody with solid experience using YC.

15k is enough for 3 students for 3 months. Somebody that has been working for a while, has probably a lot more money than that.

I have friends that saved money, quit, and now are doing their startup and living off their savings.

The only thing that YC might be usefull is some free publicity, and contacts, which are very useful especially if your product is of dubios value.

The founders out of school (or still in school) get the most publicity, but I'd guess that the median YC founder has been out of college for at least a couple, if not several years.

YC would probably like to think its value-add is far beyond the money it provides.

do it part-time or something. delicious started that way.