How did they know it was you? Maybe change the name and remove any links to you and the project.
And, fwiw, I'd start charging for it... that way if it takes off, and you make millions, and you do get disciplined, you probably won't care that much.
Also agree with the suggestion to study the rulebook; perhaps there's a compromise version where it doesn't violate school policy but is still incredibly useful. From the school's position, I imagine AI-enabled study apps are basically an extinction level event for the school's "services," which are basically minting a degree proving that you learned what their brand assures you did. I imagine there's hundreds or thousands of apps that enable cheating, as defined by its current rules. I imagine education will eventually evolve, but first they'll fight the many projects like yours.
Context: 3x startup founder/CEO, focusing more on impact than constant work
- Things (♥) and Reminders for todos (the latter for location based reminders or when I need to use Siri to set them), to put reminders so they are captured
- Notes end up in Dropbox Paper (for work), Mac Notes (for home, sharable within, iMessage users), Notion for specific projects
- Polymail for inbox zero, on iOS and Desktop (I'm biased, but Superhuman never stuck for me and Gmail isn't as effective, feels distracting and unintentionally designed)
- Fantastical for calendar (home, work, although I'd like to break these up more so that I can share them by project/team)
- Openphone for throwaway cell phone for orders, 2fa, etc.
- Arc for web browser
- 1Password both for work and private passwords
- News Feed Eradicator to remove/limit feed distractions on my laptop, Screen Time on iOS
- Turned off all notifications except calendar on Apple Watch
- Slack for work chat, but intentionally been spending less time here for more deep work time. Conversations seem to get more efficient if forced to happen on SMS and phone calls.
- Just bought a Remarkable, which I intend to finally use to replace carrying around paper journals for notes and journaling
- Google Suite (surprised by this, but I no longer need the MS Office Suite any more)
- Google Meet (some people make me use Zoom, but GMeet has gotten much better, no software downloads or updates, it just works and the quality is far better than it was when they launched)
- Like @ggwp99, I also plan my week either Sunday evenings or Monday mornings (I intentionally ignore email Monday mornings since people seem to volley their problems, which may not be correlated with my priorities)
- Start every day by asking the question, "what one thing would make a massive impact on my day or week or month," and start there. It's usually the thing I don't want to do.
- Workout classes 5-6 times a week, 7:30am, pick your poison... F45, Barry's whatever motivates you to leave soaked in sweat. I fought this for years since I didn't care about the superficial reasons for working out. Now I find that I am 100% energy at 9am, flushed with endorphins, and I feel better with 6 hours of sleep than I did with 9.
I feel your pain. Life seems to get more completed over time, especially when you’re managing properties, businesses, etc.
I scan everything with ScannerPro on my iPhone (which OCRs text to make it searchable) as items come in via mail etc. or print to PDF if I see myself needing something later. Scanned docs sync to Dropbox, and I move them to their appropriate Dropbox folder (e.g. property, taxes by year, biz, etc.) when I sit down at my laptop. It’s worked pretty well. I think the key is focus on the new docs, and you’ll eventually stop needing to refer to the old paper docs in your old folders (rather than trying to scan literally everything, which seems like a daunting task).
Another way around this is to not apply for the job. Find the hiring manager and ask them for advice/feedback on your experience/resume, that you value feedback more than consideration for any role. In YC we always reminded ourselves that if you ask for money, you get advice. Ask for advice, and you get money. I think this applies here. Get the feedback via email or writing so you can read it more than once or even share it with other people and have them help you interpret it for maximum growth. Ask people who you admire for advice and to look at your resume, experience, application, and invite them to be honest. And if you don’t have friends you admire (because as they say we’re the average of the 5 people with whom we spend the most time), expand your circle, finding ways to give to others with no expectation of anything in return.
You’ve started a great dialog with yourself. Congrats, and keep it going.
If you look at any value-centered or “conscious” business that is successful (there are many, I used to run a blog on conscious business), they are successful because they offer a competitive product or service (e.g. Method home products, which filled a gap in design centric, non-toxic cleaning products, then landed distribution through Target). The values and org structure exist to support the founders’ or owners’ vision and its operations, but it never creates competitive advantage.
If anyone is interested in a bank built for startups, also worth a mention is Mercury.co. Been using them since their alpha, and I'll never use SVB or Wells Fargo or any of the traditional banks again. They have obsessively good support, do everything you need them to do without having to go into a branch, are backwards compatible for everything you need from a bank account, you basically just set it and forget it, and best of all it's completely free.
Worth disclosing if you are an advisor or investor. From your Twitter feed it look like you might be?
I’m not affiliated with either, but from the looks of it Brex has no fees for wires unlike Mercury and offers a higher APY than Mercury as well. For a startup thinking of using Brex it seems like it’d make more sense to use Brex for banking needs vs something else for simplicity.
It actually makes me wonder why Mercury chose not to do YC? I honestly think an unrecognized risk here is that if you’re a startup in the business of selling a product to other startups it seems like you have more to gain (and a lot to lose) by not going though YC since you lose out on a lot of customers that’d use you just for being in YC. Now that there’s a YC company that is competing with you as a non-YC co you will lose every time to win that business.
You’re absolutely right. I’m an investor but I’d have said exactly what I did either way. Part of my being opinionated about the subject stems from having built Founderkit, which compiled terrible reviews of SVB, batch after batch. I hated seeing YC companies join just for the brand or “network” then end up completely let down by the service.
When I switched away from conventional banks (Wells Fargo in my case), I was surprised how many edge cases there are in banking, so while I love the idea of positioning a new product as a new thing, there seem to be many features and cases when I’d simply want the best bank, period, run by a team whose livelihood depends on serving me so my team, investors, and customers are never left hanging.
On the YC point, it’s none of my business why the founders didn’t do YC again. The CEO was a partner so he very likely was given the option. Since the YC deal can vary with more experienced founders or later stage companies, it simply comes down to the deal offered to your startup. And if you have great relationships with VCs and the tech community already, perhaps it’s an option you’d forgo. And while YC companies are typically excited to try a service that came out of YC, in my experience that has to do with the continued involvement of the founder(s) with with YC (on the forum, offering deals, speaking, etc.). YC founders are smart, and they’re going to choose the best tools for their business every time. But the do YC again question is for the founders to have decided, and I’m sure they considered the option deeply. Anyway, appreciate the thoughtful reply to my comment.
The challenge for Mercury is that on the surface it doesn't appear they are competitive on rates or fees, so if you are a YC founder and even if no one there is explicitly saying that you must choose a YC-backed company over one that is not when choosing the right tools for your business, there is little other information out there that would sway you to not choose the YC one, especially one in this case that has a big head start. Choosing a tool to handle your money for you takes a lot of trust, and I think a lot of startups would look at the funding, headcount/team, and brand that Brex has built and feel like it would be the far safer option, given what's publicly known. I tried googling reviews for Mercury and the only thing I could find was the Product Hunt listing, which is at 3/5 stars.
The rate comparison is actually pretty big because Mercury is only paying the 1%-1.5% on the savings account (which is frankly an uncommon account to use/need for a business), so you'd have to deal with transferring funds between a checking and savings while adhering to the legal transfer limits, whereas with Brex it's just one interest-bearing cash account paying 1.6%.
Yeah, Mercury's going to have to up their game if they want to stay relevant. I remember my disappointment when I found out I had to park 250k in a 0-yield checking account to qualify for the 1.5% yield on a savings account that can only do something like 5 transfers a month, making it a complete non-starter for running a real business. It felt like they're playing all the same old tricks on us as the incumbent banks, just with a prettier UI.
This new Brex account with 0 fees and 1.6% yield on the entire deposit with no transaction limits feels like a breath of fresh air in comparison.
The best thing I can possibly recommend is doing user research. Nothing uncovers UX issues more effectively. And it’ll be painful to watch (and not guide) if it needs fixing.
When Ian and I built Founderkit, we wanted to give founders tools to save time, make fewer mistakes. One of the things in YC that was always helpful was credits for services like Heroku, to help get started. We wanted to give this edge to more founders, so when companies reached out to us after launching, we asked them to help our founders get started by adding a deal. This is just a tiny start, and look out for a Heroku deal shortly, but we'd love feedback and suggestions.
And, fwiw, I'd start charging for it... that way if it takes off, and you make millions, and you do get disciplined, you probably won't care that much.
Also agree with the suggestion to study the rulebook; perhaps there's a compromise version where it doesn't violate school policy but is still incredibly useful. From the school's position, I imagine AI-enabled study apps are basically an extinction level event for the school's "services," which are basically minting a degree proving that you learned what their brand assures you did. I imagine there's hundreds or thousands of apps that enable cheating, as defined by its current rules. I imagine education will eventually evolve, but first they'll fight the many projects like yours.