Y Combinator’s Fellowship Program is back. And its bigger and better. And here’s what you need to know about it.
In the Fall season last year, Y Combinator wanted to do something different when it came to funding and mentoring early stage startups at scale. To this end, Y Combinator devised an 8-week experiment that they dubbed The Fellowship.
The aim of the Fellowship? To have a program that helped as many startups as possible at the idea or prototype stage.
The Fellowship experiment was a success at YC. And now, the incubator has announced that it will be done again.
The Fellowship V2 program is already getting ready to fund some promising startups in its second iteration, and Y Combinator has seen spectacular results with the program, that it has announced that they’re open to applications for the third batch.
Here’s what startups and entrepreneurs need to know about some of the salient features of the Fellowship program:
Lets take a look at what each of these points mean in detail for startups.
More money will be provided per team this time around, a fact made possible by taking some equity on.
This time around, the Fellowship will provide $20k for 1.5% equity.
Equity will not be taken upfront. Instead, YC will issue a convertible security that kicks in by converting into shares if:
For startups this is good news, as this new approach allows YC to build a long-term program, a far cry from the traditionally lightweight version that the accelerator currently provides.
Iteration is the name of the game when it comes to mentoring startups. The program is continuously under evolution.
Here are some highlights of the new Fellowship program going forward:
After seeing how much popular and successful the first iteration of the Fellowship was (one week netted 6k applications apiece for the Core program AND the Fellowship!), YC has decided to make the process more streamlined and simpler this time around.
This is efficient because YC will not have to deal with separate application cycles. So now startups can apply to either or both programs via one application, depending on what stage they are at regarding product market fit.
The first Fellowship program had 22 of the 32 participating startups going on to avail the YC Core program. 6 of those companies are still part of the Winter 2016 batch.
The new iteration and format is going to start from February 1st, helping YC scale up and offering the best funding and mentoring to budding startups this time around.
If you’re looking to get into the funding game, for both the third Fellowship batch and the YC Summer 2016 batch, you can apply for it today.
Good luck startups.