An open letter from the founders of Scribd to those of you who didn't get into YC

44 points

19 years ago

"The best place to work, if you want to start a startup, is probably a startup. In addition to being the right sort of experience, one way or another it will be over quickly. You'll either end up rich, in which case problem solved, or the startup will get bought, in which case it it will start to suck to work there and it will be easy to leave, or most likely, the thing will blow up and you'll be free again." - PG

So you didn't get into YC. We all know it probably isn't your fault - PG admits that with so many applicants, the choice becomes increasingly arbitrary. The question is: what do you do now? If you're a hacker, you're probably weighing three options: (1) Start your startup anyway; (2) Work for Google, Apple, etc; or (3) Work at someone else's startup

If you want to do 1, more power to you. It would have been easier with YC, but if you work hard you could still pull it off. Unfortunately, too many great programmers see only options 1 and 2, and forget that the next best thing to starting your own successful startup, is getting in on someone else's while it's still young. It's also a great path to eventually starting your own company.

Although Scribd now has 8 people, working at Scribd is a lot more like doing your own startup than working at a big company. This is true in terms of the work environment: at Scribd you'll work with a bunch of YC hackers, you'll have a huge impact on the product, and you won't have to deal with management or bureaucracy. But - and this is often overlooked - it is also true economically. Valuations are always debatable, but the cash value of the equity you would get in Scribd is actually higher than the cash value of the equity you would get in a new YC startup, which is only about $125K. At Scribd we'll either all get rich or we all won't, and you'll participate in that.

Scribd was originally started by the merger of two Y Combinator companies, and since then, everyone who has joined has either been a YC applicant or someone who started a company themselves. YC startups often "cannibalize" each other in that way, and it makes sense. We want to keep this trend going, and right now we need help more than ever to scale our insanely fast-growing website and to develop the technology that is going to revolutionize the way that documents are shared on the Web.

If you are interested, send us an email at [email protected], or just call Trip's cell phone at 617-335-6685. Feel free to get in touch about anything, even if you just want some advice about what to do now. For more details about working at Scribd and our uncorporate culture, check out our jobs page: http://www.scribd.com/static/jobs

Sincerely, Trip, Jared, and Tikhon

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