Scaling YC

• Y Combinator (YC) is talking about increasing the number of adopted companies (src).
• Started 16 years ago with 8 cases
• 20th (twice a year, so 6 years ago, I guess) 100 cases.
• Four years later, the number was 200.
• That’s where COVID19 came in and went online.
  • The number of cases increased to 300, but it worked out fine.

Why Scale Up?

• There are thousands of online applications and hundreds of startups with potential.

  • In other words, I feel we’re missing out on something that has potential even in its current state.
    • This is the same issue for unexplored junior

• The value of the network will increase if more companies are accepted.

  • That would be true if the quality didn’t go down with the expansion of scale.
    • For example, changing an event from a 2-day/1-night camp with 30 people to a 300-person event will not increase the network 10-fold.
    • If it’s not done on a scale where everyone’s face can be identified, it becomes “a place full of strangers. - Where individual recognition is possible.

Cautiously expanding

• Because when I led the development of Yahoo Mail, we increased the number of users too rapidly and failed.

What we did.

• Maintain physical space to allow for events that bring everyone together

  • I think the all-hands-on-deck event is important too.

• Split the program into smaller groups.

  • I would like to know more about that!
  • Is it about creating close relationships in smaller groups, but putting up a random edge at the overall event?
    • Small Communities

• In-house production of software to help with operations by creating a development team

  • Integrates onboarding, alumni directory, wiki, advising catalog, demo day website, Slack and Zoom

  • In-house software also plays an important role in the adoption process

    • so that the adopting team can focus on the important issue of “who to choose from the large pool of applicants”.

  • This idea was left out.
    • There is a feeling that the unexplored human resources who are volunteers are doing it on the fly, so there is a lack of continuous improvement and maintenance (unexplored junior staff).
    • I don’t think the IPA’s unexplored is run by engineers, so they can’t even make it themselves.
    • It is interesting to increase the scalability of the business through software

• More GROUP PARTNERS to advise

  • To do this, we created a visiting group partner program.

    • It’s a temporary position, not an ongoing part of the team.

  • The most recent batch had 5 visiting group partners, and last year we promoted 3 to group partner.

  • This is for my “unexplored junior mentor”.副担任制を導入したらどうか」という案で考えてたことに近いと思う
    • To suddenly become a mentor with full responsibility from zero experience is a high psychological hurdle for both the person becoming the mentor and the person asking for help.
    • So, I think it would be good to have them get involved in a casual, peripheral position first, and then they can think about whether they want to become a mentor or not after they get a feel for the atmosphere. - Legitimate Peripheral Participation

COVID19 occurred when we were approaching the limits of physical space.

• Full remote forced to do

• Surprisingly, the largest ever

• They ran more smoothly than any other batch.

  • This was done using Scrapbox because it was unexplored junior and needed to be run remotely.Unexplored Junior 2021 Boost Conference が予想よりいいものになったことを連想するな
    • As a result, the Unexplored IT results debriefing session also became a Scrapbox, and this year in 2022, the Boost Conference also became a Scrapbox! - It’s been five years since the last update to Announcement Parallel Chat.
      • It’s a nice combination of synchronous and asynchronous, so it’s no longer appropriate to call it a “chat”.

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