Joey Primiani | Pioneering the New Internet Revolution

I recently submitted my business plan and beta models to Y Combinator.

“Y Combinator does seed funding for startups. Seed funding is the earliest stage of venture funding. It pays your expenses while you’re getting started.

At Y Combinator, our goal is to get you through the first phase. This usually means: get you to the point where you’ve built something impressive enough to raise money on a larger scale. Then we introduce you to later stage investors—and in some cases even acquires.”

They accept applications twice a year. Current businesses include: Reddit, Infogami, Kiko, Loopt, ClickFacts, TextPayMe, Snipshot, Inkling, Flagr, Wufoo, YouOS, PollGround, LikeBetter, Thinkature, JamGlue, Shoutfit, Scribd, Weebly, Virtualmin, Buxfer, Octopart, Heysan, Justin.TV, I’m In Like With You, WriteWith, SocialMoth, Xobni, SlapVid, Versionate, Adpinion, Anywhere.FM, and Fuzzwich.

For my case, they “were very reluctant to accept proposals with only one founder, because we think starting a startup is too much work for one person.” They obviously don’t know who I am. 🙂

Great company with great innovative startups. I wish them much success. I also hope to submit again to get as much help starting up my company. Of course they are not the only ones, but it was great to see that they were very specialized in mostly new media and social networking sites. With the amount of talent, expertise and investors rotating around the company it can only help.

One valuable piece of information I gathered was their application forum. Similar to my entrepreneurship club pitch forum, there are several key questions that make sense to think about carefully before entering development. For example, “What’s new about what you’re doing?”, “What are people forced to do now because what you plan to make doesn’t exist yet?”, “Why would your project be hard for someone else to duplicate?”, “How will you make money?”, and more.

These are very important questions to master when explaining your business idea. I notice I get so caught up in my ideas that by answering these questions lay out the basic blueprint for anyone to clearly understand what and where you want to go with the idea. The heart of most business models are the same, it is more important to think about why you want to create a business and solve a problem rather than going into detail about what you are creating. It creates a bigger picture.

For some cases, I do not believe all companies need a formal business plan. Some people can see a void that needs filled and can spend very little money developing it and launching it. Similar to Kevin Rose and Digg.com. But, in order to take the web startup to the next level and start asking investors for help, obviously they need to show a solid business model, competitive analysis, estimated income and growth, etc.

This Thursday, I will be heading out to Chicago for the National Collegiate Entrepreneurship Organization. I attended last year, and had a blast. I met a lot of big industry leaders one on one, including the founders of Quill (later sold to Staples), Invisio, iRobot’s Roomba, Jimmy Johns, and more. I also want to meet Ryan Allis, who is a big inspiration, he is a 23-year-old tech entrepreneur and author that started a very successful company now grossing $8 million in sales. There are also several workshops focused on web startups. Plus, I petitioned a bill to our school so we get everything paid for! I’ll be reporting back from the conference, stay tuned!