Y Combinator announces a new online Startup School!

Y Combinator announces a new online Startup School, with classes beginning on April 5. Anyone can sign up at StartupSchool.org for the 10-week massively open online course (MOOC). YC thus aims at teaching everyone how to start a startup and help them along the way with guidance from people who’ve started companies.

The class is designed for people to go through it with their own nascent startup, though you can also just watch the lectures if you’re interested. In either case, it’s free.

The goal is to replicate much of the YC experience.

1) There will be guest speakers covering a wide variety of topics—how to get ideas, how to build a great product, how to grow, how to build a culture, how to raise money, and more. 30-40% of these will be recorded advice sessions with startups—as they note, they’ve always heard from entrepreneurs that this is some of the most helpful content. These lectures will be recorded at Stanford University. Some of the guest lecturers include: Alan Kay, Jan Koum (WhatsApp), Patrick Collison (Stripe), Steve Huffman (Reddit), Adam D’Angelo (Quora), Alex Schultz (Facebook), Tracy Young (PlanGrid), Jason Lemkin (SaaStr), Harry Zhang (Lob), Dalton Caldwell (YC), Emmett Shear (Twitch), Michael Seibel (YC), Kirsty Nathoo (YC), Vinod Khosla (Khosla Ventures), Ali Rowghani (YC), Jess Lee (Sequoia), Aaron Harris (YC).

2) For a limited group in a special Startup Founder track, there will also be weekly online advice sessions where the participants can get feedback on their startup. The advisors are mostly YC alumni, like Daniel Kan (Cruise), Sanjay Dastoor (Boosted Boards), and Cindy Wu (Experiment).  

3) An online community via Slack and email will be opened where the participants can connect with other entrepreneurs in the class.

4) At the end of the class, participants will have a chance to share what they’ve built with a wide audience.

If you’re interested in participating with your idea, please sign up at StartupSchool.org and join the crew!