Tips for Landing a YC Internship?

I'm a rising sophmore in university, and I really want to work for a YC-backed startup this Fall (leaning towards consumer products).

I think I have solid experience (interned at AWS this summer as a SWE, and I've also built and scaled consumer mobile apps solo to 20k+ downloads).

My main method so fair has been sending cold DMs to founders on Linkedin for startups I find interesting, but so far I've had no luck. Any advice?

6 points | by cnnadozi 1 day ago

4 comments

  • sarreph 15 hours ago
    Have you tried Work at a Startup?

    https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs

    You can apply for internship roles there (by configuring it in your profile).

    [-]
    • cnnadozi 5 hours ago
      thanks I'll check it out!
  • pliiight 23 hours ago
    cold dms and emails are what landed me (senior in hs) YC internship, and honestly just being within the community and showing passion about the product helps drastically
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    • cnnadozi 19 hours ago
      dang congrats. how long did it take?
  • rl3 22 hours ago
    >Any advice?

    Yeah, don't put YC on a pedestal. Whatever ship the supposed prestige was on sailed a long time ago, then sank.

    One would hope that would create a habitable reef, but in practice it's probably closer to an underwater super fund site.

    >...and I've also built and scaled consumer mobile apps solo to 20k+ downloads

    I highly recommend watching HBO's Silicon Valley.

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    • chistev 14 hours ago
      > >...and I've also built and scaled consumer mobile apps solo to 20k+ downloads

      >>I highly recommend watching HBO's Silicon Valley.

      Before watching it, can you explain what you meant in reference to his comment? Thanks.

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      • arnavpraneet 5 hours ago
        Not OP but I just watched the episode he's referring to - Season 3, Episode 9, titled "Daily Active Users" where the company reaches a huge number of installs before realizing that the metric that matters is not number of downloads but number of daily active users (actual users as opposed to people checking out the product once) - so he means to say that the number of downloads is less important, scaling matters at sustained use and returning customers I guess?
        [-]
        • chistev 4 hours ago
          This makes sense. Thank you.
  • mengyuxuan 15 hours ago
    good luck