New Project — 200 days to YC #W1

My friend invited me to start a new project called “200 Days to YC.” I was so scared, because 200 days of consistency is such a big commitment, even my day writing practice I’ve done is only 90 days!

He told me “go big or go home.” But essentially, it’s just some weekly fun call that we take about shit and discuss about ideas and problems.

Practical thoughts on building my vision

After learning about San Francisco this year, I realized there are several routes for me to work on my learning problem.

• influencer route: The tokenization project I made is pretty solid with learners so I know that if I continuously do it. I can be the next 3blue1brown. I can start by accumulating a big audience first.
• company building route: SF has lots of incubators, and I started to accumulate connections, plus our incubator does have a program to coach and support early founders already.

Within the company building routes, there are also two more routes I can take

• Incubator routes (like YCombinator): As far as I know, there are two routes that I can potentially take to get into YC, Great credentials with mellow products or freat products with fewer credentials. As we are in the top 5% of our YC application in the last batch even without any users, I know that if I can find a good co-founder with big tech background, we have very high chance. However, the downside is that product and vision misalignment causing cofounder breakup might happen in the middle. As for the second route, I will need a half-baked product with some sort of revenue stream ~5K.
• Finding investors: It is really possible to pitch and directly raise in SF too, I know lots of founders who can give me intros. It feels a bit scary and stressful so I feel I resist this idea A LOT.

I feel so happy when I’m writing this down because all the insights come from all my failures and experiments last year!

The biggest challenges — 28 weeks of consistency

You thought my biggest challenge was building a company? No, haven’t even been there yet! My biggest challenge is doing this new project for 200 days! How is that even possible? Do you mean doing something else EVERYDAY while I’m working on the busy startup from Monday to Sunday? That’s insane!

200 days is ~28 weeks, so I came up with a 28 weeks curriculum for myself. Let me show you the first week curriculum in my mind.

• Week 1: Understanding Startups and Identifying Problems
• Learning Tasks:
• Familiarize yourself with the startup ecosystem and YC’s philosophy.
• Learn about the Lean Startup methodology.
• Output Tasks:
• Generate a list of 10–15 problems you’re passionate about solving.
• Recommended Resources:
• Book: The Lean Startup by Eric Ries.
• YC Startup Library: YC’s Essential Startup Advice.
• Video Series: How to Start a Startup.
• Practical Exercises:
• Problem Brainstorming: Spend time each day noting down problems you encounter or observe.
• Discussion: Talk to friends, family, and colleagues about challenges they face.

Though 28 weeks sounds so scary, “spend time each day noting down problems you encounter or observe” sounds like a fun one!

What I learned this week — Criteria for my solutions

Today, a friend and I brainstormed the thing I wanted to build. I learned that the things I wanted to build contain these 5 elements.

• in-depth learning: Quantum country, How might we learn
• creativity & fun: pika, speedrun companies (An incubator focusing on game or gamification, brilliant, trees Esther made
• extendibility & flexibility: heptabase, the curious interface, one million checkbox from eieio
• decentralized learning (lack of predefined curriculum): buildspace
• potential to replace formal education system: buildspace, Minerva

And then I realized I really cannot imagine anything that hit all of these criteria till today. But at least I figured out the criteria.

Idea for the week — Black mirror for learning

This week, we came up with a new learning idea — Black Mirror for learning.

Traditional curriculums can feel limiting, so what if we gave learners more flexibility? Imagine the learning content as a “black mirror,” where everyone receives different experiences tailored to their learning style, much like how astrology categorizes people.

For example, when learning engineering, we all follow the same standard Jupyter notebook — predictable and uninspiring. But what if, instead, each learner was guided through a unique storyline in their project? After completing a problem, they would be assigned a new narrative or problems to solve based on their learning style, creating a personalized and dynamic learning journey, just like in Black Mirror.

Rating for this idea

• in-depth learning: Yes!
• creativity & fun: Yes!
• extendibility & flexibility: Have some possibilities
• decentralized learning (lack of predefined curriculum): A bit
• potential to replace formal education system: Not sure

I still think 100 days is my max consistency ahhhh. Weirdo friends, 28 weeks of consistency is a bit too hard for me so please don’t hold me accountable haha

Or is there any way that I can make this work? Like creating a gamified or beautiful visualization for consistency? Or request a winter vacation from my friend?

Maybe I’ll request some vacation.