Just apply to YC. Here's why (even if you're late):

I quit my job June 30th and gave myself 60 days to build, 30 days to get customers. A quarter of the way through, I realized I'd accidentally recreated YC's 3 month timeline - so I used the August 4th deadline as my forcing function.

Results so far:

37 days of 15-hour days

Built a working SaaS platform that can be purchased today

Incorporated Delaware C-Corp, figured out cross-border taxes (I'm Canadian), filed trademark

Product is beautiful and functional

My edge: 8 years doing every role in tech - BDR, QA, dev, CSM, sales engineer, exec. At my first startup gig, I landed them a Pentagon meeting for a multi-million dollar deal 5 months in. Later built a CSM program to manage $2M ARR efficiently with over 20% YoY growth.

This diverse context means I can talk to customers in their language, then immediately translate to technical solutions. With LLMs proving context is everything - my context across the entire stack is my moat.

The reality: Without customers yet, my YC odds are slim. But I've aimed high before with remarkable results. By decision day, I'll have a feedback flywheel spinning fast enough to scale effectively.

Why applying to YC was worth it regardless:

The application forced me to get sharper. What started as "I'm building an AI tool" became "I'm building an AI-powered platform that replaces 5 different tools." That clarity alone was worth the time.

More importantly - YC's "you need customers" requirement pushed me to start customer conversations on day 45 instead of my planned day 60. Those 15 days matter and they are a forcing function for me to clear every remaining bug and get legal user agreements done ASAP. I already got Stripe Connect Marketplace setup yesterday so that was a good win.

(Yeah, I know - should've been talking to customers day 1. But after 8 years hearing the same pain points from dozens of potential customers, I knew exactly what to build. Sometimes domain expertise lets you skip steps.. and frankly I've needed to focus since I'm a solo founder and needed to build fast enough to have something worth using at least on par with competitors with core features and with my own differentiators that make me worth doing business with)

I dropped out of biochem and computer science in my second year, 8 years ago to work in tech. Built great departments everywhere I went but never felt fulfilled. It has to be building for me or nothing. Having been in customer success most recently it was frustrating to hear customer problems and not see solutions getting to the customer as fast as I'd like.. now its in my hands and lightning speed will define my companies. Aaron Epstein wasn't messing around when they said they wanted to see a $100 billion dollar company with less than 10 employees. Why not? You have the best force multiplier humanity has ever had since the invention of the computer.

Shifting to customer acquisition, next week. Let's see what happens.