Step 3

I’m going to assume you’ve completed Step 2, and that you are reading Step 3 from beautiful San Francisco. Step 3 involves becoming one with Y Combinator. For those of you not familiar with YCombinator, YCombinator is a mythical entity that turns shmucks like you into successful startup founders in exchange for a measly 7% of your startup, which in your case will be worth at least $70,000,000.

Beautiful downtown San Francisco, just 1 block from your $3000, 100 square foot closet.

For this $70,000,000 worth of equity in your soon-to-be Unicorn, they will provide you with access to a number of inspirational speeches, free snacks (mostly coffee and Soylent, and sometimes caffeinated Soylent), and most importantly, $150,000 in cash, which is just enough to cover your rent, food, taxes, and expenses for the next few weeks of living in San Francisco.

But to cash out on this sweet deal, you will need to study up. Specifically, you will need to memorize every Paul Graham essay. All Unicorn founders have memorized these essays, and you will be quizzed on them frequently and when you least expect it. You will also need to nitpick and criticize every single article submitted to HackerNews, YCombinator’s forum.

Pictured: you at the birth of your child, being quizzed by Paul Graham (posing as a doctor) about Paul Graham’s essays.

This is a crucial step that many founder mess up — remember Digg? MySpace? Pets.com? No? It’s no coincidence that none of them criticized every single article on HackerNews.