How to ace a YC interview | Hacker News Reader

How to ace a YC interview

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111 pointsjmilinovich23 comments

> "Make sure everyone speaks"

From personal experience in a YC interview: My cofounders and I decided we would speak and answer in turns. The problem we ultimately ran into after a few minutes was that one of our interviewers asked, "so who is the CEO?" Inside, we knew that was a bad sign (I believe I've heard PG say that it's a very bad sign).

It probably wasn't the only reason we were ultimately rejected, but it certainly didn't help. Looking back on that experience, one of the things I would have changed would be the author's next bit of advice:

> "Generally speaking, there will be one person that answers most of the time"

[Edit] People have asked why I felt that being asked "so who is the CEO?" was a bad sign: https://youtu.be/JK3sVFs6_rs?t=175

> "It's really bad if we're talking to a bunch of founders and we can't figure out who the leader is..."

Again... This was one YC interview a number of years ago, and I of course have no real insight into the final impression we left on our interviewers. Just something that I remember not feeling great about in hindsight.

Why is asking "who is the CEO" a bad sign?

It is like asking who is the organ grinder. Implies that the rest of the team are monkeys. That aint a good sign.

Just to be clear, I'm asking why the original commenter believes that this is PG's opinion and a source backing this up.

To be honest, bit odd that YC wouldn't know this before even inviting a startup in for an interview; or if agility is the goal, nametags with first names that match a brief covering roles, responsibilities, etc. with headshot on the sheet too.

If someone is using the question to express something indirectly, I would rather someone directly express what they're thinking.

Personally, not knowing who's the CEO in my opinion isn't an issue; in my opinion, partners not understanding what's being said, being unable to answer a question, not agreeing, giving conflicting answers, etc. - are issues.

Hey nxzero,

I saw PG say this once in a short interview I saw on Youtube. I'm looking for it now. Will update when I can

[Edit] Found it: https://youtu.be/JK3sVFs6_rs?t=175

Wow, awesome; adds a lot of value adding it to your original comment, thanks!

Presumably it's because the leader of the group should be apparent without having to ask. If everyone's leading, no one is.

- "Be heard, not seen."

- "Be seen, not heard."

- "Be seen, be heard."

Which requires the more control, trust, etc.?

In our interview, it was very apparent that I held the most knowledge and expertise, but still left some of the answers to my co-founders. The partners did ask us who the CEO was too. I think the question is more about whether or not you've established who the leader is, and given it thought. The bad sign is when none of you is really sure.

Yes, exactly. The body language is often more telling than the words :)

It's not a bad sign at all if YC interviewers ask "who is CEO?"

YC is famous for asking that question to make sure all founders wholeheartedly agree on the answer, not because they think the the other founders are any less valuable. As a founder, there are always going to be times when serious disagreements happen and at the end of the day someone has to be the overruling vote. One of the most common killers of startups is founder disputes and it's important to know who is CEO so that the company has a chance of still surviving if a founder leaves.

For example, if you have a highly technical product, the CTO might actually do way more of the talking in the interview but both sides better agree on who is CEO. It's not at all a bad sign if it's unclear based on who is the dominant speaker.

Has YC never heard of a flat organization that makes decisions by consensus rather than a top-down way?

A flat organization cannot rapidly scale. And sometimes there might not even be a consensus. Having an overriding vote, albeit rarely, is crucial to break deadlocks.

This is not to say that flat organisations are bad. But I don't think they are a particularly good fit for the scale YC companies work at.

Deciding by consensus is ponderous. Very few decisions are important enough to waste that much energy.

"Who's CEO" is good shorthand for "do you know who's responsible for what kind of decisions?"

Not necessarily -- you can have the really big decisions made by consensus in a horizontal fashion while still delegating much of the decision-making power. No one's arguing that everyone in the organization sit down for every decision. There's no need for everyone in the organization to sit down and decide whether candidate X is a good hire (though that might work just fine for really small teams). Delegate as much authority as possible to the actual experts in the domain and the stakeholders of that decision. As decisions affect more and more people, figure out ways to involve everyone in that decision making process in a horizontal rather than a vertical way. Asking "Who's responsible making sure the code is high quality and we're not taking on too much technical debt? or "Who's responsible for making sure we're in legal compliance?" or "How are you going to resolve a disagreement about which vendor to use for XYZ" is a different question entirely than "Who's in charge of everything?"

Are there many examples of such organisations being successful startups?

I guess Buffer comes close enough.

I have no idea of YC internal procedures. I will comment a bit on the concept of flat organizations.

IMO, it's much more efficient if each individual focuses on his domain and provides a single interface for the stakeholders for that facet of the enterprise.

The overhead of communication and context synchronization become ginormous as the organization grows and the issues affecting the enterprise grow in number if every decision is made on a flat basis. If the context synchronization is not made then the decisions made by the group will be less informed than that of an individual. For informed decisions, it would require then that each individual become an expert on the single issue discussed. This would effectively negate the main benefit of small teams - individual focus and small communications overhead.

Yea but you can't gauge team cohesiveness that well in a single interview (most of the time). I think YC, and most investors frankly, just want to know where the responsibility is and frankly if they have to ask it's a bad sign. All IMO of course.

Don't take turns, take concerns.

Have the best person answer the question, even if that means one person does 90% of the talking. Marketing question? Tech question? Maybe different people answer those. You're there to get your best answers across, not to show off how well you can take turns speaking.

If one person is visibly moderating your side's responses by directing it to the correct person, that's not a bad thing either, re: "Who is the CEO?"

> > "It's really bad if we're talking to a bunch of founders and we can't figure out who the leader is..."

This is really much more than how much time someone takes answering a question or speaking. It's also subtle signs of deference from others as well as body language not only from participants but from the CEO.

Great read but, man, that green top bar is ugly.

haha, agreed... my post was syndicated with a Medium collection, and for some reason my post inherited its 'interesting' style..

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