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Comment by xenoterracide | Hacker News Reader

"because another group proposed the same idea and seemed further along."

That'd be nice to know. Especially since one might want to join that group ;).

This time around pg set up conversations between some of the prior founders and some of the applicants--to get a better feel for the teams, and to give them a chance to ask any questions about YC they had (including what to expect in the interview and how to best present their case--and maybe even who to pitch to, since sometimes pg is not going to like your idea, but rtm or tlb might if you pitch it right, and pg takes their advice seriously).

I was amused to find that one of the groups (one of the best we talked to, actually) was planning to work on the same area as our new product from a slightly different angle--I don't think they were entirely aware of how closely the functionality of their proposed product matched what we're about to launch until I told them). It's not at all unlikely that we'll contact them in a few months when we begin hiring (because them having written no code, and us having functional code in private beta with real paying customers, we do seem further along--but they did seem like a smart team, and if YC doesn't accept them, we might have a good place for them on ours).

I thought it was interesting, anyway. And since I've frequently stated that the single best thing about Y Combinator is spending a lot of time with the other teams, anything that provides more connectivity between founders is a win for everyone.

> because them having written no code

I'm curious as to how it was determined they were one of the best when they hadn't written anything yet. It seems a lot of proposals with code and demos got declined (not even looked at in some cases) but in this case a proposal with no code, which has essentially already been funded and done by your group... gets an invite?

Prior work, though admittedly in unrelated fields.

I don't know if they got an invite--we talked to them before any decision was made. But if they don't have a demo before the interview, I strongly suspect they won't get in--our pitch was not well-received by pg, and only the strength of our demo brought rtm and tlb around to an appreciation of the difficulty of the problems we're solving. And, we have yet to prove that this is a lucrative market--we know it is, but YC can't be blamed for not knowing it yet, since we've had no exit and growth is steady rather than explosive.

But, YC will fund groups that are working on the same problem domain, but not usually in the same round. Since we're a year in the past, I'm sure they wouldn't turn a team down based on where we are.

I would be rather peeved if PG gave out that kind of information on what I was doing to someone else. I suppose he could ask, but... that's not really his job to play matchmaker is it?

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