So you got a YC interview? Now what.. (from the founders of Snaptalent, YC winter 08)
blog.snaptalent.com
blog.snaptalent.com
I am sure this is true, but how many product advisers do you know?
When I look at that last batch of acceptees... I am very surprised at some who made the cut. I'm not sold on YC's judgement. I think they may hit a few home runs just due to taking a lot of swings rather than due to an ability to identify the good pitches, and get lucky that a couple hundred fair pitches are proffered every time. Which leads into the next point...
> Pg and co get so many applications and have so little time to read them that you should expect that the YC partners don’t have any idea what you do
...Which means you're giving ownership to people who don't care enough about what you do in particular to spend time on it; this is a big mismatch if you've spent a lot of time on your project, so their approach is more aligned with people who come in with ideas sans code. They have dozens of other start-ups to deal with, not to mention all the time some of them spend on this site.
So the main value in YC seems to be demo day -- getting a stage to present to a large number of moneyed interests at once, plus the news coverage, so you either get the real investment dollars you need or get acquired.
All the information you get is pretty much replaceable -- you can find it other places -- but YC takes the write-protect tab off the floppy so instead of just you being stuck in read-only mode you can write out information that is seen by people you want to see it.
At least that's what it appears their primary value is to me.
To point 2: AT Interview stage, from one application form how familiar do you expect someone to be once you've read 500 forms. This is a pretty selfish viewpoint. Once you get into YC and get to know everyone YC (in particular Jessica) works extremely hard for you and care about what you do.
Some companies like rescuetime and heroku were well past the idea stage when they did YC. So your comments are a bit of an overgeneralisation.
Every team works on an idea. A lot of the last batch are underwhelming:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/14/y-combinator-demo-day-r...
> AT Interview stage, from one application form how familiar do you expect someone to be once you've read 500 forms
If they're flying you in for an interview you're no longer in the pool of 500 forms. If they are asking questions that make it clear they aren't paying attention to the information you've already given them it just goes to show that your grandiose plans are fairly inconsequential to them and they're only tossing their spare change at you.
> Some companies like rescuetime and heroku were well past the idea stage
Companies that have a lot done already are the ones that are going to run into the mismatch I talked about. Here's this great thing you made; now you're giving ownership to people who don't feel about it the same way. There's not a lot of investment of money, time, or emotion on the part of YC. So it seems to me that the exchange is equity for exposure -- basically you've started off your marketing budget at the 6% that YC takes.
And to the statement 'now you're giving ownership to people who don't feel about it the same way.' - differing viewpoints about your idea is not a bad thing.
Finally, to reduce YC's value-add to 'marketing budget' is incorrect. Do you think that VC's attend demo day because of YC's marketing?
The mistaken assumption shows in the use of the past tense. The fact that a product's launched doesn't mean it's done. In most startups, most of the work happens after launch.
Another thing I've noticed is how features that have been around for a long time (web time), are slightly "modified" (most times more simplified, either for the good reason of simplification, or simply because of lack of technical experience, or in the worst case because of bad copying) many examples of this. but since you brought up dropbox, the first thing brings to my mind is box.net. again I'm not saying anything bad about it. I'm sure its better since I know about box.net and their not that great anyway. but my point is that there are not that many selections that are either new innovative products or an old idea that you could say wow this is how it should be implemented. say Google for example. And, they have common theme to them. no not from the perspective of the consumer or what the products are.
I really don't know about how yc views things but the theme of yc is clear. alteast to some degree. either because that's simply the result of their total work and it just produces this, or intention by design to move in this direction or both.
if you go to many vc's site and look under their portfolio many times you can find a common theme in their select.
Listen to what Graham himself says: if you have customers, nobody cares what your pedigree is. Most successful companies don't come through YC. Most funding sources --- top tier VC included --- don't come with real PR benefits. YC does. But it's not proven that you need it.
If you already have customers, you're doing YC a favor by applying.
There is one exception in the companies they have taken on but all the rest were not established and only a few looked like a sure thing (auction manager, photo editor, comments manager).
I am not sure how that is funny. After web applications started dropping like flys about 2000 I decided that I could build my own that would be just as good but without millions in venture capital.
If by "bootstrap" you mean "build an app in your spare time while holding down a full-time job in IT at Wells Fargo", you win the argument.
If by "bootstrap" you mean "build a company without funding", implying making payroll, I think you're nuts. It's at the very least incredibly scary to bootstrap a company.
The opposite is to get the money first, create a company, then build an application.
I would prefer the last one, but getting the money up front is really difficult for most people. Not because there idea but there connections. YC builds the connections, helps build the idea, and then puts it all together. So while YC is great, there will always be a greater number of people wanting in then there is room. So it is back to Plan A.
Does Google count as serious to you? They took investor money. Practically every successful startup does.
I know a ton. Many aren't that good, but everyone thinks they must be a great product advisor. Isn't "idea guy" just news.yc slang for the same thing?
Saying PG is better than the average random person with an opinion isn't giving a lot of credit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance#Empirical_...
At the interview stage all we've seen is an application form with 120-word answers, and maybe a demo. And we're interviewing 50-60 groups over 3 days. It's not that surprising that we don't know in great detail what each plans to do. But once we accept a group, we spend a lot of time talking about the product with them-- literally down to the shapes of buttons.
And this is true with groups that have already launched just as much as those that haven't. In any startup, most development happens after launch. Every (good) startup is sans ideas 6 months in, compared to what they'll eventually do.
The reject group also includes applicants that have stuff to show that you didn't even look at.