My Y Combinator Interview (W2011)

Very interesting read, although that's probably because my cofounder and I had nearly the same exact experience you did. We got an interview for this round of Y Combinator with an idea that could be summed up as, "it's pretty much an improvement of X."

But ultimately what any pitch comes to like that, whether it's the innovative minds at YC or the cruftiest, oldest-school VC, is always the same:

a) If X has competition and it that competition already has existing traction, they will point out it will be hard for your idea to catch on because of established players.

b) If X has competition and it's bad, they will point out that nobody will adopt X to begin with even if your version is better (generally "chicken and egg" problems)

c) And if any of them have any direct experience with X, they will point out they already did this and it didn't work.

My cofounder and I ran into scenario (b) and despite spending the spending the majority of our preparation time on (what we thought were) convincing answers, we didn't get accepted either.

If I had one regret, it's that we had a potential pivot for our idea that I think could have been spun off as a completely original idea W, and we spent barely a minute talking about it. We brought it up, PG went into brainstorming mode with us, and I walked out wishing we had just pitched W to begin with. But perhaps that story is for a blog post of my own.

I was part of Auctomatic, and I still think inventory management is a space to be disrupted. I think that we were free from day one was a reason that people were reluctant to start paying.

The one trouble with eBay inventory management, or any space where there are existing competitors, is every user has their own pet feature they absolutely can't live without. It becomes a battle to implement them all and keep a clean interface.

Also make sure you can import everything from every competitor. It lets people try your software very easily and gives you all of their data. So even if they don't become a hardcore user you can see what one looks like.

For a story with a (bad) ending, that was really engaging to read. It sounds like you're still optimistic, and I'm definitely wishing you a ton of luck.

Rejection notwithstanding, I think the advice to get the system installed into a few other businesses is actually golden -- not just from a revenue standpoint, but from the product perspective. You'll get non-family feedback on how the system can be improved.

To be fair, building/selling a cool system is a higher goal perhaps than doing YC. (I say this knowing that for a ton of us, the hierarchy is confused in our own minds, haha!).

Either way, Jud, plug on, keep tooling and keep writing. I loved reading this...

To be clear, we don't subject ALL our airbnb guests to 4loko. Jud was a special case.

-Benjie

Jud, first of all congratulations!

You ought to be proud of the fact you have built a working inventory management system. You also ought to be proud of just interviewing with YC.

Keep Going!

If there was no market for inventory management systems, then you would have never been invited to interview.

That was strangely interesting. Thanks for the write up.

I have added this to my list of links to people that have actually done the YCombinator interview:

http://ycuniverse.com/interviewees.php

So now that page has 3. Feel free to contact me if you have more links to such information.

Are you continuing?

Sounds a bit categorical with respect to inventory management. I know of one company, moysklad ('my warehouse' - in Russian), which has done quite well for itself in Russian-speaking countries. They are a couple years old and they've already taken venture capital from Ambient Sound Investments. I found a little snippet of info about them in English here: http://www.chubbybrain.com/companies/moysklad/investors-fund...

So I wouldn't get discouraged just yet.

Thanks for sharing this. I read the line "the rest is history" and wasn't sure if I knew what that history was. Maybe a link to more info in the footer would help.

Anyway, it just goes to show how difficult it really is to get your ducks in a row and truly get to the root of the problem you're solving.

Personally I think the Four Loko made the pill a bit easier to swallow.

-Ray

it's great to read these stores. Especially from those who are able to describe the lessons they've learned despite being rejected.

thanks. that was interesting.