How to Hack the YC Application
foreca.st
foreca.st
Recommendations from YC alums that you barely know should be pretty worthless. I've been asked repeatedly by people I've met for < 30 mins to recommend them, and I've always had to politely decline. The recommendation mechanism is meant for people with whom YC founders have actually worked or studied.
My advice would be:
- explain in simple language what your product actually does. Please avoid buzzwords.
- explain why your team is awesome & what you've accomplished (together & individually)
- build stuff, release it early & talk to your users. Then explain in your application what you learned
I think they are trying to optimize the wrong things. I'd much rather they spend a few days testing your business model and hacking on the business than the YC app itself. You'll probably learn more that way. Plus if your business model is successful and you have traction, it's really helps your app.
Chances are you won't find a spot into YC, but you'll probably still have your company in a few months. Which one do you really want to optimize? I'd go for optimizing the business with less of a focus on the YC app.
It's like reading a bunch of books on how to get a first date. The actual getting the date is not the important part...it's the overall being a person that is worth dating that is important. If you are worth dating then getting a date isn't hard.
I am curious what PG has to say about this.
Really, they just wrote a hack to find YC alumni, then see how they were connected to them to get some intros.
I think trying to meet as many YC alumni as possible makes sense and if you can get a recommendation from one of them even better.
In today's world of so many applicants and noise, I think showing your due diligence in talking to other YC alumni and then having them vouch for you is a bit like a pre-emptive interview process and valuable to the YC application review team.
It's kind of like back at my days at Google when I would interview people and they didn't really even have much understanding of how Google made money (i.e. the online advertising business) I would almost have to immediately veto the candidate.
Just my 2 cents.
You're in luck. From the link tomblomfield supplied:
"Actually it would be better to expend that effort on your company or the application. Don't spend a lot of time spamming YC alumni trying to collect recommendations. They don't carry any weight with us unless they are very strong. We can tell the difference between a recommendation that's being made for our sake (because the alum thinks it would damaging for us to overlook the application), and one that's being made for the sake of the applicant (e.g. because the alum is benevolent and they begged him to recommend them)."
So they are only sharing what they did, not what was successful. I'd rather work on my business than spend obscene amounts of time hacking the YC application process. If I don't get in, I'll still have the product, those who try to hack the system will only have the knowledge of what doesn't work.
Disclaimer: Current Austinite and fan/friend of Forecast.
We have no product, just a good idea. I hope YC gets the amount of passion and enthusiasm we have for providing the product, not just to make money, but because of its potential to change the shape of technology.
We'll all find out soon, and I wish good luck to everyone that applied. If we get to the interview stage I'll be sure to post our application so people can look at it, and I encourage everybody else to do so. It was nice during the process to read all the apps that can be found around the web.
Seems to me that talent, hardwork, and all the cliche stuff would take you a lot farther.