How we got a Y Combinator interview but blew it
keacher.com
keacher.com
Point is, PG is one of the smartest guys around; but don't be discouraged if he thinks your idea is terrible, he's not always right.
I made it to interviews last year, thought we did OK on the interviews but were ultimately rejected. Looking back, it was definitely the right choice to reject our idea. Holy cow was it bad.
One of my teammates went on to get accepted for a fantastic idea in the following round, though. I since joined http://counsyl.com and am way happier working here than if I was still working on the terrible idea we had (p.s. we're hiring http://is.gd/counsyl_engineering).
I'd be super curious what you think of us now, actually. We struggled for a bit to find the right approach but I think we've come a long long way; even though we still have a long way to go.
As for what I think of you now, at your stage you can use the same test I would: monthly revenue growth rate. If it's over 20% that's impressive.
Now the problem that I face and would like to solve eventually is video editing storage and retrieval. Ever wondered how raw video gets sent around today? Through FedEx in removable hard drives. The sheer amount of raw data is staggering when making any sort of film. Then storing it for archival. All a pain. 1TB of video is common these days. I have a few ideas to solve this and I think videographers would want a solution.
Problem? Slow as hell....
The technical solution for most people is just not there yet. It's way cheaper to backup on a solid drive and store it at your friend's.
There are a few solutions out there that address this issue. But they are in the B2B space, mainly positioned to large advertising agencies and production companies, and priced accordingly. AFAIK, there isn't a fantastic consumer-oriented (or even prosumer-oriented) solution in the market.
I'm actually surprised that Apple hasn't tried to address this problem, as an adjunct to its video editing software and its cloud service. Maybe it's looked into the problem and didn't find it big enough to warrant the sky-high IRR it probably requires of a project. But the idea could make sense for a startup.
I imagine you could position this tool to videographers, sure, but also to the growing number of people trying to turn semi-pro at YouTube and other video sites. If your solution is good enough, Google seems like a likely acquirer; these days it's allocating a lot of resources toward building tools to help its prosumer YouTube producers.
Dropbox even launched a feature to automatically capture photos from a device [4]. If they can't answer the 'compare to Dropbox' question well, they can't defend the business.
[1] - http://www.labnol.org/software/backup-files-dropbox/18634/ [2] - http://lifehacker.com/5406806/best-online-backup-tool-dropbo... [3] - http://workawesome.com/software/data-backup-and-sync-3-dropb... [4] - http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/12/dropbox-responds-to-tumblrs...
That said, Backblaze works fine for me, although the initial backup did take a while.
For me, as a photographer with around that amount needing to be backed up, I'd want to know what their service offered me over the $59/year for Carbonite (that can also back up just about anything else you want).
It has been discussed in detail in one of PG's essays [1] about how it's only the big wins that matter to them these days and trying to determine whether the company has the chance to become that big is all part of the problem.
The fact that you didn't get into Y Combinator shouldn't have stopped you continuing with your idea. It is a problem that needs a solution and your solution may have ended up being a multi million dollar idea which would have given you both great success. The problem is, the start up space these days and incubators in particular are on the hunt for the billion dollar ideas - thus they can gamble on many, for the few successes to help break even.
At the end of the day, you guys seem really switched on and the effort / level of detail you went through suggests you are capable of success - just potentially you need to re apply with a bigger idea next time, after reading PG's 'Black Swan' essay to understand what they're wanting to hear you pitch.
I do think, however, that their time would have been better spent fleshing out their business plan/idea and creating some nice mockups rather than trying to slam together a subpar prototype.
They got meaningful feedback.
Maybe it's that YC just saw a pitch a few hours/days before about a similar product with a better team/solution. Maybe it's that YC already invested in a few similar companies in the same space. Maybe it's the lack of a track record of the founders in building things. Maybe it's the black shirts. There are a lot of reasons besides being tied to a solution.
Just my 2c.
(I love my H4ns, though -- I use them for everything. For conferences I usually have cameras with shotguns on L, board audio on R, and a zoom doing the same thing near the board. I still use a Sony HDV with 3 big chips and uncompressed HDMI out to an Atomos Ninja, though, and HDV tapes for backup. Picking the best audio track and getting it all in sync is a pain, though.)
We have worked with many designers and photographers, and all of them have the same problem - they can generate hundreds of gigabytes of important resources in almost no time at all, and even with a relatively solid pipe normal backup solutions just don't work.
What they really need is a bulletproof storage device that can be transported to a safe location when it needs to be. LaCie has some products in this space, but they don't offer the service that the customer needs - reliable, accessible storage.
The real solution is tape drives. Try to sell an Ultrium drive to a designer, though.
It's like saying I'll bake a cake at home with the free and open source implementation available online instead of buying it from the store.
It about how much you weigh your time and the quality of your product.
Of course, there are exceptions, the cake you buy from the store might be bad but, that's unlikely if you buy from a reputed store.
Because home baked vs store bought also have some very different qualities, both emotionally and practically. Price is just one difference.
Some people just buy cakes. A few make & buy cakes. People who never buy cakes because they can make it themselves are few, opinionated, and kind of cranky in a lovable way.
Yes, there's free, open source versions that do the same as Blurity. It looks like Blurity has spent time developing the user experience as well as the algo's used, even comparing with other tools on the market.
Compare the two programs and you'll see the difference in algos. Blurity loses in quality of the end-result. If Blurity is any indication of the quality of the solution that he was pitching, well, then it's no doubt he "blew the interview".
I have compared them, I've looked at the result images for both that are listed. I'd try them but I really don't care that much.
In short, SmartDeblur is a parameterized non-blind deconvolution tool. It handles only a narrow set of blur kernels: focus errors or camera movements in a straight line. Real-world motion blurs seldom conform to SmartDeblur's limitations. Also, the technology in SmartDeblur is nothing new: the commercial FocusMagic has been doing exactly the same thing as SmartDeblur for almost a decade.
On the other hand, Blurity is a blind deconvolution tool. It handles any type of blur kernel, not just when the camera was out of focus or moved in a straight line. From talking with many actual customers, I've learned that almost all real-world motion blur is non-linear in nature. Blurity is well-suited to those situations.
Of course, I encourage people to try both tools and use whatever works best on the blurs in their images.
Have they heard about Flicker (as far as I remember they offer unlimited space for a few dollars a year)?
What's the big surprise they did not get funding? True, Venture Capital bussiness is totally broken, they throw money into a lot of crap ideas, but not that crap.
I guess that Dropbox for storing MS Office documents or Dropbox for storing MP3 files (I have so many of them!) are also weak ideas, given the generic Dropbox can handle that (and Skydrive or Google Drive too).
Your sarcastic and insulting commentary is not needed here.
Dropbox itself can handle photography, it's what a lot of photographers use for sharing shoots back with models but a dedicated one for images only with smart meta data usage and a few other features would make it very attractive to the photographers I know.
I was very surprised that your rejection email said "you guys", I know YC keep it casual but that's really stunning word usage coming from an investor. As an EIR I saw many acceptance and rejection emails and never have any been written with such sloppy English. I guess it's part if the YC image, but I'm still surprised.
Your video sucked, and I'm sure you're far better at math and software than presentation skills, but that stuff doesn't matter if the idea is solid. You can hire those people later. Check out the kickstarter video Brydge for an example of how to make a great video.
I would agree with others though, forget Windows, build prototypes for a Mac, because every single photographer uses a Mac.
I think your CSI-like unblurr proves you go both have first class skills, keep at it, there's definitely a product that's not yet been built that deals with photographers' needs specifically. Dropbox isn't is for sure.