How I got a YC interview as a single founder and blew it at the final hurdle
swaggadocio.com
swaggadocio.com
I know this story speaks of SV culture in some way; huge risk, huge rewards and the idea that no one can stop you. If the venture pays off, it makes you a hero. If it doesn't, well you get a cool story. But you're aiming to be head of your own company, you need to make wise business decisions. This doesn't look like one, and just shows (me) that you're willing to make large gambles for a chance at winning the lottery. Where do you draw the line?
Considering the context I have to vehemently disagree.
Steve's really well known in the UK tech scene. He's a regular attendee & speaker at the Hacker News London meet-ups. Acceptance into the YC program would have vindicated his ambitions.
YC is seen as almost mythical in this part of the world as it's a huge ask to move to the opposite side of the world to go through a program to gain funding when there are an insane number of VC's & angel investors in the UK. YC is essentially 'Tech Hollywood' as far as most UK hackers are concerned. You can make yourself a household name as an Actor based in the UK but most Actors would jump at the chance to make it in Hollywood. The appeal of YC is a microcosm of that analogy.
EDIT: I appreciate CaveTech is referring to the zap.com situation but the entire trip was a guy doing everything humanly possible to make his dream a reality. I stand by my point.
To what do you vehemently disagree? That it is a slim chance of securing the domain name? If so, why does the rest of your comment discuss how important YC is to UK programmers?
Your hypothesis seems to be that if only you had answered the one question right, then PG would have seen the beauty in your plan and let you in. But you followed up immediately with the answer. And then you sent them a link to an implemented feature, which they didn't bother to click on. Why would they ignore both followups if that was the one thing that kept out someone they otherwise saw as a promising candidate?
It would seem to me that the more plausible hypothesis is that PG still believes exactly what he told you: you haven't figured enough of the idea yet. And therefore, that it really wasn't about that particular question. I suspect you're fixating on that because it was the problem that you could see, and because it was a strong emotional experience.
When I've rejected job-seekers after interviews, it was never about them failing a particular question. It was about a pattern in the interview, generally a Dunning-Kruger failure in some key area. I think it speaks well of people when they follow up with, "Oh, I totally blanked on X, here's the correct answer." But that never makes a difference, because never blanking out for a moment is not one of the characteristics I'm hiring for, and the conscientiousness displayed in the followup was also visible in the interview.
Inspired, I hacked out the feature that was the answer to the flunked question and used it on the partners.
If it was such an easy feature to add and so important that you had several strong answers to the issue that required the feature, why wasn't it already part of your product?
edit: If the feature was already present in your product, it would have been almost impossible to have gone blank.
The constant gripe of U.K. based talent is that nothing ever gets funded there. At least not at the rate or the fluidity with which it does in the valley. Besides this maverick ex-con of an angel, Xavier Niel, who claims to have invested in some 700 startups to the tune of almost $150,000 a pop, who are these angels and VCs you talk about?
I love the conservative objections here. Stunts like this only work if most people aren't willing to try (EDIT - thanks).
EDIT: Outlandish stunts are the best way to improve your hustling abilities. If you have the time and money to try it, you win either way.
One thing I can tell you is that we frequently get approached by people who have some kind of an idea that someone is going to let go of an asset because somebody really wants it and tells a good story. That approach is actually quite common. And anyone who owns even 1 good domain has almost for sure been approached by someone with a story about why they need the domain but don't have any money to spend.
Even though the owner of this domain isn't in the domain business they still have some idea of the value. They aren't just going to let the domain go because some guy shows up from London. In fact, how do they even know that's the truth? That he flew in from overseas just to do this transaction? And not for some other reason? This is not "Bud Fox" in "Wall Street".
I'm currently working on a deal trying to purchase a domain for someone which is owned by a non-profit Fortune 500 company. They don't need the money even though the amount the person is willing to pay ($50,000) is a good number for this domain.
The approach that I will try after being turned down by the usual suspects at the company is to simply work my way up to the board of directors at some point and perhaps make a case that as a non-profit the $50,000 can do some good and the domain isn't being used bla bla bla.
Find an angle that matters. (Note same angle probably wouldn't work with a for profit but it's worth a try with a non-profit ..)
I'm surprised that calculating risk before investing large amounts of time and money now qualifies as 'conservative'. If that's a common attitude in SV these days, the bubble may be worse than I thought...
The OP made a point of saying how he thought he had a good story to tell YC. The fact is something like this could backfire and show how naive you are and be easily viewed as stupid.
From what I read, it was the hedge fund not the billionaire that had the domain.
if that's the case, then the problem is that the fund is carrying the domain on their books for some value, say $100,000.
If they give it away for "free/cheap" then they report a loss of $100,000 to not only their investors but also themselves, presumably they are invested in their own fund:)
no one is going to let someone else at the fund just give away $100,000 of gains.
Remember the money isn't just the owners, it belongs to the limited partners, ie the people who put money into the fund.
Are we still talking about the same thing here?
> or buy the asset personally and then invest it personally.
Yes he could obviously do this, but he can't just give part of hte funds assets away, which is what I was clarifying.
If a few days and a few thousand pounds isn't worth much to him then I understand but if resources are scarce, using them on long shots that might not even pay that much over the alternatives is not good business.
edit: punctuation, grammar
And given that Paul Graham turned Stevie Graham down for not having thought things through, rather than for lack of a good domain name, then I'd say the time and money was wasted. With those resources he could have conducted 20 user tests against prototypes. If PG was wrong about his concern about the business model, Stevie Graham would have had real evidence from real users. And, if as is more likely, PG was right, then Stevie Graham would have discovered the problem before he was pitching somebody so important to the future of his company.
They got widespread mockery and bad press coverage for that, and no longer use the domain.
A domain name won't make or break your business. But all that time and energy spent on this problem could probably have been spent better on something else.
I get the point, but why the snark? Why be so dismissive? Especially since this "stunt" didn't work. (Yet?)
I know my comments haven't been full of praise but I enjoyed your post and it seems you have the personality that is needed for success.
His quote, via Gigaom: "We joke around the office that the worst is the fetish for failure. You want to preserve the good of the idea when it comes to pivoting, but you don’t want people to be intentionally encouraged to fail. Maybe it’s time to add a bit more stigma."
If that happened to me, I'd be too embarrassed to repeat that story even to a group of close friends, let alone tout it as my proudest "life hack".
I wouldn't. I think it shows exactly what he is trying to show: a tremendous amount of "hustle", indomitable fortitude, drive and passion... sometimes if you really want to make something happen, you have to take some chances and go a little over the top. And more importantly, it shows that this is a guy who doesn't just sit around and wait for things to come to him; he takes action and makes (or at least attempts to make) things happen.
I have no idea who this guy is but if I could buy stock in his future right now, I would. I can't say the same for anybody who reads this and thinks he's foolish.
I admire this guy's persistence, but not his incredible arrogance ("swaggadocio", "sound my huge balls made as I sauntered"), his poor risk/reward assessment, or his lack of lateral thinking skills.
His behavior only makes sense if having name "zap" is the riskiest thing in his current business plan. If everything hinges on him having a specific fancy domain name, then I doubt he'll be delivering sufficient customer value to his users to build a real business. And if that wasn't the riskiest thing, then he's just wasted a lot of time and money in a poorly planned exercise to get something that was a shiny distraction.
That sort of behavior is a great example of why solo founders are dangerous. Startups are endlessly distracting, and a good partner can keep you from taking off like a missile at something that, in the end, isn't core to what you're up to.
"Learning to embrace failure" is not an excuse to avoid basic cost analysis.
- best comment in the thread so far
IMO the story shows great hustle but poor prioritization. Domains don't matter that much. One of YC's most successful graduates is airbnb after all. That domain is basically nonsense, but the product is so good, now it's their own special nonsense.
These PG hagiographies are getting good.
:)
Sounds like an incredibly minor detail to base the decision on considering everything else appeared to go well. I've no doubt PG and the team are all about small details but that doesn't quite add up for me.
Either way Steve, you did great to get as far as you did and a YC rejection is only a minor hurdle along the way so best of luck bud.
During the entire interview, I imagine PG and his partners were likely analyzing and processing your idea, your capacity to execute your idea, and your potential to succeed compared with the potential for other top-tiered candidates to succeed. Also, they were likely looking for signs, any sign (based on prior failures), that were predictor of failure.
In my opinion, you were likely turned down because either they weren't convinced that you (along with your idea) have the potential to succeed more than the candidates they were considering, or your case showed signs of potential failure. Note that the signs of potential failure is not necessarily reflective of you or your idea, it is simply based on actual factors that Y Combinators have seen in startups that had eventually failed. I have read about this from PG himself right here on HN.
If Y Combinator turned down a potentially primed-to-succeed applicant because the applicant did not convincingly answer one question (while being very convincing on all the other questions), then I am definitely mistaken about all I have read about PG and Y Combinator. These chaps are well-reasoned and thoroughly experienced investors, I don't think they will turn down a potential DropBox for missing one question—well, I hope not.
I've figured out a great way around this. Install rapportive in gmail, compose a new message and start guessing emails. If the email is correct, rapportive will pull up all the information for that person. Bingo! There's the correct address!
Learning experiences and such, grind it out and keep going.
"I hacked the process and all I got was this stinking blog post."
Edit: This front-paging HN will more than likely land him a job somewhere, for better of for worse, and was likely his real goal in writing it.
Selling yourself is almost as important as the idea, if you have the best idea in the world but you seem a bit wishy washy then no one is going to be interested, but if you can sell yourself and get them to believe almost anything is possible in your hands then you're in with a better chance.
It's a lot easier to point a smart/hard working person in the right direction
Giving up completely may mean accepting failure, but strategically choosing how to invest your resources is not giving up. Spending thousands of dollars & days simply to obtain a domain name... in an effort that ultimately still failed seems like a series of poor decisions.
I had the domain knowledge and experience, but PG said my demo was too simple (which it admittedly was - it was a MVP to test some assumptions I had about the market).
It was an intense, yet very fun 10 minutes of my life...
I absolutely hate reading websites that do light on dark.
I use this Chrome extension and it works great. http://www.chromeextensions.org/appearance-functioning/chang...
I used to use some extension on firefox as well, can't recall the name.
EDIT: Perhaps this https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/color-that-si...
Just anything that isn't light on dark.
"So you're telling me there's a chance." - Lloyd
Zap is a great name. But there's no harm in starting with PayWithZap.com, like you're currently doing, then acquiring zap.com down the road when you have real capital or revenue. Owning zap.com now is a premature optimization, a nice-to-have.
A single answer should not be the difference between getting an investment and not getting one. Can you imagine Warren Buffett passing over a stock he was prepared to buy just because the CEO couldn't answer a particular question instantly?
When it comes to jumping on a plane to try and blag the domain name I think its actually a pretty smart move, on the open market that name would have gone for 6 or 7 figures certainly far more than you could have afforded on seed funding, in which case its worth dropping a grand or so as a gamble that you might get it for much less, I'm guessing you were hoping they'd say they weren't using it and just sign it over to you?
Hey you took a chance and gambled 1000 bucks in the hope of it paying off many times over, it didn't but thats life.
Best of luck man :-)
I still recommend that applicants seek out YC alumni when applying, but this is because they will give you good feedback on your application and advice on the interview process, not because their recommendation of someone they met once over coffee will move the needle.
I have a feeling we will be seeing a lot of very cool stuff from Zap in the future ;-)
Great story. Shows just a glimpse of the many different angles you need to take as an entrepreneur to try and make things work. (or not work)
Later, messed up one question in YC interview and got rejected.
Baffling...
In my earlier and somewhat more flush years, I used to have a saying "just throw money at the problem until it goes away". And you know what.. it worked. Well .. until I ran out of cash that is. This is what this sounds like to me. Flying London to New York on the off chance to meet this guy? One would have been better off finding out what gym he's a member of, which bars he drinks at, where he shops etc one was that desperate. mini-rant over.
'A lot of people do that, and unsurprisingly some people (maybe all) working at YC do not appreciate it. Personally I would advise against it and think of a different way to get to the partners, n.b. Instacart, rather than show up to YC when everyone is extremely busy and putting YC staff in difficult positions." Now just think what he did with hedge fund manager ?.
That probably explains why there is little interest in selling you the domain. It would probably be a huge PITA for them, even if they wanted to do it.
It has no revenue or business activity meaning it was probably once a public company or had the intention of becoming one.
1. Spent lots of time and money(thousands of pounds) trying to meet with CEO of hedge fund just to get one of the domains in their portfolio. 2. Failed. 3. Explained that he is co-founder of twillio europe. 4. Used above story as some kind of self proof of ability 5. Decided that he failed YC interview because of a silly mistake 6. Drew lots of lessons and conclusions.
yawn
There is a relationship between bipolar disorder and creativity; Jameson's Touched with Fire is a good exploration of that. Steve Blank of Lean Startup fame suggests that many founders come from dysfunctional families, because a chaotic home environment makes people comfortable operating in chaos later on:
http://steveblank.com/2009/05/18/founders-and-dysfunctional-...
Living in San Francisco and having just spent the weekend mentoring 100 would-be founders at Lean Startup Machine, it's my firm opinion that entrepreneurs are universally odd ducks. They are my people and I love them, but if they were particularly normal they would have found a lower-risk way of making a living. I think it's especially useful for entrepreneurial types to pay attention to mental health; some kinds of crazy are useful and to be honored, but some are just slowing you down.
...I would think that depends on how many thousands of dollars you have in the bank. It would be nuts to do this if you had no money to your name and were struggling to make ends meet, sure. But if you're got a high disposable income, or you know you can make it up with work, why not?
I haven't had the pleasure of meeting Stevie, and I know nothing about his financial situation. I suspect neither do you. Regardless, you could easily cover the cost of a last-minute LHR-NYC flight with three, four days of contracting (I should know, I used to freelance iOS in London). Doesn't seem quite so crazy when you frame it like that.
What I probably wouldn't do is throw around the idea that simply because somebody buys a ticket on a whim that makes them a manic depressive.
Salespeople who are too aggressive frighten prospects, and his target is a billionaire who hears from all sorts of people who want something from him. If he were sincerely after the Zap name, I think he would have been much better off pursuing it consistently over 6 months, rather than in a dramatic, unprepared rush. Especially since this particular name is a nice-to-have.
Ask yourself, would you say this to Stevie's face? If the answer is no, move on. If the answer is yes, I'm sure he'd oblige.
For the record, Stevie is one of the most talented and well respected members of the UK tech community, so once again, think before you comment.
I'm also concerned about the message this sends to others -- that since Stevie suddenly spent massively to try and coerce his way to meeting someone who could release the domain his company probably doesn't really need, that this is acceptable behavior we should all try.
Just because a person is highly accomplished and respected doesn't mean that person can't be mentally ill. John Nash Jr was.