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Comment by physcab | Hacker News Reader

> Although, they also want to see how quickly you can execute. 2 years to build an iPhone app is too long.

Why would they care about how quickly you can build something? If you took 2 years to build an iPhone app in your spare time, but that iPhone app ended up being Candy Crush, wouldn't that make that metric pretty meaningless?

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Apps like candy crush are edge cases that make general comparisons meaningless.

Given most successful apps aren't anywhere near as popular as candy crush you're not comparing apples to apples.

The chances of building a successful anything are low. Even lower for the first attempt. So if you take 2 years to build something...you've stacked the odds so high against yourself you might as well not even try. And if you're the one paying the bills, 2 years is a long time to wait for a failure.

But we also know overnight successes don't really happen overnight. So I imagine you also don't want to be the person creating new apps every month because you're misguided about how hard it is to achieve success. So again, it doesn't seem like a useful metric.

You're overthinking it. The faster you can build, the more of a competitive advantage you have. It's that simple.

If it takes person A 1 month to build the same thing as person B in 2 months, all else being equal, person A has a better shot at succeeding.

It's never that simple - and making the product awesome and launching at 95% can introduce way more rewards than launching at 75 or 80%. I think the concept of an MVP is regarded as the word of law around here, and sometimes an MVP looks like shit and nobody will use it afterwards, so spend the extra two weeks making it absolutely awesome. I know that's not really what you were talking about, but I think people shouldn't shy away from taking a step back and just thinking about what you're building without being stupid-productive all of the time. It's all about balance.

> sometimes an MVP looks like shit and nobody will use it afterwards

Then it's not viable, which is what the V stands for. So it's not an MVP at all, it's just shit.

Respectfully disagree. The key phrase in your response is: "all else being equal"

When it comes to marketing what you've made, you do get the first-mover advantage but that's about all you get.

I've made many a useful, problem-solving prototype in my spare time (and even 'launched' a few of them among close friends and family) only to see the same thing going big a month later. Except, it is someone else who happens to have made the same thing a; they just manage to push it a lot better that I ever could. It also doesn't help that I'm really bad at the business side of things.

I really need to find someone who can do that for me and my ideas/prototypes... :(

The metric is important in the sense that you can't iterate quickly and figure out what does and doesn't work if you spend 2 years per version. Successful companies tend to be ones that iterate on new ideas quickly and double down on the ones that stick.

If this is the true intention of the question, then why don't they just ask "Tell us about a time when you iterated quickly." I'm still not convinced code velocity is a good metric.

Traction excuses everything.

Pretty sure that you don't apply to YC to build an app in your spare time...

I think you're looking at it backwards. To me it seems reasonable to apply to YC with an app you have been building in your spare time with the intention of working on it full-time provided the metrics are favorable, growth is apparent, market exists, etc.

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