Show HN: No YC interview, but here's my application | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: No YC interview, but here's my application

penflip.com

148 pointsguynamedloren92 comments

    > [ http://www.lorenburton.com/ ]
    > [...] I posted the site to HN and dropped a "share on twitter" button on 
    > the bottom of the page, racking up tens of thousands of hits and hundreds 
    > of tweets. I was in touch with Joe Gebbia (thanks pg!!) within hours, who 
    > expedited the interview process, and I flew to SF the next morning. Though 
    > I didn't get the job [...]

Wait, what?! You made http://www.lorenburton.com ... and then didn't get a job at AirBNB? Goodness gracious. The job was for some frontend stuff, right? You seem pretty good at making frontend stuff, I can't imagine why you didn't get it.

I have a solid history of failing remarkably. Good lessons learned, though.

To be honest I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I was completely unprepared and under qualified, and it was my first job interview ever. I bombed it.

I would be fascinated to read more about that experience.

I've been meaning to write about it for 2.5 years now... I might get around to it eventually.

I find the remarkable part more important than the failure. Best of luck for the future.

You may be selling yourself short, you might feel under qualified but with technology you're always in the fire meaning that things change at such a rapid pace the real qualification is that your competent to keep up with it.

That's crazy that you didn't get the job. Considering AirBNB's growth rate, it seems they could have taken a risk that someone like yourself would grow into the position.

This isn't the 1970s where you could get hired as a novice and trained on the job. In today's world you need to be a rockstar programmer right out of college. Training? No start up wants to gamble resources on that.

A person's capacity for learning complex concepts quickly matters more than their current body of knowledge. Startups are marathons, not sprints.

If Feynman were still alive and wanted to work as a programmer at your startup, it'd be foolish to turn him away. This was a guy who went from "zero knowledge of how a space shuttle works" to "knows the design of the Challenger shuttle in detail, and is able to spot overlooked problems" within a couple weeks. So he'd certainly have no trouble reaching rockstar programmer status at your startup within a couple months.

But I'm getting the feeling most startups would turn him down if he wasn't already a rockstar programmer the day his interview rolls around. That seems a little nutty.

Job interviewing is definitely a skill that improves with practice. Next time you'll do better :)

How did Loren make/get the graphics for this site? I'm assuming self created in his graphics software of choice?

It's probably the most artsy personal page I've seen.

I drew them in Illustrator.

Thanks for the kind words! Edit: at least I think those were kind words :)

Thank you for the support, HN. I appreciate it.

To be clear, I have no intention of quitting. I started working on this project without even thinking about YC as a possibility, driven only by excitement and the desire to see it exist. In fact, I wasn't going to apply to YC at all, but changed my mind at the last minute.

Against my better judgement, this little idea has turned into a full time, 18hrs-a-day-7-days-a-week project (with the occasional burnout day), and I plan to keep working on it is successful or I run out of money.

Nice of you to share your whole application. How much time did you take to prepare it, by the way ?

Worked on the bulk of it over the course of a day, on and off. Thought about it for a while before that though (when I was unsure if I was going to apply). This was my third time applying[1], so I basically have the questions memorized at this point.

Oh, and I've been recording every thought and idea for the past three months (some of my lists: http://grab.by/rKOY), so filling out the application was mostly compiling those thoughts into readable form.

[1] Different ideas each time, spanning 3 or 4 years. Funny enough, last year I got an interview. By that measure, this is a regression :)

What app to make that list?

it's just the sidebar for textmate2

I like how a few people have 'forked' your application on PenFlip. Would be lovely if someone made a few modifications and got accepted.

Really like PenFlip btw. Keep up the good work.

Definitely keep a screenshot of this for a final slide in your IPO roadshow deck 2 years from now

It's an overall strong application, but it's missing a few key components - namely, you're a single founder, and you're a bit early in terms of product and traction. That might've been enough to get in a few years ago, but competition and standards have gone up with each new batch (the single founder thing might've still held you back).

You'll probably have a better chance getting in the next batch, if your product continues to mature and you have more traction by then. If you're interested, I wrote about my experiences reviewing about 300 applications for a different accelerator, 500startups - might be useful http://www.techfounder.net/2013/08/22/after-reviewing-300-st...

Market this thing as "The easiest way to get your book sold on Amazon"

Figure out the process for people to sell there e-books on amazon and assist them all the way.

Make sure this tool outputs in what ever format it needs to be to be sold on Kindle/Nook/what ever.

Offer conversion from Word/Google Doc/ to pen flip

No one knows what Markdown is.

I like the project a lot.

Why do you think there was no YC interview? Any retrospection? Was it due to you being the only founder? How strict is the video time limit? The video sounds not really geared for YC but for general audience. Also, did you have a friend go through the application? A lot of it sounds like bragging, which is not bad at all but can be abrasive after a bit.

I like the project a lot, and may you reach heights with it.

> Why do you think there was no YC interview? Any retrospection? Was it due to you being the only founder?

I would guess that was a major factor. YC's view on the size of the founding team is that one is too few, four is too many. pg told Drew Houston to find a co-founder and I know of a four-man team that were turned down two years ago despite having two engineering PhD coders on the team and a product that was already being used by thousands of people.

> Why do you think there was no YC interview? Any retrospection?

Video was too long, automatic rejection.

I'm kidding, who knows. I'm thinking a big part of it was probably due to being a single founder, but there are likely other reasons.

Personal thoughts (trying to channel pg with a huge stack of applications to get through - I imagine the guy who first applied Naive Bayes to email spam being quite comfortable making snap decisions over small variables):

This guy seems smart, but not outstanding. Idea is decent but not amazingly novel. I feel like I've met both this guy and this idea 100 times before.

Solo founder without an amazingly impressive background. The t-shirt website is really cool - but sadly these days it's not that novel an achievement. "the t-shirt that I was selling didn't even exist until weeks later" - come on, everybody here's read the Lean Startup/4HWW. Again for the "AirBnB' feat - he wasn't the first person to do something like this.

Again, this isn't a reason to say 'no' - he's clearly smarter and more entrepreneurial than 95% of the population - but as a solo founder he needs more than that, he needs a strong reason to say "yes".

Onto the idea itself. His early traction is pretty impressive - I wasn't sure if writers would be interested in a tool like this. My main questions are a) how do you balance power and usability for users who might find version control hard to understand and b) is there a significant reachable market of people who would pay for this? Lots of little competitors suggests that this is an idea many people have had but not necessarily with a significant market.

For YC it makes sense to reject, for loren, the most interesting card in your hand right now is the feedback from publishers who face this problem and don't have a good solution - worth focusing on them and building an MVP for their needs (if you're not already). It might help to partner up with a biz dev guy who has experience in that industry who could help hack around the slow procurement processes that are likely common in that industry. See if you can get some smallish publishing house on board as a demo user.

I note that an existing YC startup "Kivo" is also doing "Git for the masses" though they're in a more lucrative space (Powerpoint).

It reads like a great application and given aguynamedloren's previous AirBnB stunt he's certainly inventive - but it is obviously a one-man-show (previous collaboration projects: n/a), and so there's no evidence of team work and everything that goes with creating and working in a good team.

Could that be why YC skipped on him this round?

I am not 100% certain but signal has it that they let one of your competitors in. And with that I mean one of the handful of other "github for writers" which were showcasing on HN.

Just use that as fuel. Good luck!

Create yourself an http://angel.co profile and solicit funding & advice on there. The startup world is a tiny bit bigger than YC.

I just wanted to chime in and say (though possibly off topic) that Loren is an extraordinary developer. I saw penflip on ShowHN when he first posted it, and before that when it was simply an idea he threw out here, and immediately signed up. I began writing a book on Clojure using the platform and I couldn't be happier. He also is great at engaging users. Just look at the twitter. He's personally helped me multiple times and even contributed to my project.

So, if you're looking to write. Use penflip. It's awesome. But this really goes to show YC is a cutthroat place to try and get into. It really is amazing how much this system pg has started up has inspired. Just think of the entrepreneurs who have sat and thought of ideas because they know networks like this exist. It's truly an awesome thing for the world.

Thank you very much for sharing this. I found it very helpful as I am also preparing some applications. One thing that I noticed though, was that the video you submitted is both well beyond the 1 minute restriction, and you also spent a lot of time talking about the project and not about yourself ("1 minute video [...] introducing the founders").

When recording our previous video we were very worried about being on the 2-minute mark and straight to the point, spending more time introducing myself and my colleagues. Do you (and the HN community) think that may have caused some serious loss of points? Good luck from Brazil!

I wouldnt have thought the market was huge for this. You mention "Textbooks" - most commercial publishing companies would already have internal version control software, you mention essays? Most students would just use google docs. Where is the target market? It's neither casual nor a power tool. Thats probably why your pitch failed, their is adequate substitute products already in the market place.

> commercial publishing companies would already have internal version control software

You'd be surprised. I've talked to published authors, and here's the inside scoop: the writing/editing process is often, amazingly, word documents emailed back and forth with hacked up homebrew version control 'systems' and inline comments. Believe it or not. I've seen them. And it only gets worse when there are more editors involved (depending on the content, there can be many).

O'Reilly is working on a similar idea (http://atlas.labs.oreilly.com), which means there is at least some demand by commercial publishers for a system like this. If O'Reilly is working on it, it can't be solved very well.

Anyway, I'm not even targeting commercial publishing, I'm targeting independent publishing.

> you mention essays? Most students would just use google docs

For short essays google docs is fantastic. I don't plan to touch that. But have you tried writing any kind of long-form group research paper (as in, over the course of a semester), especially technical, with google docs or dropbox? I have. It's a nightmare.

> their is adequate substitute products already in the market place

Craigslist and couchsurfing.org were adequate substitutes for Airbnb, Yahoo search was an adequate substitute for Google, and flash drives were an adequate substitute for Dropbox.

I agree, and I see a big market especially in academic publishing. A lot of course book text is written in a collaborative fashion with word docs emailed back and forth. Penflip could be to collaborative writing what Dropbox is to team file sharing.

Being a single cofounder might have been a negative factor, in your rejection.

Yes

Because formatting a book is painful. And you need to use the tools the publishers use (namely - InDesign)

And they import (keeping the styles) from: Word

What would be needed is a way to import from a Markdown type of thing to InDesign (or generate the PDF directly, and I'm not sure Latex caters to all the needs that InDesign caters to)

Penflip has markdown to PDF (and other formats) with a single click, with formatting and fairly well designed defaults. I included this feature as somewhat of an afterthought, but it's turning out to be one of the most used features on the site. So yeah, you're right - there seems to be some value in that.

Cool!

The problem with automatic conversions are the adjustments that are sometimes needed, as well as things like sideboxes, pictures, etc

But yeah, since it's been used a lot, looks like a very nice something to have. Good luck!

well to be fair, your hitting a very crowded market that already has very established services with large userbases (If Google Docs, Word or Github just takes the idea then your basically done for) and there is a whole bunch of startups in the same exact space as you (Atlas, Editorially and Draft), that might of scared Y Combinator off because chances are one will thrive and the rest will fizzle out

"If Google Docs, Word or Github just takes the idea then your basically done for"

That is a very non-trivial task for any of those companies. Google could get closest fastest, but they're by no means going to churn something out in a month even if the good idea fairy hits one of their product managers. Microsoft, heck it'd take 3 years to see it.

I've seen a lot of PG's interviews where he literally says "Don't worry about competition". Dropbox released at a time when Google Drive was looming in the horizon. Still they succeeded. It's the execution that matters.

honestly though there was a pretty large gap between the time Dropbox came out and Google Drive did though, Dropbox was already established and had a large user base when Google Drive launched

> Anyway, I'm not even targeting commercial publishing, I'm targeting independent publishing.

A few years ago, when I first quit my job, I was originally going to start another magazine, but a previous experience in publishing had convinced me that I needed a version control system my writers, editors and advertising sales/production people could use. There wasn't anything available, so I started building something similar.

When I tried to validate it as an actual business, the biggest problem I ran into was that the vast majority of the (magazine publishing) business is in a shambles, nobody knows if they will have jobs in five years and everyone is understandably a little paranoid. Successful publishers could (hopefully) afford to pay me, but they were generally extremely bureaucratic, difficult to penetrate, and averse to change what was (sort of) working for them. New or floundering publishers were interested (and they were seeking something easy to solve this problem), but the most common feedback I received was that they'd love a free tier, but couldn't afford to pay for it.

The most interesting thing I saw during the whole process was an editor's version control system. This person edits a shocking volume using this system:

/desktop/{author-last-name}/{article-name}/draft1-{date}/from-author.doc

/desktop/{author-last-name}/{article-name}/draft1-{date}/my-edits-to-author.doc

You've definitely got a great idea and I can vouch that it's needed. Best of luck!!

The application in the application. Upvoted for meta :)

The Git learning curve is far too steep for non-technically inclined people.

You must write a DropBox-like client.

Example UX:

In the special folder, each folder starting wit a "+" is a repository.

Each user has his own branch. No master. Provide a good online UI for diff reviews and merging, and a way to locally commit (the how is left as an exercise to the reader).

You can branch by creating another folder with the same name plus the branch as a suffix.

    +foo          // user1 branch of the "foo" repo 
                  // It may be displayed as "user1+foo-bar" in the web UI, 
                  // to avoid confusion.

    +foo-bar      // "user1-bar" branch of the "foo" repo

    baz/+qux      // the username branch of qux 
                  // "baz" is just a location, and may vary
                  // on a per user basis.
                  // If user2 wants to place it elsewhere, let it be.

    baz/+qux-quux // you get the idea...

Educate the users to pick unambiguous repo names.

Profit!

This seems immensely cumbersome and error-prone. Why not just a client with a simple GUI (ie buttons)?

Maybe... It looks straightforward to me, but it is off course highly subjective.

Creating a folder is something that most people can do, and you don't have to do it often.

Even if what I propose is not your cup of tea, the general idea is that you have to think of a streamlined workflow for writers.

Another thing I'd add to the above idea would be a local, private branch for each branch, that would keep every step on save (no need for a commit message), and then rebase the private branch on its public counterpart on commit (message required) for sharing with others. The WIP branch may also be pushed, for backup purpose.

Now that I think of it, the above would better be implemented using tags. Only share tagged commits with you collaborators.

"CTRL + S" is ingrained in most people's hands, and having an automatic time machine would be a nice addition.

I'm just throwing out ideas, hopefully, you'll like some :-)

An early pivot maybe?

Have you considered a on-premise hosted version for the enterprise?

For mundane and painful things like requirements documents. User manuals , documentation etc.

Certainly not as cool as going consumer but enterprises have way more money than hungry writers looking for feedback.

Let me know when you're ready and/or interested and I can schedule a demo at my company. I work for a large semiconductor company.

Not a pivot, this is a planned subset of penflip. Just realized this was one of the redacted bits from the application I posted here.

> For mundane and painful things like requirements documents. User manuals , documentation etc.

Yes. This is huge. Actually, lots of this happening on the platform already.

Not quite ready for a demo, but I'd love to chat about this. lorendburton [at] gmail

Cool. I'll send you an email

Enterprise is often ignored by cutting edge technologies. Sounds like it could somehow eat into sharepoint confluence enterprise wikis etc. market share. of course harder to demonstrate traction but you should consider (amount of money you make + amount of money a large existing enterprise solution loses) as what makes your company valuable.

Seems like collaborative editing is not hot.

No YC interview neither, and somehow related:

http://sharepad.co

YC has invested in many real-time collaborative editing tools. Most similar to sharepad: https://hackpad.com/

Thanks akanet.

As "The idea doesn't matter much; it will change anyway", we mostly see SharePad as a foundation to build something awesome.

Application Intros, might be useful. https://www.youtube.com/results?filters=month&search_query=y...

Looks very nice. Most likely the biggest problem is the single founder aspect, I'm in the same boat as you there.

I have a feeling that when you select "yes" on that red flag option, your application goes straight into PG's queue.

Keep at it, my man.

Single founder applications are probably a red flag that the founder isn't good at networking, and YC is all about networking. They probably fear you'd be reclusive at YC.

Thanks for sharing your application. It takes guts to be open about this kind of stuff.

One thing I didn't see in the application was what your distribution strategy will be. I understand the collaborative nature of GitHub for Writers, but are there established channels that you could take advantage of to help your customer acquisition. Publishers are one group but perhaps they don't closely manage writers in that way. Perhaps advertising firms or print media might be a way to go. A couple big enterprise customers might be good validation for your business.

> but are there established channels that you could take advantage of to help your customer acquisition

Yes, absolutely. See "How will you get users" question. I listed 6 different growth/distribution strategies, but redacted 3 of them for the purpose of sharing publicly. They are not necessarily groundbreaking, but I'd rather not just hand over my growth strategies to competitors.

I wasn't aware LOC is used as a heuristic of sorts at YC.

Good luck Loren. It seems like you're not really targeting scientists and are willing to concede that to the Harvard folks. As someone that was recently involved in sending tex-files back and forth I can assure you there's a need there (and probably some money from volume licensing, univerities tend to buy this stuff with "wtf-don't care" money if you get a champion)

Edit: You could also sell it to conferences as SaaS. Call for papers -> use our amazing tool to write it link.

This seems like it would be an immensely useful tool for government. In many regulations/rules scenarios, there are multiple agencies or offices (spread widely across the bureaucracy) vying for impact on a the in-progress document and the person or entity initially in control often loses ownership due to political, bureaucratic, funding or other reasons.

A product like this would significantly improve this process and provide the kind of historical record needed create transparency in lawmaking. Just a thought.

Do you work in government or know somebody that does? If so, let's chat.

I spent the last 3.5 years running a company that provides professional education to government contractors and was a government contractor myself. Before that, I worked in government for a couple years. Shoot me an email - happy to discuss.

Awesome product! Don't give up hope, I can really see it doing well. One of those links I click and instantly see the appeal and benefits! Great job!

I can't remember where I saw it before but ever since then any instance grates on me: describing your product in terms of other product. - GitHub for writers - Facebook for Pearl Divers - LinkedIn for Horse Whisperers - Twitter for Ornithologists

Merits of the idea aside it really turns me off, smacks of a lack of creativity, a lazy route to explaining your product benefits.

Very superficial I know, it may be just me.

This is actually recommended by YC:

"One good trick for describing a project concisely is to explain it as a variant of something the audience already knows. It's like Wikipedia, but within an organization. It's like an answering service, but for email. It's eBay for jobs. This form of description is wonderfully efficient. Don't worry that it will make your idea seem "derivative." Some of the best ideas in history began by sticking together two existing ideas no one realized could be combined."

http://ycombinator.com/howtoapply.html

Good to know where it comes from. I still hate it I have to say, probably for the reason they mention i.e. it comes off as derivative. But yet I don't argue that some of the best ideas in history began by sticking together two existing ideas. I'm conflicted.

Love the idea, been using iA Writer for MAC to work on my book. But since I'm co-authoring with somebody else this would be the best tool to use. Too bad you didn't get into YC (just like me and many others), but you got a user (an possibly many more after getting on HN)!

Just apply again next time when you're able to show some traction!

I don't know if this idea will be successful or not, but as a long time lurker here at HN I think the way you are putting yourself out there is fantastic. Keep up the good work and see this thing through.

I think one founder is an automatic no at the amount of applications they have now, even if they say it maybe ok. I'd just check off all applications with one person and not have to worry about them.

It isn't an automatic no. If it was, they would just say that. It is probably an easy no and gets passed by quickly without a really compelling idea/product, some revenue already, past success and you don't really need YC, etc.

I think penflip is a great idea, and if you have a usable product already you might want to consider marketing it to people attempting NaNoWriMo

Already on it! A small barrier is the $6000 donation to become an official NaNoWriMo sponsor, but I'm managing to get some NaNoWriMo writers on the platform through other means.

See if you can scrape emails off public library websites They often advertise book writing month on a board and might happily add the web link.

What caught my eye - number of n/a answers. It shows a certain level of ignorance on the applicant part. If these questions are included, they are included for a reason.

Second, single founder is a not a good fit for YC - everyone knows about it. Not addressing this issue wasn't very smart.

The Airbnb stunt is another proof that Loren wants more to stand out than to fit in.

Ignorance? Not at all. YC has thousands of applications to read in a short period of time. If a question says "If you're already incorporated, when were you?" and I go on to explain why I'm not incorporated, I'm wasting their time. N/A means "I'm not incorporated, this does not apply to me." Go and read the questions that have N/A as answers. They simply do not apply.

Did you read the questions that he answered n/a to? They specifically didn't apply to his situation, not incorporated, sole founder, never participated in another accelerator, and no one is only partially commited. What exactly would you want him to write in these sections?

> The Airbnb stunt is another proof that Loren wants more to stand out than to fit in

Isn't it better for a founder to want to stand out than to "fit in"? Fit in what, exactly?

Github for writers is big though dude. Get some traction and everybody will lick your toes!

This is an Great idea man! I would like meet up and get to know more about your project.

don't lose heart. YC is not the end of the road for you. keep on trying.

Penflip is similar to a project I'm working on. We should talk.

Sure, shoot me an email (see profile for email)

Thanks for sharing this, interesting. However, why don't you mention Google Docs and Dropbox as competitors? Google docs already does this, and Dropbox seems to be clearly heading this way.

He does, right there in the section called "Who are your competitors?":

"Indirect competitors: (...), Google Docs, Dropbox, (...)"

Edit: BTW, he also mentions them in the video linked to near the top of the application.

He mentions both in the youtube pitch.

Really like the editor of the penflip.

BTW: I really like the clean design.

Are you still seeking funding?

Not actively, right now, but possibly in the future. Going to bootstrap and possibly attempt to monetize soon.

I wasn't even looking to YC for the funding, really, mostly just the network and mentorship.

Getting into YC shouldn't be your goal. Build your own business is.

What's up with the n/a on your application?

certain questions were not applicable - no cofounder, not incorporated yet, no other incubators, etc.

Good work man!

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