Hacker News Reader

Comment by lacker | Hacker News Reader

It would be great to see previous successful applications, if they don't mind. (Unsuccessful ones would be interesting too but that might be weird for them.)

View on HN

Hopefully I won't feel stupid posting this, but I wished someone had done the same thing when I applied. (pg -- if you'd rather I not share this, feel free to delete)

Original Dropbox YC app: http://files.getdropbox.com/u/2/app.html

Had to remove some names and one sensitive thing but otherwise unedited

You had applied earlier (SFP05?) and been rejected, right? If you don't mind, it'd be really interesting to see the earlier app too and compare what changed between them?

Even though I don't intend on reapplying, this was thought provoking; thanks.

Why would your project be hard for someone else to duplicate? I think this is a critical question.

Several weeks ago I was at a coffee shop and some girl was complaining to her friend about saving her data as they were leaving. Her friend said, "I just use DropBox." Had to smile as it was the first time I saw a (presumably) lay person mention a YC-funded company. It was nice to see an indication of such a breadth of success.

Wow, that is a great application. This is exactly what I meant about being clear and concise. I linked to it from the essay.

Here's the real gem:

"Prototype - done in Feb. Version I can charge for: 8 weeks maybe? (ed: hahaha)"

Ah, founders' optimism.

The document was very informative. A repository of YC apps would definitely be a tremendously useful collection, not just for future YC applications, but for general startup community as well.

That is awesome. Great application.

I wish more people would post their applications.

You seem to be already doing well at the time of the application, why were you applying to YCombinator? Was it the money, the networking, or something else?

This is exactly what I want to know. Must be the networking to sharp folks and help building the business from concept to concrete.

If you were applying as a single founder, how and when did you meet Arash (or at what point did you get him to be cofounder)?

Nice pitch Drew. And of course, I use and love dropbox.

I agree this would be very helpful, but I imagine they're would be a lot of effort on censoring things like personal info, other ideas. I think for example I would like to read just how the successful ones described they're accepted ideas.

great for applicants, but not for the process overall. I imagine if you told people exactly what you're looking for, you'd only just get that from applicants. In essence, you'd have just diluted the power of your discriminator.

What pg's doing here seemed mostly to tell applicants what not to do. He's trying to make his application process scale better, and to increase the signal to noise ratio on the good, but not obviously great teams.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com