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Comment by dreamweapon | Hacker News Reader

Before our interview, Frank and I: - Collected all of the known Y Combinator interview questions we could find - Wrote out 1-2 sentence answers - Agreed on which founder would lead on the answer, and - Practiced with flash cards until we could answer every question fluently

Sounds like YC has turned into something of a cram school.

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You mean figuring out answers to important business issues like "who are you users?", "how will you acquire them?", and "how will you make money?" and then having a plan how to clearly communicate them is cramming and nothing more?

It was the use of flashcards, specifically.

The thing that's strange is that it seems like they could write a one-two sentence to every of these questions without much trouble.

No, needing sessions with flash cards is cramming. Knowing those answers and communicating them should be something you can do on the fly.

So I guess people should stop preparing for Google interviews by looking at and practicing the myriad of coding puzzles they've previously asked. You'd be stupid not to.

Consider Management Consulting interviews, where the firm tells you exactly what to expect and even points you towards prep books.

They test for how prepared you are and how motivated you are in working to be given an offer.

Asking "what the interview tests for" is a pertinent one as any entrance process becomes increasingly formulaic.

It sounds like after studying with the flash cards they were able to do just that.

Should they ... not prepare? What are you even suggesting? Do you seriously think it's so easy to just communicate the complexities of a business without having practiced hundreds of times? Have you even tried? I get the feeling you're just an armchair philosopher who doesn't have any idea what the heck you're actually talking about. Either that or you're just being a dick. It's complete nonsense.

By doing flash cards, they were able to accomplish the exact goal you stated much quicker and more effectively than blundering their way through the YC interview and trying again in 6 months after they've had real pitches. Or should everyone just be as amazing as you are and be able to communicate these things without ample practice? Ridiculous.

I would say it's more about speed and learning to be direct.

Interviews go crazy fast and the competition is insane. You don't want to spend 5 minutes answering a question that can be answered in 10 seconds.

Which isn't that big of an issue. I'm sure the YC folks are aware of the practice and look for other less-reproducible signals. Plus, the cramming, interview, 3-month sprint may lead to quite a bit of learning. Most doctors crammed in school.

Good answers to those questions aren't really that easily reproducible.

Yep. I'm kind of disappointed that the article isn't "How to run a business and succeed", but instead is just more prep work for applying to this generations silicon ivy.

More people want to be in a startup than, you know, make a startup it seems.

This reminded me of a quote from The Way of the Gun (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Way_of_the_Gun)

  Longbaugh: These days, they want to be criminals more than they want to commit crime.
  Joe Sarno: Well that's... that's not just crime. That's the way of the world.

Yep. That's what I'm paraphrasing. :)

Excellent sheep! BTW, Lets hear their answer to #16, "Someone just showed us an idea like this right before you guys. I don't like it. What else do you have?" (Statements of the obvious not necessary, but this is the Internet, so...)

Flashcards for YC interviews: http://hnacademy.com

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