The “Interview” with Y Combinator That’s Not
blog.directededge.com
blog.directededge.com
Despite being given the same advice by others that had been through the process we still foolishly wasted time preparing a short 1 minute pitch.
We might have had a better result if we'd invested more time in getting the user experience in our demo right and answering the one critical question - "Why would people want this?"
Don't make the same mistake we did. :)
In the case of YC interviews, that paragraph that says what your company does is buried in the thousands of pages of text that are going across their eyes during the screening process. Don't expect them to remember it verbatim. ;-)
There's so much competition from great teams that it may well be a waste of time without showing your best.
I can whip up something in two weeks easy (even with school), but I didn't submit a demo in the application because I didn't think it would be necessary, so I focused on developing the idea instead.
It didn't even occur to us that they might call our land line back home until we got the email the next morning. Remotely checking the answering machine was fun too, hadn't used that feature in ages and the code didn't work (turns out you can't send DTMF tones when calling via Skype).
At the time we weren't sure if they give everyone a call or just the ones they accept, so we didn't take the absence of a call as a 'no', but kept wondering. In the end, we got the answer about 26 (pretty exciting) hours after we left the interview room.
So, unless you're a thrill seeker, put your cell number in the application :-)
Our email came in the early hours of the morning. I'd encourage you not to respond to it, at least for a few days. I felt compelled at the time to send a few paragraphs the next morning responding to some of the criticisms. Retrospectively it probably wasn't that all that useful to anyone.
It must be an exhausting 3 days for the YC team. I don't think there are enough hours in the day for them to call all the unsuccessful interviewees. Especially when some of them (like us) will want to take more of their time responding to feedback.
The quantity and quality of the questions and feedback you get in the short 10 minute interview alone is brilliant. Even though we didn't get funded it's had a massive impact on the way I think about things. I'd fly out from the UK to do it again even if there wasn't any chance of funding.
I take that to mean that they tried to make it clear how to call them, but for whatever reason signals got crossed.
We got to the interview super early and ended up chatting with Kate (we asked her how to get to In and Out), Skysheets Dan (saw his demo), and two other interviewing teams that were accepted. Then there were two less social teams who sat in the corner with their laptops, I guess nervously testing their demo one last time.
Maybe I'm over-fitting, but for me the nerve-calming benefits of being social in the waiting room was helpful.
Don't need the money but could really use the "blessing". They have some of the most enviable media contacts in the industry right now.
edit: why am I getting downvoted?
"Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. "
One point I'd like to make though is that it's less about the karma itself than it is about the reason that people don't like the question. I could understand why if I was trolling, insulting, etc.
Honestly, I don't care if my karma goes to negative infinity, unless that would automatically ban my account, or something to that effect.
I would write an expose on Hiring practices we used to have at Netscape, detailing precisely what hiring managers though, and how - and people would downmod me like there was tomorrow.
Over time, I realized, that sometimes it's just a popularity contest. Your comments, even if well meant, may just not be in agreement with somebody elses. I just learned to deal with it - over time you get a sense for the Ebb and Flow - and can learn quite a bit about the community. Don't always consider a downmod to be negative - sometimes it's just a reflection of what other people think - not a reflection of your comments value.
Yeah you get good media contacts with YC but that only takes you so far. What's good is the community of founders who have gone thru YC.
Seems like the whole startup scene is focused on web-based tools and utilities, while we're focused in real-world businesses.
By the way, I am also interested in operations research. (I write my thesis about the very real-world problem of scheduling at Deutsche Bahn.)
On DirectedEdge home, can I enter any search term, or does this need to be a well formatted Wikipedia entry url ?
disclaimer : I'm a radical graph data, noSQL proponent, so you had me at 'edge', however...
The only thing that I care about on that page is the graph.
Id like to see just that graph, but prefetched, fluid interactive javascript. Nothing else, except the text bar at top, and the interactive sliding autoscaling graph data app.
That would be wonderful, a new thing packaged out of old things Id half enunciated a thousand times myself.
the other stuff, Id put in some links.
This way you have all the focus on what your about.
So my 'Crazy Thought' is - make that the whole company, trim away everything else.
What would it look like if you had 2000 data points on the screen, gradually getting smaller at the edges, and fluidly navigating with say 500 nodes of prefetch ahead.
This should be in JS using Raphael if its not already .. [ I didnt see a raphael.js inclusion in your source page. ]
I meant : it seems a good kit, you've probably heard of it.
It's a 404. Form follows function. I prefer it to a prettified version, honestly.
I'm not a big fan of overboard, fancy graphics (just look at my sites), but just a little bit of looking nice goes a long way.
Really, if the user hits a 404 then something has gone badly wrong and I think it's appropriate for them to get an ugly message.
If you really want your users to be helped by your site, even when they've ended up somewhere they probably shouldn't have gone, you need to have a basic 404 error page which gently describes that the page doesn't exist and contains a link back to the home. Not everyone using a website will see "404" and understand what it is, and without a link back to the main site, a user (potential customer) is lost.
Even for 404 errors, it's pretty standard practice on corporate web sites to include at least some of the main site's look and feel, with a link back to the main page or something.
Good luck!
Why did you fly to America to get $5000? It is not a large amount of money. I am surprised it covered your air fares.
So why? I do not feel the need at all. You did. I would like to here why. Did they really say something in the interview that justified all that time and expense?
update: I have no idea whatsoever why this is being downvoted. There is no way I would fly to the US to collect a pathetic $5k. I'd genuinely like to know why people think it is a profitable thing to do so. Thanks.
The money is the least important aspect of getting in to YC. What matters is the advice they provide and the community/network aspects. These things are so valuable that they are a huge state change for most startups.
Fair enough I guess. People pay what they think it is worth. That's capitalism; no argument from me. I am not trolling. Carry on.
"""It is not easy to determine how far Pythagoras was indebted to the Egyptian priests, or indeed, whether he learnt anything from them. There was nothing in the symbolical mode of representation which the Pythagoreans adopted, which bore the distinct traces of an Egyptian origin."""
And further: """The philosophy and the institutions of Pythagoras exhibit what might easily have been developed by a Greek mind exposed to the ordinary influences of the age."""
Today travelling across the world to receive information isn't something most people would do - or even think about. After all, the price of information has crashed even more than stocks in Lehrman Brothers.
I'm curious what led you to Hacker News if you don't see the value of YC more than the money.
In Silicon Valley, you see something similar in companies - there is this massive meritocracy and cross pollination that takes place. Companies get successful. Employees vest out and go form new companies. Then they reach back into their (metaphorical) Rolodex and pull colleagues from years passed who went through the most intense interview ever - working side-by-side for multiple years. It's why I recommend anyone from outside the valley interested in technology, particularly early in their career, to take any job they can get with a good valley company, and pay absolutely no attention to their salary. None. Once you are established, the money will follow.
But it's all about getting in the door, taking that first step. YC is one of those first steps for startup founders.
Saying it's just $5,000 is disingenuous.