Lessons from a Failed YC Pitch with Paul Graham

I think Kyle's pitch could have been fine and he could have avoided 2 years of feeling shamed if pg was a bit more encouraging and patient during the delivery. A little more "yes, and" less "but, why not". Give the founder the benefit of the doubt they might be starting with some idea. If they really do have nothing it's going to be apparent, you don't need to try to sniff it out in the first 15 seconds.

"Yes, and we're really starting to see the metrics space pick up steam with the likes of mixpanel and others. That's a pretty exciting place to be. Tell us what Schmetrics is going to do amazingly well that some of these other players may not be tackling yet."

vs

"You can't even use the microphone correctly. We've already funded Mixpanel, what could you possibly do better?"

How many times had you tried to pitch before that day? My guess is less than 50 times. It takes several dozen practice runs before, really, the ideas gel in your mind, the questions people ask are all predictable, the confusion points are already planned for and navigated around. This is just an example of how everyone feels when they've done 'the pitch' an order of magnitude too few times.

I think it's also worth pointing out, listen to just the very next person who comes up to speak. PG hands a big gift-wrapped present to the speaker, "with that in mind, please, tell me precisely what you do" and look what the entrepreneur does... launches into a thing about something Bill Gates said, and you can see PG just going right back into that pain zone.

So I think it's a terribly common problem, and really, it's something that pretty much everyone works through manually just by getting out and giving the pitch over, and over, to different people, gauging their reactions, their body language, their questions, and just adapting, refining, sharpening that pitch to the point where it really crystallizes exactly the best way to communicate how what you're doing really makes a difference.

I was there for that pitch and I remember it only because it was entertaining, not because I had any judgemental thoughts. If anything I had (and still have) so much respect for people who talk on stage because public speaking is the bane of my existence and I need to practice speaking 50 times before I'm not going to have a breakdown. So kudos for getting up there and kudos for proving "everyone" wrong.

I watched this online a long time ago and it actually has come to mind from time to time. I never actually thought it was as terrible as it has been made out to be though. Kyle was obviously very nervous (as I would be) presenting to PG in front of hundreds of people.

Now realizing how successful Keen.io, Kyle, and his team have come to be I find this far more inspiring than the typical success stories that float around the HN bubble. I run the entrepreneurship club at my university and I plan to show this to all our members.

hmmm...i watched the video of kyle pitching and i understood what was talking about. i don't see what was so bad about it. to me, given the interruption-laden flow of the dialog, it was as clear and concise as you could probably expect (though i'm sure the pitch got better over time)...but i'm a developer (the target). i think the problem was not necessarily the content of the pitch, but the fact that he tasked with getting a non-developer (or one who's been out of the game) to understand the specific problem he was addressing - in an artificially short time frame. ...he was also talking to someone who was desperately trying to put his idea in a box so he could understand. it's too bad that kyle took it so hard. it's great to share this experience with others so they can learn that pitching is hard and doesn't always go your way. practice, practice, practice.

I used to be "Data Scientist" in a social game company - one of OP's target - and I remember the data warehouse and back end teams tried to build something like Keen IO, but I have to say, in a non structured way because there were so many teams. All I can say is that Keen IO would help a lot this business, and I know at least one company that does exactly that.

After watching Kyle's presentation, I was reminded of the real time analytics problem I experienced, and if I was still working there, I know I really would have wanted Keen IO.

I <3 Kyle / Keen, but that could have gone better tbh; open office hours seem to add a lot of pressure. Kyle didn't get what PG was asking though:

1) mixpanel - you = ? 2) why use keen over mixpanel?

Succinctly (+ all in imho of course); Keen is a level lower than Mixpanel; - a more powerful, more flexible, API driven events platform. Users would be anyone that wants to track and report on things which aren't the norm for mixpanel, who's product is good but pretty prescriptive in it's use.

This is a really cool showcase and kudos for being so open! I'm currently writing up an article on about 18+ (simple) points of what founders should be looking at before pitching.

But many times it just boils down to the same and only point - and that's the beginning. Just directly start with the problem, and then naturally move on to the solution. Like 50% of startups we watched at pitch events just failed at that - and the crowd was left wondering what they're really doing.

It's like the most important thing. Drop everything else, just throw the problem out there - to make people think about it - and then how you solve it.

But this, this was a step harder - no slides to back you up, and an investor in another data tool grilling you on the spot and not letting you off the hook to validate his own investment - that was a tough cookie. Usually you can just leave a comment or two about competitors and move on, but here you had to stay and explain details. So it's not a black and white fail for sure.

( Another point that helped us internally was to pitch in front of the team first. Because there the fails will become evident much faster, and it's a crowd you don't care too much about failing in front. Pitching in front of your team = unit tests before the event )

I watched this a long time ago. I actually remember thinking that you handled the situation well, and seemed quite comfortable. It's a stressful situation, plus you were alone, without a co-founder to help answer some questions. Also, there was added distraction with the microphones etc. You were brave to go up there, many people wouldn't.

I was at KeenCon when Kyle did the opening talk in front of the audience and I remembered thinking how well-spoken Kyle was and how awesome could be if I could pull it off as well.

How funny it is to look at the Startup School video now - a great story about Keen IO not getting into YC and then raised $11M+ from Sequoia!

Two things.

One: I don't know what is the idea of keen.io after watching the video. I guess it is some sort of generic data collection platform with querying capabilities.

Two: based on the pitch (6 mins) I don't know why should I not just roll with opensource components are assemble this platform myself, tailored to our use case.

During the video the keen.io guy kept mentioning mongodb as a competitor, I am not sure why. Bringing together a very similar platform that is able to collect metrics, able to process them and query the results for meaningful analytics is roughly two weeks project for a seasoned guy. The value of such a system provided is not extremely high. I am pretty sure they got a revenue and all that, I am just not sure if it is profitable to provide this service. Seems a little thin to me.

I remember Kyle. He was on the same session as those two Stanford girls (PG told them not to make a recipe site because they were Stanford hackers, if I recall correctly) and that guy who forgot to shake PG's hand.

From what I remember, I didn't understand a thing from what he was saying but he seemed to have done two things:

* Solve a problem HE had. * Acquire some paying customers (that early).

Tradeoffs stating that people part away from their money in order to get something they want/need, his product seemed to matter to someone.

That, to me, was pretty neat on its own.. So Kyle, if you're reading this: I didn't think you were a fool and actually look up to you, dude. I'm writing something that solves a problem -I- have right now and I have to learn a lot about a lot before it works.

Good luck!

I actually can't see how this epitomizes a failed Pitch. Sure, he was struggling a little bit, and towards the end went off the rails.. but generally if this summarizes what a 'poor pitch' is like, then we're in pretty good shape.

I still don't really grok what value keen.io provides. The storage and querying of data (including unstructured) is pretty easy (and has been for a long time) with numerous ready-to-go solutions.

Is the value mostly on the visualization and dashboard portion? Is it some sort of WYSIWYG query editor?

Kyle is one of the most humble, coolest, down-to-earth individuals I've met - his personality and ambition is what entrepreneurial communities need.

Noting that I applaud the introspection: He was embarrassed for thinking he sounded stupid whereas I think he should have be embarrassed for seeming like a jerk.