Hacker News Reader

Comment by greendestiny | Hacker News Reader

The fact that this article doesn't even consider the widgets themselves to be the reason for the rejection probably sums it up. Your customers don't care what you're using to poll. While it might be true that Comet will enable someone to develop really good 'live' web applications it doesn't sound like it will be you, you're too caught up in Comet itself.

View on HN

I think you're exactly right. We thought our expertise was valuable, but what YC wanted was a business, not technical expertise alone.

We don't look for business expertise so much as the raw materials that go into it. E.g. the judgement to realize that publishing (supposedly) verbatim quotes from your YC interview on the web would cause any future investor to think twice before talking to you.

He certainly managed to generate a great deal of buzz. If it's for enough buzz, I'd be willing to make investors think twice.

Paul, its important that the Comet community understands how little mindshare we have. If you hadn't heard of the technology after reading thousands of startup ideas, then what chance do we have? Thats compelling enough reason to post what I remember of the conversation. I sincerely doubt my article would make other investors nervous. The interview contents don't reflect poorly on YC, they reflects poorly on our (my partners and I) ideas and the entire Comet community.

If nothing else, publicly speculating that your interviewer is bad at his job, is somewhat less than tactful.

> If you hadn't heard of the technology after reading thousands of startup ideas, then what chance do we have?

You're fundamentally mistaken. The technology is 1%. Execution is 99%. You need to stop being so obsessed over technology and focus on the execution of the technology. Build great stuff on top of Comet and it won't matter what mindshare it has or whether PG has heard of it or not.

It seems as if Comet is more important than your startup. Maybe a startup isn't the right way to promote Comet, if Comet is truly what's important to you?

Consider two things: 1. interview questions may be more to do with finding out how people answer, 2. posting (possibly sensitive & flawed) recollections of an interview reflects a lack of acumen.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com