I'm amazed at the people who continually doubt the value of YC. Why not just ask those founders who have been part of YC - nearly all of them will tell you being in YC was invaluable. Isn't that all the proof that is needed?
The wrappings are what exposes how good (or bad) the applicant is. Thinking that your natural wonderfulness will be obvious no matter how you fill out your application sets yourself up for failure.
Great point, I definitely endorse that point as well. We didn't have a prototype when we applied, but we created one by the time we were interviewed. Showing even a rough prototype will explain your idea better than anything you say during that 5 minutes.
Wundrbar's site says they're a platform and soon hackers will be able to plugin services into the system to be used by anyone. I think we'll see some awesomely clever uses of Wundrbar as its community starts to grow.
This is natural when you abide by "release early and iterate." Most of the companies 11 weeks old. When you release, you haven't yet implemented your entire vision. That takes much more time to develop internally and become obvious to outsiders. But the founders know that the first release is just the tip of the iceberg.
Employee efficiency is big business. Companies aren't going to fire you for spending a bit of time on CNN or Facebook, but I guarantee you they wouldn't mind getting a bit more of that time back. Every minute gained is a competitive advantage.
Also keep in mind we've only been launched for a few hours now. Being a toolbar provides us the opportunity to do some clever things, which we have planned. So as we roll out these features the differences will be more apparent.
8aweek only tracks time for the current tab that you are active in, and after 5 minutes of no mouse movement it'll realize you're inactive and not count that time.
Think distribution. HotOrNot is a single site, which coincidentally just sold for $20 million. AddHer is distributed across all social networks. It's all about distribution, and as the AddHer team executes the rest of their plans (whatever those may be), they'll have millions of users at their fingertips.
Great job on the design and keeping it going at a quick pace. You'll definitely get some people addicted. The distribution model is clearly a winner. Good job, Addhers ;-)
Btw, your writer analogy is a poor one, since prior art exists for that story line and thus it would not be patentable. There are also industries that would collapse without patents (pharmaceuticals for one).
I think the "reflection" of the photos on top is too stark. This needs to be toned down and very subtle. Also your intro paragraph to the right of the pic is too verbose. I'd cut this down and get straight to the point of what Muchcloser actually does.