
Y Combinator interview advice (by Robby from Zenter) - sharpshoot
http://www.robbywalker.name/1/post/2007/05/y-combinator-adviceinterview-tips.html
======
pg
There's a danger in some of this interview advice: everyone writing about it
is writing based on their one interview. So it seems to the Zenters that one
should be passionate about one's idea. But the Zenters had a good idea. We'd
been waiting for someone to propose a web-based Powerpoint killer. So all we
needed to know was that they were smart and psyched to work on it.

Reddit was at the other extreme. We didn't like their initial idea. But we
liked Steve and Alexis, so we brainstormed with them about other
possibilities, and the result was Reddit. If they'd spent the time before the
interview pumping up their "passion" about their idea, it would have just made
things harder.

Maybe I'd better write something myself about what happens at interviews....

~~~
kcl
One thing I seem to notice from people doing startups---really, from anyone
doing something that isn't codified---is the urge to take a personal
experience and distill it into generalized wisdom, even if what they learned
isn't useful in general. If you have a scatterplot, you can draw a pretty nice
linear approximation through it. I sort of think of this type of advice as the
experienced person throwing a line through their one point and then trying to
orient that line as best they can. Personal stories make great content for a
blog, and it's true, when taken in the context of other people's experiences
they can be of great help, but the urge to generalize and present them as a
method is something that's usually better off avoided.

~~~
pg
Everyone does this. There's nothing wrong it. Generalizing from experience is
part of intelligence.

Maybe the reason you seem to notice it more with startups is that there's a
lot of variation in startups, so generalizations more often miss.

~~~
falsestprophet
No. Avoiding baseless generalizations and making rational decisions is a mark
of an important intellect. Anything contrariwise is exactly that.

~~~
pg
But one is always guessing. Or always should be. You can't wait till you have
complete information. You have to act on hunches.

Case in point: most of what Robby wrote was correct, even though it's based on
a small amount of data. He's a smart guy, so he was able to extrapolate.

I think you have it exactly wrong. The mark of a great mind is not how few
mistakes it makes, but the magnitude of the new things it discovers. Newton
probably spent more time on pointless theological controversies than on
physics. But we still consider him smart.

~~~
falsestprophet
I have found that most disagreements are artificial; these are the result of a
poorly framed discussion. I bet we agree, but are talking about two diffrent
things.

I chose my words carefully. I did not say "the" mark of a "great" mind, but
"a" mark of an "important" mind. I think we can all agree that Newton was a
great mind, but I think the questions of what makes a great mind and an
important mind are different.

I think there are many important minds in the myriad fields of human
enterprise. These are people, like yourself Mr. Graham, who are able to
understand their corner of the world and shape it.

I have observed that a lot of the people I see who are leading their fields
have the quality I mentioned above. (These people have other qualities as
well, but that exceeds the scope of the conversation.) They are in a position
to lead, in part, because they have made a great many good decisions. As far
as I can tell, the people who make good decisions are those who are not
wrapped up in superstition and who are disciplined enough to make rational
decisions whenever practical. Rigorously rational decisions require boundary
conditions. It is important to know what degree of certainty is important. It
is important to make a separate equally rational decision about how much time
to spend thinking about the first decision (but be careful with this
recursion.)

I can identity this pattern of decision making in your writing. You say that
start-ups shouldn't spend a great deal of time worrying about their idea: "[if
it seems good enough, then build it and find out.]" But, you rationalized that
idea at length with the idea that implementing a project is less costly than
researching the market. So, in this case, you are carefully making a rational
decision to recklessly make other decisions. I think this suits my model
(which is, of course, not certain).

------
henning
"Taylor Hicks won American Idol. QED"

Oh cool, is someone going to set up a "vote for the worst YC app" website like
there is for American Idol? :)

