
Want to ace your Y Combinator interview? Be relentlessly empathetic - brandnewlow
http://blog.perfectaudience.com/2013/04/26/want-to-ace-your-ycombinator-interview-be-relentlessly-empathetic/
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argumentum
Another alum here, good list of questions. As was stated, the key to doing
well at the interview is _insight_. This can't be overstated. Show them
something you understand about your users, market or technology that gets them
thinking.

The actual questions will vary based on the type of team you are. I.e. a
couple undergrad dorm-room hackers with a prototype, a team that's spent time
in the industry they are trying to disrupt, a team that's developed some real
technology, or a team with a product that has traction.

But whatever questions you get, demonstrate _genuine insight_ , not marketing
speak or cliches. And have a decent answer to every possible question. The
partners have spent only minutes with your application, and you've spent
anywhere from weeks to months to years on your idea, so this should not be
that hard. If you do this, they will get themselves excited and you're pretty
much in at that point.

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DanielRibeiro
Better yet: be relentlessly empathetic, create something people want
(need/can't live with it, etc), whether you are interview with YC or not.

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timjahn
This is great stuff Brad, and I'd say it's just as important in the day-to-day
happenings of your early stage startup, rather than just to ace a Y Combinator
interview.

I love your advice about having at least 1 person dedicated to learning
about/listening to users all the time. This is so key from my experience thus
far with matchist (<http://matchist.com/talent>).

With an early stage startup, it's not about the code at all - it's 100% about
the users.

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jonathanjaeger
These are crucial: How much better is your solution? Why would they switch to
your solution?

Switching costs are often underestimated and it's hard to come up with a solid
answer for this in many businesses. And even if you do have people who would
switch, it's hard to get the distribution to implement a way of getting those
users who want to switch.

"Did you know Airbnb thought the “breakfast” in Airbed & Breakfast was a
crucial part of their product experience at one time?"

I did not! Interesting.

~~~
brandnewlow
There's a screenshot I've seen from an early version of Airbnb where the
listing page was divided into thirds, with a photo of the apartment, a photo
of the host, and a photo of the breakfast (!!) all the same size. They really
thought a good breakfast was important for listing your unit.

~~~
EvanKelly
To be honest, a good looking picture of eggs benedict could probably convince
me to stay with you.

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ysapir
How would this work out in a scenario where the customers are a subset of the
users. Say, a restaurant menu service that provides restaurants with enhanced
menus for their clients. The customers are the restaurants and restaurant
owners. But the users include the clients who actually use the menus and may
have their own interests and considerations. You may revenue-share with the
restaurants, but the customers are still the restaurants. Now there may be
questions on this list, where the customers' interests and pain are at odds
with their clients' interests and pain. What happens when the customer is an
enterprise level business, and you can't speak to them daily or weekly or
maybe even monthly?

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brandnewlow
The restaurant is the user in that situation because they're paying you money.
A lot of B2B businesses are like this. The user questions are particularly
important for vetting these sorts of businesses precisely BECAUSE the user
situation is so convoluted.

My company sells advertising and the equation is similar to your situation.
Our customers are marketers who use our tools to launch retargeting campaigns
that serve ads to their own visitors. Our products have to interact with those
visitors in a way that creates value for the business, but our actual customer
is the marketer and we need to know his/her needs inside and out.

The "and you can't speak to them daily or weekly or even monthly" is one of
the biggest barriers to entry into many very lucrative B2B spaces. One of the
reasons why it took us so long to launch our product,
<http://perfectaudience.com>, after finishing YC was because our initial
product was aimed at enterprises we had domain knowledge of (newspapers), and
when that didn't pan out and we had to build a product that went direct to
advertisers, we had to go out and gain a ton of new domain knowledge from a
customer type we weren't familiar with at the time.

B2B businesses are awesome and hugely lucrative if you can build something
lots and lots of businesses want. But building something lots and lots of
businesses want is a lot harder than building something lots and lots of
consumers want because you're much less likely to have shared experiences with
those enterprises than with consumers.

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nwenzel
Thanks for the post. Interviewing on Sunday.

I've been trying to figure out how much time I might be able to get to explain
what we do before the first interruption. 15 seconds? 10? Basically, I get a
verbal twitter post, right?

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brandnewlow
"I get a verbal twitter post, right?"

That's a good way to look at it.

~~~
nwenzel
Thanks. Any chance you want to mock interview me?

We build software that stops law firms from overcharging our customers.

nwenzel edgesolutions.com

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Terretta
Ha. As a company that's had six figure law bills we've negotiated back to mid
5s thanks to careful documentation on our part, this tool sounds compelling. A
real problem.

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pg
Not just Brian. Brian and Joe Gebbia both flew to NYC every week.

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argumentum
Where was Nate?

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grinich
Probably writing code.

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lalos
So to ace your YC interview one must be empathetic and focus on the user. This
is also the advice to give to somebody that wants to deliver a great product,
I don't like to think in terms of what to do to get more investors and VC
funding instead of thinking of delivering a great product. If you focus on the
product and the user, the funding will come but that is not the goal.

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thetrumanshow
I would love to see an actual tear-down question list from the man himself, or
Gary, or Paul, or Jessica.

For now, I've printed this list of questions to hang in my office. :)

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brandnewlow
Glad you found it helpful!

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agntdrake
This is essentially the 'Genchi Genbutsu'
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genchi_Genbutsu>) principle. You need to get
off your butt and figure out what your customers want (although not
necessarily what they say they want).

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futhey
Great advice! Small typo, "relentless resourceful" should be "relentlessly
resourceful", shouldn't it?

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brandnewlow
Fixed!

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jsterling10
Awesome post. Thanks Brad!

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mcmSEA
are you actually empathetic if someone has to tell you to be empathetic?

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LanceH
I think a lot of it comes down to focus. You have tons of code to work on,
maybe family and/or a full time job, etc... It's easy to forget that customer
email represents a real person at the other end.

"I'VE GOT PEOPLE SKILLS"

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drivebyacct2
Want to ace anything in life, charm your way through everyday conversations
and problems and more? Be relentlessly empathetic.

