
My Y Combinator experience - creolabs
http://marcobambini.com/my-y-combinator-experience/
======
peteforde
Sorry guys - if I was interviewing you as a YC partner, I'd pass on you too.

You repeatedly express frustration that the interviewers were not intimately
familiar with your application, but it doesn't seem if you put much into
familiarizing yourself with YC and their flavour of logic.

YC: Why are you spending so much time developing this application? Creo: It is
not only an application, it is a compiler, a virtual machine, a new language
and even a mobile operating system.

YC was asking why you ignored customer development and just jumped into
boiling the ocean before doing anything to verify that there was an existing
market opportunity in the form of real customers willing to pay you real money
to solve a problem. It's not that they didn't understand what you were trying
to do, or questioning whether you could do it. They were right to push you for
proof that you had more than a few friends who were desperate to use it.

The answer that you gave to the question is just a hairball of red flags. You
wrote half a million lines of code before validating your business case? Do
you truly believe that your ability to see the future is so strong that you
just don't need to back up your vision with data? That is not reassuring to a
savvy investor who hears "500klc" and feels fear and/or pity.

Listen, it sounds like the experience was positive and that you are taking
answering some of the hard questions seriously. However, I urge you not to
move forward without questioning that your entire position that YC blew it on
an obviously incredible opportunity might be significantly flawed.

As to your idea itself: I am deeply skeptical that a drag-and-drop UI for
building mobile apps is going to turn non-developers into developers. You're
not considering that 10% of writing code is syntax and 90% following a strong
intuition of what to do first.

Perhaps the reason it doesn't exist is because nobody has that problem.

"What does it do?"

"Anything you can imagine!"

Most people don't understand what they are allowed to imagine. Sorry.

~~~
benbou09
You seem to think that fast product iteration and testing with customers is
the only way to go. It isn’t. The most ambitious projects sometimes need bold
commitment. For instance if you want to create a space travel company, you
will need funding way before you've finished your proof of concept. Now, maybe
Y Combinator is simply not their market.

~~~
david927
Exactly. Applying to YC was a mistake: it's an accelerator for making money,
not an incubator for innovation.

~~~
justin
If you don't think consumer software like Dropbox or marketplaces like Airbnb
are innovations, consider that we have funded companies like Gingko Bioworks
(synthetic biology) and Helion Energy (nuclear fusion).

One thing you're right about: we're not an incubator.

[http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/16/why-the-first-yc-backed-
bio...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/16/why-the-first-yc-backed-biotech-
company-may-just-be-the-future-of-pharma/)

[http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/14/y-combinator-and-mithril-
in...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/14/y-combinator-and-mithril-invest-in-
helion-a-nuclear-fusion-startup/)

~~~
david927
YC is not really for technical innovation, it's for product development: it's
for taking X and doing something new with it, not for creating a revolutionary
new X. For example, you certainly might have funded Facebook but I don't think
you would have funded Google with Page Rank. There were a lot of search
engines at the time and there was no clear market for it.

And that's not pejorative -- there's nothing wrong with that; you're not
crying yourself to sleep at night.

Your whole application process reflects it: with tiny textboxes and the
10-minute interview time frame. It's perfect for saying "We're like MySpace
for college students," but not at all appropriate for saying, "We use a new
form of compiling search results that place ranking based on complex algorithm
of reputation-based weighting."

A funny example was given by Noam Chomsky. A producer at CNN (IIRC) once told
him they wouldn't feature him because "he is from Neptune and lacks
concision." To which he replied something like that it was fair, because if
you're saying something strikingly different, you look like you're from a
different planet, and then you need to justify how you got there, and that
means you have to talk a lot, so by definition you lack concision.

If these guys have spent years writing their own VM, they need a lot of time
to talk about _why_ they did that, the corner they turned and all of the
complex differences their VM exhibits. A one-page application is fine if
you're building Facebook for Cats but if you're doing something 'from
Neptune', you can't have concision. They simply don't go together.

~~~
nostrademons
They did fund DropBox, which is also in the category of "There is a lot of X,
there is no clear market for X, but here's a new way of doing things that may
or may not work technically." Granted, I've heard that they almost turned him
down (twice!), but they were at least open to the possibility of it working.

I suspect that a lot of that is because Drew actually went to the trouble of
building a video and getting a few thousand signups before applying.
Similarly, Google had significant traction at Stanford well before it became a
company. While it takes years for world-changing ideas to become world-
changing, it usually takes about 4 months for them to get an initial prototype
out that can at least excite _some_ users.

~~~
david927
I used to think of Silicon Valley as the birthplace of the future in
revolutionary terms -- what Peter Thiel refers to as going from 0 to 1. Doug
Englebart, Alan Kay and Xerox PARC, etc.

Now when Silicon Valley talks about innovation, it's about making it so much
easier to store files on a server and metrics to gauge product/market fit.
There is _nothing_ about DropBox that changed the world. Simply and sadly
_nothing_. But there is everything in that it's what is cited as "innovation"
in 2015.

~~~
nostrademons
You're moving the goalposts - your initial post was about hard technical
innovation. Very often, the change in the world happens decades after the
initial technical innovation, and is done by a different person or company.

You don't actually use a mouse or web browser made by Doug Engelbart, do you?
Do you get paid to program in Smalltalk? And I bet your laptop says "Apple"
and not "Xerox".

It took 20-40 years for these innovations to actually "change the world".
Check back in a couple decades on the status of YC companies and see what the
world looks like then.

(A bit more personally - I used to think of Silicon Valley as the birthplace
of the future in revolutionary terms. Then I realized that _I was wrong_ \-
not about Silicon Valley, but about how innovation happens. There's no such
thing as a revolutionary invention made by a lone technical genius, a priori.
Instead, there are environmental changes, often years after the fact, that
make the original tinkering of someone who dared to be a little different seem
amazingly prescient. You can't predict what these changes will be, but you can
tinker and you can capitalize on the tinkering of others.)

~~~
david927
Why do you see goalposts? Why are you trying to squeeze between them?

I made an effort to clarify there wasn't anything criminal about going from 1
to n, or with the companies that do that (such as Apple and potentially some
of the YC companies). Sure, that can be part of the cycle. There's nothing
wrong with "tinkering and ... capitalizing on the tinkering of others."
There's a lot of money in that -- and YC is quite clear that that's what
they're about. It's an accelerator for making money.

But it's not an incubator for innovation. It's not for those attempting to do
something in the 0-to-1 space. But without those people, the 1-n's can't do
much. Alan Kay famously asked on StackOverflow, "Has there been any new
innovation since 1980?" and the answer was no.

Then we have to ask ourselves, "What happened in 1980?" Right? Where did it go
wrong? I suspect that it is, at least partly, when the money exploded in a
distributed way. There suddenly was a huge volume of customers asking to "get
something working today, it doesn't matter how." Fast forward to today and we
have -- at this moment -- hundreds of thousands of the developers, including
some of our top minds, writing applications in HTML/CSS/Javascript, etc. And
no one is laughing. Almost every app written today is on a huge, ludicrously
stupid stack. And we smile and work hard to optimize it, without questioning
the stack as a whole. Everyone is still trying to get 'something working
today' because that's where the money is. At the last StrangeLoop there was
only one presenter from the pre-1980's: Joe Armstrong. His talk? "We can do
better" Everyone else's talk? "How to optimize or manage this part of the
stack."

Doug Englebart's kids found out about his innovation from newspapers. He never
talked about it. He said it was never about money or fame. Alan Kay is
relatively unknown and relatively poor compared to people like Bill Gates and
Steve Jobs, who invented nothing but were better at marketing, and I don't
think Alan cares. And isn't that the adult way? You give kids rewards: "Clean
your room and you get a cookie." But as an adult, you just clean your room.

I think that before 1980, we got 0-to-1 revolutionary innovation because it
was done for the reasons we do true science or art. It's not about childish
rewards of money or fame. Artists/scientists don't do it for glory or gold.
They do it because the mountain stands before them. Because they see a better
world, they see something beautiful, and it pulls them forward.

------
coffeemug
Negative feedback incoming. Sorry.

Your landing page ([http://creolabs.com/](http://creolabs.com/)) doesn't care
about me (the user) at all. There is a big difference between being proud of
your product and being self-aggrandizing, and you're on the latter end of that
scale.

To quote Henry Ford, you can't build a reputation on what you're going to do.
Apple can get away with saying "something big is going to happen" because
they've already proved (over and over and over again) that they can deliver.
They've earned our trust. You haven't (yet).

The landing page talks about rewriting things from scratch, and a custom
compiler, and language influences, but it doesn't tell me what the product
does, how it does it, how it fits into my life, and what it will enable me to
do that I can't do right now. To put it differently, you're placing a demand
on my time (by asking me to get social, or share my e-mail address, or even
read the page), but you haven't thought through how to make me feel like I've
spent my time on your site wisely.

Your product is important to you, I'm not. That's actually perfectly fine (I
get the appeal of building beautiful systems more than anyone), but that's not
a company (yet). It's somewhere between a hobby and a research project.

Your video demo has the same problem -- you show off random features of the
environment, but you don't show me how I can build a real app. Again, you
don't care about me, the user.

Based on what I could get from the demo, the system is actually ridiculously
impressive, which is great; but you need to learn to look at the world through
other people's eyes. That's way harder than building the most sophisticated of
optimizing compilers.

~~~
CrackpotGonzo
And the most important point is that they are trying to build an environment
for non-developers to program in. By definition their target audience won't
have any idea what they are talking about. Agreed that they need to retarget
their messaging to their audience.

------
sama
first of all, we do care about great products. a lot. though we still try not
to fund great products that we don't believe will become great businesses
(there are many, many reasons why this might not be the case). it's critical
to us you have some specific ideas about who your first customers will be.

second, we often ask questions that are already covered in your application.
the way you explain what you do is incredibly important. if you can't clearly
and concisely explain what you do, and get people excited, you will struggle
to recruit, sell, raise money, retain people, etc.

third, we are happy to fund ideas with lots of technical risk. we have funded
nuclear fusion companies, rocket companies, synthetic biology companies, etc
that are years from a first sale. i don't know where this meme that we will
only fund companies with traction came from, but it's not true. that said, we
expect you to progress as quickly as you possibly can for whatever you're
doing.

fourth, i believe i am the youngest YC partner and i am 29. there is no way
you were interviewed by 3 young boys in their early 20s. however, i don't
think the age of YC partners should matter, as long as they can evaluate and
help companies.

~~~
cryowaffle
Is your shift key broken? This is funny because it's clearly intentional. I
know you have one because you made the parentheses. Ohh, and you made the YC
uppercase, no way we can lowercase that.

~~~
jacquesm
You can talk about the form or the substance, I'd prefer you did the latter.

------
creolabs
Guys, I just wanted to describe my experience, I really didn't want to
criticize YC or the interview process. YC was our first pitch and we were
surely not prepared enough. As I clearly wrote in my post I started with the
wrong assumption that our product and our technology could make the
difference. I was wrong.

Website is more a landing page that a real site. Product is not yet released
to the general public. We plan to launch a public beta and a brand new website
with more useful information in about a month.

~~~
grey-area
People love to carp and criticise here, don't take it to heart. The good news
is your product is impressive, the bad news is you're not great at selling it
as yet, and your target market is not clearly defined.

I found the article really interesting, because it highlights what is clearly
a huge gulf between what you expected of YC, and how they behave. You were
looking for validation of what you think is a great idea, and to discuss an
idea with people who have spent a long time thinking about it and perusing
your carefully prepared documents. They don't really care about your idea,
they care about you, how well you can sell _any_ idea to them, how well you
can sell yourself to them (and by extension customers) in limited time, how
you deal with pressure, how much contact you have had with customers, and how
you plan to make money. You didn't have convincing answers to those questions,
because you were expecting entirely different questions and an impressed
audience. YC are not even really interested in your idea, they're interested
in whether you can execute. That's probably because most ideas do not survive
contact with the harsh reality of customers and the market, but companies do
_if they can adapt_.

In this sense YC is behaving far more like a potential customer of yours than
you might imagine - most customers spend about 30 seconds evaluating your
product, and if you can't sell them in that time, you have a problem. Most
customers will never read your sales docs or understand your product at first,
they might read the home page if you're lucky. From a customer point of view,
there is a fundamental problem with your idea which I think you're going to
have a lot of trouble with:

 _Who could have developed a new multiplatform programming language with a
blazing fast virtual machine?_

You're asking people to build a business on top of your platform and a new
language. There are a lot of reasons why that's a terrible idea for customers
(even if it is a great thing for you), but foremost among them is lock-in.
This is not really a technical problem, it's an issue of trust, and these
decisions are not even often made on a technical basis. IMO you need to open-
source your platform (get rid of trust issues), show customers everything, and
make money on support/bespoke development _if_ the platform is good enough to
actually attract users (that'll be a very tough sell, and not one based mostly
on technical concerns).

Thanks for posting and I hope any criticism you find here will be useful to
you.

~~~
declan
I think the post above by <grey-area> is on target. I suspect there is a large
market for very easy-to-use app building environments (though, because I know
how to code and like doing it, I don't know what the competitive landscape is
like).

I remember seeing Steve Jobs giving demos of Interface Builder at NeXT -- hey,
drag and drop connections between objects! -- and, years later, nobody has
solved it yet.

But as <grey-area> says, there may be many reasons why people could be
reluctant to switch to your environment. You created a new programming
language? I don't care about programming languages as much as having a good
collection of libraries -- will I be able to find or convert the ones I need?
How about the equivalent of ones like Beautiful Soup, or PIL, or even
massaging UTF-8 strings? For reference, CPAN has over 144,000 Perl modules
available.

Do I need your build servers to create an app, meaning if your company goes
out of business, I'm out of luck? If Apple changes APIs, how long until you
support them? Etc. Open sourcing will help.

I understand you're pre-release, and that the site is a placeholder. But you
may want to address some of these questions in a FAQ. In any case, I applaud
your effort. You're trying to create something new and powerful. Very few
people have the courage and fortitude even to try.

UPDATE: I watched part of the video and it seems very GUI-based, so my
question about programming languages and libraries doesn't seem relevant.

------
mootothemax
_In 10 minutes they had not even bothered to understand what we had in our
hands_

I think you may be walking away with the wrong impression; it's your business
and marketing talents they were concerned about.

Just because you're not on the market doesn't mean that you can't have users,
whether friends, family, or trusted third parties; you must be testing with
_someone_ who isn't a core team member?

If you're not, I'd take this as a huge signal that you should do so ASAP.

Likewise, what _are_ the apps that have been built with your system?

I'm sure you'll have various test apps, but have none of you built anything
more in-depth? Or, again, have no family, friends, or trusted third parties
built anything with it?

I think the Y combinator interviewers were worried about what sounds like a
lack of market research.

It's not too late to fix that - _if_ the market's after a solution like yours,
and you can fix the "we built this without doing any research" red flag - just
make sure that you start _right this very second_!

------
phelmig
From what I understand your created a Flash Clone to create smartphone apps
(The VM, the simple programming language, it's all there). This sounds quite
nice but where do you see yourself making money? On the creator's side (like
Adobe did?) or on the customer's side (like the AppStore)?

I like your idea, and the vimeo video doesn't look bad BUT: You seem to make a
mistake I often see with (being one myself) Dev/Tech people: Our own
enthusiasm a product or idea prevents us from verifying the actual market
need. Instead we start doing what we love: Building. Unfortunately the more we
build the less we are open to criticism or potential customer's feedback. For
this reason we start only talking to people who like our product (but aren't
customers) and get stuck in a positive feedback loop that isolates us from the
hard truth that we might move in a wrong direction. Wrong, not because the
idea isn't good but wrong because without a market the idea won't be
sustainable.

I wish you all the best guys. Revenge can be great motivator but don't fight
wind mills.

------
simonw
From reading both the article and the comments here, one common theme seems to
be surprise that the YC partners didn't appear to know all of the information
that was included in the application.

Here's a tip for anyone who lands a YC interview: go in with the assumption
that no one who is interviewing you has read your application form, and you'll
have a much higher chance of success!

Think about this from the POV of YC partners. They're interviewing literally
hundreds of companies over a few short days. At s guess, they're doing 4
interviews an hour for 5 hours a day = 20 per day (probably higher).

When are they going to read the applications in depth? If they read 20
applications at the start of the day they'll have real trouble remembering
which one is yours by the time they get to you. If they read your application
directly before your interview, they'll only have time to skim it (my guess is
that this is what they do, I'm happy to be corrected).

For you, your application represents days of work, and your interview is the
most important 10 minutes of your entrepreneurial life. For them, you are one
in a thousand applications.

The application is the thing that gets you the interview, nothing more.

~~~
corry
Good advice, and to expand on that: Even when they do read your application
closely, I'd STILL expect them ask you questions that you answered in the app.

There is a BIG difference between painstakingly writing an answer on your
application (refined over days? weeks? months?) and being able to quickly and
concisely express that.

I don't think it's controversial to say that being able to concisely and
persuasively talk about your idea is extremely important and likely highly
correlated with success as a founder.

------
jmckib
I haven't interviewed with YC, but I felt like I was missing something while
reading their account of the interview. I would assume that the YC
interviewers DO read applications, and they only ask questions they already
know the answer to to see how the founders will respond. I read somewhere that
they do this to make sure the founders have already considered every possible
objection to their idea. I wonder if these guys were rejected because of their
negative reaction to this type of questioning.

~~~
gfosco
That's my reading of it too. When pitching your product, these types of
seemingly ignorant questions should be exactly what you're prepared for.
Responding with incredulity is a terrible way to win people over.

~~~
david927
It seemed to me that the questions ( _Eclipse? really?_ ) betrayed not just a
lack of familiarity or ignorance, but a deep confusion as to technology in
general. That question alone made me laugh, as if the person was raising their
hand and saying, "I have no idea what I'm doing."

I might possibly await that kind of response if they were pitching people with
little-to-no technical background, but from YC I would have expected questions
which, if not insightful, were at least moderately appropriate.

From the few minutes I've spent looking at Creo, there were a lot of valid
questions to be asked here, but from what I read, none of those were asked.
They flew a long way to find out that YC wasn't what they thought it was.

~~~
arethuza
Actually I think the question about Eclipse was an opportunity being handed to
them on a plate - rather than reacting defensively they should have explained
the downsides of existing development tools and why their approach is so much
better.

My reading of it was that the HN interviewer was _trying_ to give them
opportunities to explain themselves whereas the answers were defensive and
impatient.

~~~
david927
My reading of it was that the YC interviewer was so lost that they didn't know
what question to ask. Of course, you're right, they could have corrected them
and _taken_ the opportunity to clarify further, but the question itself
betrays a lack of any idea of what they should be asking. If I were Creo, I
would also be (rightly) frustrated.

------
ggreer
In addition to the issues others have pointed out, I think there was a bit of
a language and culture barrier. The author says, "We entered the room and
facing us there were 3 young boys in their early twenties." I get the
impression he felt insulted, but it's not like the interviewers can choose
their age. The statement is also odd because I don't think any YC partners are
that young. Maybe his estimate was thrown off by their casual attire and
demeanor.

The author was annoyed by interviewers asking questions answered in their
application. That's a natural reaction, but there are good reasons for this
practice. Maybe some of your answers have changed since you applied. Maybe the
interviewers want to get an idea of how much thought you've put into these
questions. Maybe they're not satisfied with some of the answers in the
application, and want you to flesh them out in person. My point is: the
interviewers aren't trying to annoy you or waste your time. They want to
understand you and your idea. Responding to their questioning with annoyance
won't help them.

I found it very unusual that the author ignored the post-interview e-mail.
Those e-mails typically contain tailored advice, or at least reasons why the
partners passed. That information is extremely valuable. YC's reason for
passing will probably be similar to many other potential investors. Even if
you don't think it's a good reason, it's worth crafting a solid response to.

One more thing: If you have a demo, show it as early as possible! A demo can
obviate the need for many "What are you making?" questions, since it shows the
answer. That leaves more time to discuss your product or idea, instead of
trying to explain it to the interviewers.

With that feedback out of the way: I wish Creo success and I'm glad they plan
to apply again. Good luck!

------
julianpye
While I agree with the conclusions of the other posters, I also think it is
difficult for anyone to put themselves into the shoes of these people,
traveling over, waiting for the opportunity. Pitches can go bad quickly. I
think anyone knows the pitch that you enter well-prepared and in best spirits
and you come out 10 minutes later and wonder what the hell just happened.

Anyway, I also think it's great that you posted this in this detail, since it
also shows once more that the interview will give you VC type questions and
not YC type (well-informed) questions. If you can't explain it to a VC who is
not up to date with everyday tech changes, then you're not ready for YC.

Finally, you sum up the feelings nicely - that mix of a feeling for redemption
and the highly illogical feeling of a need for 'revenge'. I have felt that and
it is so much unlike my personality, that I was really startled by it. Put
that negative energy into something positive, right now I think your first
priority is to make a non-tech person understand what it is you're building.

~~~
unreal37
This is a great response. I can totally put myself in their shoes, going in
with something I'm proud of, and being thrown for a loop when the person I am
talking to doesn't even seem to want to understand it.

10 minutes is no time at all.

------
DanielBMarkham
This is a great story, but perhaps not for the reasons intended by the author.

I applied once to YC. As I recall, my solo founder video included a puppet, so
fair warning: I'm an idiot when it comes to startups. I only repeat what I've
heard and read.

When they asked you guys all those questions, the proper answer wasn't to
reply technically, it was to reply with something akin to "social proof"

So, for instance, when they asked "Why are you spending so much time
developing this application?"

One good answer might be something like "Because we've talked to 50 people,
and 10 of them tell us that if we can finish in the next six months, they want
to use it. In fact, here's the money they deposited so they would be first in
line"

The takeaway that YC is only interested in money may be at the same time true
and misleading. As I understand those guys, they simply want _proof_ from
other humans that you are capable of doing something folks will like. Either
you already have those humans and proof -- or they believe that you're the
kind of guys that can go get them and then they'll take a flier on your
ability. In either case, to say it's money is missing the point.

A _lot_ of technical folks confuse the kinds of questions they are getting.
When the question is along the lines of "Why don't I do X?", they're not
asking you to argue that X is better than all other choices. Hell, X may be
worse. They're asking you to explain to them how by talking to other people,
you've learned that a significant percentage of them like X better, even if it
sounds stupid. (In fact, if it sounds stupid and looks like something other
people would not do, yet real people want it? That's a plus!)

I liked this. Thank you for posting. Sorry about the negative feedback.

ADD: There's nothing wrong with building something complex with a grand vision
that might take months to put together. The trick is to do it in smaller
chunks that get customer validation each step of the way. [Insert long
discussion here about how it's easy to get emotionally attached to a codebase
and solution that nobody else in the world would ever want]

~~~
emmelaich
> The takeaway that YC is only interested in money may be at the same time
> true and misleading.

Indeed. There are people who consider mentioning the money aspect to be
indicative something lacking. Passion? Innovation?

Then there are those who know that buying your product is the true evidence of
sincerity.

------
jim_greco
It's good to have a little ego, but I don't know anyone in the batch who talks
like this:

> I realized that Creo is an extraordinary technological challenge and we
> achieved unbelievable results so far. Who could have developed a new
> multiplatform programming language with a blazing fast virtual machine? Who
> could have rewritten from scratch a mobile operating system fully UIKit
> compatible? Who could have a product like ours? Nobody, probably nobody in
> the world… and if YC’s choice was driven by the product than we would had no
> rivals.

------
IvanDenisovich
I'm also reading some cultural clash between American and
Europeans/Mediterranean mentalities. Prioritizing your business model over
your product and answering amiably to annoying questions are decidedly
"American" behaviors. That's not to say these aren't great practices for
aspiring entrepreneurs. When you're ready to apply again, maybe you should
consider hiring an Italian guy with an American MBA who can bridge the two
cultures?

(I think your idea is cool. If no one went for the long-shot projects Silicon
Valley would be full of copy-cat boring App companies. Imagine how that would
be like)

~~~
WhitneyLand
Totally wrong. The technical bias shown here is every bit as strong in
American entrepreneurs who lack experience pitching a product. I see this
still all the time and it took a few of these painful holding up a mirror
experiences for me to start seeing things from multiple perspectives.

If they have the courage to really examine what went wrong here they will come
back much stronger.

~~~
IvanDenisovich
You're definitely right about the technical bias. Most comments here support
this theory. I just offered a supplemental explanation, based on my
experience.

Kudos to you for overcoming that bias. I'm still working on it.

------
manigandham
Have to agree with general sentiment here... this seems too much like a
product and not something that can turn into a business solving a need.

What's the market size? Compatibility? Pricing? What apps have been built? How
advanced? How long to learn a new language? What about the surrounding
ecosystem (storage, analytics, notifications, etc)? Do you offer support?
Training? What if you disappear in a year, what then?

There are already plenty of tools (as mentioned by the interviewers) for
making mobile app development easier but there's a limit to how far you can go
with non-developers. I think you're building into a niche of people who might
be interested enough to dabble and but not enough to become serious, and that
just doesn't sound like something you can build a company on.

Btw, maybe I'm alone in this but being someone in their 20s, it felt strange
to read "3 young boys in their early twenties" as if they couldn't handle an
interview. I strongly suggest reviewing everything you've done so far and
asking more fundamental questions about the viability of the business, because
at the end of the day, that's what matters.

------
ksikka
My guess is:

You're just too early for YC. They have so many applications where the
business/growth side of things are farther along than in your case, and they'd
rather pick those companies for the finite amount of spots that they have at
this time.

They wouldn't say they were impressed by your product unless they really truly
were. They're just waiting for some more validation because they have had
companies try to do this in the past and all (including mine) have failed.

I believe there is an opportunity here, but it's incredibly grueling to spend
months developing only to realize after user testing that you've developed
something that has significant problems that require months more development
time. If there's a lighter-weight way of testing that what you're building is
going to be easy to develop with, you should definitely do that and re-apply.

EDIT: Btw, "Y Combinator has been created for one single purpose: to make
money." That's definitely false. They do use this criteria to help them select
companies, but it's definitely not the single reason it was created.

~~~
jlevy
I am one of the YC lawyers who was in the interview room and I was actually
pretty pumped to hear the description of 20 year olds (I'm in my 40's)...

I also take exception to the comment "Y Combinator has been created for one
single purpose: to make money." That's a pretty cynical view, but more
important: it's not true at all.

------
WestCoastJustin
Too bad there isn't a Creo demo, screenshots, or walkthrough, where you could
show off your platform. You must have many potential customers on your site
with this influx of HN traffic -- hint hint.

~~~
epikur
Here's a video walkthrough:
[https://vimeo.com/108812024](https://vimeo.com/108812024)

Not sure why it's hidden in the footer.

~~~
archagon
Hmm. To be honest, I think the best bet these guys have is to get bought out
by Apple to work on the Xcode team. This tool is too complicated for normal
users and too limited and risky for programmers. Also, the apps it produces
look awfully basic. It doesn't seem like you could design an amazing, fluid,
and responsive user experience with this software, which is pretty much the
bare minimum to get any attention in the App Store these days.

Amazing tech, though — for sure.

~~~
iSayHi
My thoughts exactly. Actually when I first saw the video I was really shocked
by how ridiculously good the product was and how lacking was the market
research/fit. I can only see it suitable for high-end professionals like the
Adobe Suite as it is.

I think it should be possible to build very solid apps out of this. They just
didn't bothered to develop a polished app as they reply to the YC guys
suggests. But they should have, as well as providing video tutorials,
documentation, etc...

------
andrea_s
To be fair, I'm always very wary of claims going in the direction "programming
for non-programmers". We've lived through enough workflow-oriented tools who
promised a lot in that direction and delivered very little (I'm looking at
you, SAS - can't go around two consecutive corners without having to write a
lot of code).

Aside from that, good luck with your efforts from a fellow Italian :-)

------
kriro
It's an interesting read but I hope the OP takes away more than a renewed
drive "to show them".

For an outsider it looks like a classical "overengineering" kind of project.
You say it's too complex a problem to test early but if you reapply keep this
in mind "validate you're not heading down the wrong path as early as possible"
is the mantra. You seem outraged that XCode was suggested for example but you
should have had a very clear non-technical response. Maybe list stuff like
Ionic or even rapid prototyping stuff like Quartz Composer with Origami. Then
link them by saying you can essentially build apps as if using Origami but get
close to native performance, better code etc (mind you the JS to native
compilers and pure JS folks will make similar claims)

Who's your target audience. Programmers becuse it takes them less time,
designers because they can get further without programming?

I think you (the devs) should sit down for a coffee and talk through your
project without going technical. Think of it as hacking the application
process if you want. Fill out a Lean Canvas for your product even if it seems
silly. Grill each other as if reliving the interview.

tl;dr: Pretend you're talking to nontechnical people and ignore everything
that feels like "did they even read our application". Just mentally imagine
they have invited you because someone recognized this as a hard engineering
problem and now they are mostly interested in the business side.

------
creolabs
BTW the video you discovered on vimeo was just a quick demo we did for
internal usage. It wasn't meant to be showed to public and it demonstrates a
very old version.

There are a lot of critics here and I really appreciate the "brutal" honestly
in your answers, we'll do our best to treasured your advices.

I really think that there are some misunderstanding about the real intent of
the article and since the website is just a landing page, the best answer is
just to release an impressive product as soon as possible.

As I already wrote, a public beta version is expected by mid April.

------
huhtenberg
> We entered the room and facing us there were 3 young boys in their early
> twenties.

I wonder if YC considers applicants' age when pairing them with the
interviewers. Because if not, that's a very fertile soil for all sorts of
interesting biases.

~~~
WhitneyLand
This issue has been discussed on HN previously and even commented on by YC. It
left me with the impression there is no problem with age any greater than you
would find in general in society.

------
smoyer
I think you should probably look at what you've written with a very discerning
eye:

"the only thing that matters for them is the business model … I repeat here
again: product has zero value."

The YC partners are pretty good at weeding out ideas that will never make
money ... are you prepared for this project to be your hobby? There are a
couple other red flags in your post such as the idea "you won't need
programmers any more. This has been the holy grail of the business world for
years because programmers tend to be (pick as many as needed):

\- Expensive

\- Odd

\- Opinionated

------
72deluxe
There is much self belief in the article, which is probably passion but it is
tricky not to come off as arrogant. I wonder if this is difficult to present
face to face.

It is clear that he is very passionate about the product that he has produced,
which is a good thing. It must have been a very disappointing experience.

I'm glad they made use of their time there to visit the area and see different
local places and to make the most of it.

Having visited the landing page I'm still a bit confused as to what it does as
there are not specifics.

------
Mz
I mostly skimmed. (I am supposed to be working right now.) My general
impression of a lot of it: Wow, a whole lot of ego. Also: "Can you say _Duke
Nukem Forever_?"

However, the closing list of YC frequently asked questions looks potentially
useful:

    
    
      Y Combinator’s FAQ
      1.What are going to do?
      2.Potential Users?
      3.Obstacles in your path?
      4.What’s wrong with existing options?
      5.How you’ll overcame the barriers that allow existing options to stay bad?
      6.Who needs what you’re making?
      7.How do you know they need it?
      8.What are they doing now?
      9.What makes you different from existing options?
      10.Why isn’t someone already doing this?
      11.What obstacles will you face and how will you overcame them?
      12.How will customers/users find out about you?
      13.What resistance will they have to trying you?
      14.How will you overcome that resistance?
      15.What are the key things about your field that outsiders don’t understand?
      16.What part of your project are you going to build first?
      17.Who is going to be your first paying customers?
      18.If your startup succeeds, what additional areas might you be able to expand into?
      19.Why did you choose this idea?
      20.What have you learned so far from working on it?
      21.Six months from now, what’s going to be your biggest problem?
    

Edit: Whoops! Formatting

------
evadne
UIKit for Mac has been done more than a few times.

[https://github.com/BigZaphod/Chameleon](https://github.com/BigZaphod/Chameleon)
[https://github.com/twitter/twui](https://github.com/twitter/twui) …

------
Udik
Despite all the good points made by other commenters here, I see that nobody
has yet quoted the other somehow related story that appeared on these pages
not long ago:

How I Crashed and Burned in Y Combinator
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8867335](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8867335)

It seems interesting because the author of that post basically described how
he came to YC without a developed product but only a vague and confused idea,
and how his project was nonetheless accepted. He then moves on to describe
how, having entered YC, he started frantically working on different projects
that had nothing to do with the original idea, until he finally gave up.

Now, I wonder which could be the factors that make YC accept a non-existing
project, so shaky to evaporate one hour after the interview, and reject people
that at least produce and are entirely focused on a working prototype of a new
product.

~~~
janekm
Because the person with the shaky and vacuous idea but excellent marketing
chops has far more chance of success than the team with 500klcs written with
no market validation (that team will be extremely reluctant to change course
if their idea doesn't pan out with customers).

~~~
arethuza
"the person with the shaky and vacuous idea but excellent marketing chops has
far more chance of success than the team with 500klcs written with no market
validation"

Well said - that was an _incredibly_ painful lesson for me to learn as co-
founder of a UK based startup in the first dot-com boom. We must have raised
over £25 million and, to be honest, had very little market validation at any
stage - and the revenues to prove it.

------
dxbydt
Can I ask you what is the point in airing this dirty laundry ? Even as a
learning experience, it comes off pretty sour. Do you really want to be known
forever as "creo ? oh those guys who trash talked yc ?" , because that's what
happens.

Lemme air some clean laundry instead that might actually be useful to you
guys.

2012 - am driving with a company co-founder who has just been accepted into
YC. He points at an elephant logo on a building and says - "those guys!
ridiculous! they have a billion dollar valuation! what did they do - put
Notepad on the web ? what we are doing is a million times more complex."

He was ofcourse pointing to Evernote.

I gently told him that his company may be solving a problem million times more
complex, but how many people wanted such a complicated solution ? 10 ? 1000 ?
1000 ? Maybe 10,000 ? There is a ceiling on any supercomplicated niche product
you are building. Its now 2015, his company has about 5000 customers. So in 3
years they got to 5000. But Evernote has upwards of 100 million users, with
its supersimple Notepad on the web product. So this yc company has now pivoted
to building a specialized social network, and they already have a million+
users on that front. They'll probably keep the 5000-user supercomplicated
business running, because its good money, but the focus will be on now growing
the supersimple million user social network business.

A long time ago, we had a guest from Microsoft visiting our compiler theory
class. He bemoaned that more people were using something called Microsoft
Flight Simulator, which was just a stupid toy, compared to what his team was
working on - the Microsoft Visual C Suite, which was such a sophisticated
state of the art compiler.

Once again, how many people have a need for such a compiler, versus how many
people want to just play video games ?

Focus also on customers, not just on the complexity of your technical problem
space.

------
josefresco
Have you read our apply?

you really just said Eclipse?

This information was clearly written in our apply

As I already said

Fix these and you'll go a long way towards succeeding in meetings like this
and impressing, "3 young boys" who, like it or not, are deciding your business
fate at this stage.

------
aregs
When answering questions in a YC interview you really need to satisfy the top
3 YC criteria for startup success.

1-Make something (a large enough number of) people want.

What YC wants to hear in the interview: who are these people?(show us you made
an effort to find them) do they need what you are building?(show us you made
an effort to find out) what are they doing now to get what they need?(show us
you made an effort to find out) how is your solution much much better at
helping them?(showing us who is begging you for your solution)

2-Make something that a small number of people absolutely love. (as apposed to
something that a large number of people merely like)

What YC wants to hear in the interview: -Show us a small set of users that
would absolutely love to use your solution.(i.e. who would get upset if you
stopped building your solution)

3-Teams (and execution) matter more than ideas

What YC wants to hear in the interview: -Less focus on the technical merits of
your idea/product and more focus on how you are getting users and the market
you are targeting. If you did not give the right answers to items 1 and 2
above then clearly you are not the right team according to YC.(Note: If the
product is highly technical you do need to show that you have a technical
founder with the right skills. But that is not really the same thing as
focusing on the technical details of the product)

------
outworlder
> "I believe that our biggest mistake was to think that being able to develop
> such an extraordinary product could somehow give us an advantage against the
> thousand of other ideas presented at Y Combinator."

Sorry, you don't get to call your product 'extraordinary' among a crowd of
developers. Users may apply that label, and it's your job to try to convince
them to do it.

------
jacquesm
Some choice quotes:

". I realized that Creo is an extraordinary technological challenge and we
achieved unbelievable results so far. Who could have developed a new
multiplatform programming language with a blazing fast virtual machine? Who
could have rewritten from scratch a mobile operating system fully UIKit
compatible? Who could have a product like ours? Nobody, probably nobody in the
world… and if YC’s choice was driven by the product than we would had no
rivals."

Ok, you're amazing.

"I believe that our biggest mistake was to think that being able to develop
such an extraordinary product could somehow give us an advantage against the
thousand of other ideas presented at Y Combinator. We were wrong."

No, your biggest mistake was to think that you are somehow entitled to an
investment and that YC was the lucky one. The opening sentence is indicative
of that, according to you it started with a letter from YC to you, but in
actual fact _you_ applied first. So you're the seeker, you are the one
initiating the relationship and _you_ have to prove yourself worthy of the
relationship.

"I really think that the complexity of the Creo project penalized us at YC."

Making something complex simple is a communications issue. If you can't step
away from the complexity of the engine underneath your offering then you are
not an effective person/entity to communicate with capital providers.

"the only thing that matters for them is the business model … I repeat here
again: product has zero value."

You state this as though it is a fact, but it is just your opinion. In order I
think that for YC team comes first, product/market fit second and business
model last.

Then, the actual interview:

" In few words it’s an app that is able to create other apps. We have
developed a new programming language with a multiplatform virtual machine and
we have rewritten from scratch a mobile operating system (100% UIKit source
compatible), all exposed through a desktop application that makes incredibly
fast and easy the creation of mobile applications. Development time is reduced
from weeks and months to few hours or days."

This is an old story in IT circles, it comes back every time there is a new
medium, sooner or later someone will do 'cross-platform', that's not unique in
and of itself.

"OK, but there are other similar technologies . For example …"

Did you let them finish their sentence?

" Creo: Xcode? (Have you read our apply?)"

If they had not you would not have been invited.

" … those are solutions that can be used only by professional developers, our
software is for everyone, even for those who are not a developer."

That's another thing that's been said since COBOL about every new
language/platform.

" YC: OK got it… so why should not I install Eclipse?"

" Creo: (Eclipse Holy God, you really just said Eclipse??)"

Yes, he did, but so what? If you're so incredibly smart that YC alumni seem
stupid in comparison why can't you explain in a simple and easy to understand
blurb what it is that your product does so that such confusion does not arise
in the first place?

And so on...

" We came out of the interview dazed … neither I nor Daniele wanted to talk.
My impression was that it was a complete disaster … two years of work, two
years spent fighting for an idea that seemed impossible to become reality and
in 10 minutes they had not even bothered to understand what we had in our
hands. "

No, they did bother, you failed to explain. It's a communications problem on
the sender side, the receivers would have been happy to understand you if you
had taken the time and the trouble to explain it in _their_ language rather
than to expect them to accept the explanation in _your_ language.

That's a pretty common mistake but it is unusual to see such a condenscending
and frankly insulting attitude on the part of the person exhibiting the
mistake. Your whole rant comes across as though you are somehow entitled to a
certain treatment because of your technical expertise when in the real world
what matters is how well you manage to communicate your achievements to your
target audience (potential investors in this case) whoever they may be.

A few tips:

\- turn down the rhetoric about how awesome you are until you have real world
results, and preferably have others say how awesome you are

\- go and work with your target audience instead of doing all your work behind
closed doors

\- focus on the product/market fit before you do more work

\- get a dose of humility somewhere

\- keep your dirty laundry in-house

Good luck!

------
giarc
>As I already said and as I clearly written in our apply, we are currently in
pre-beta so we just developed apps for internal usage, nothing is on the
market yet.

I hope this isn't a verbatim quote from the interview. Your interviewees were
obviously very smart people, if they keep asking the same question (or what
seems to be the same questions) it means _you_ have not answered it properly.
Therefore saying things like "As I already said" leaves an impression that you
don't understand what they are asking.

Thanks for writing this up though. All too often we hear about the successful
candidates. It's good to hear the other side of things.

------
helgeman
I and probably everyone who has ever talked to investors/VCs had a similar
experience to yours. And from an Investors standpoint it does make sense to
basically ignore the product. Even though that can be frustrating. I think the
pitfalls and traps that came with the interviewers questions have been
discussed already. You know what they want to hear so naturally you are going
to do better next time.

Anyway by all means there was good advice on here but don't get discouraged if
you are passionate about your product. Because that, beside product and Team
and everything else, is still the most important factor in a startup imo.

------
ryanSrich
Great article and it points out an issue I've seen with a few startups.

It's no one else's job to understand what you're building. Even if you hand me
an application saying what you built I still want to hear you explain it. I
shouldn't have to work to understand your product. The fact that YC was trying
very hard to get you to explain what you were building and you continued to
repeat yourself tells me you still don't know entirely what you're building,
and to an investor that's a huge red flag.

------
humbertomn
I just think they could have had the same questions asked by a potential
customer, in a real sales pitch, and then they would definitely need more
patience and stronger answers to win the client.

They seem to know their technical needs, but I would spend more time talking
to possible early adopters... that would help the project itself and also
their pitches for VCs and accelerators :)

------
nattofriends
By the way, Creo was the name of a Vancouver-based digital imaging software
company that was acquired by Kodak in 2005. So there might be some people you
are confusing with that name.

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creo](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creo)

------
BinaryIdiot
Through the interview you seemed more annoyed with the questions than excited
about your product.

------
dkersten
Regarding the "this was covered in the application", besides what others have
already said here, could it be that the person evaluating the application
wasn't actually in the room? Perhaps even on purpose?

------
sauere
While i do agree with some of the negative comments here regarding the lack of
market research, i also gotta say: the questions (Eclipse, Xcode) seem
rather... well, off.

~~~
david927
Not just off, kind of ridiculous. I would be embarrassed if I were the YC
interviewers.

~~~
randomsearch
Is this not just provoking, probing?

i.e. translates as "so, why I am going to use this rather than an IDE? What's
the demand here? What makes you _different_?"

as opposed to being a question to be taken literally.

~~~
david927
'naughty' said it best in this thread:

 _These questions quite unambiguously pointed at YC never giving their
application proper attention. Perhaps they skimmed it, but even then they
should 've picked up that the product was for non-developers. So to people who
spent days writing the application and planning their life around the
interview it would look like a half-ass effort on the YC part. It's only
natural that they are pissed about the whole experience. One can hardly blame
them._

An interview always has two sides, and my take-away from this is that YC
looked, frankly, unqualified to hold the interview.

------
merrua
Good Luck to all at Creo.

