
To Applicants: Has Y Combinator looked at your demo? - palish

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rebecca_d
For your #'s game, which I think is a fun one... No one from Ycombinator has
looked at our demo yet.

It was a wonderful deadline, no? We worked three straight days at the end that
we'd have spread out otherwise. I imagine YCombinator often jumpstarts even
the companies it doesn't fund. That would be interesting to see numbers on.
How many companies YCombinator has played a role in helping indirectly. We've
certainly been inspired by this process.

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nostrademons
Doesn't look like it, unless they're coming from a home (i.e. not-resolvable-
to-hostname) address. Actually, I think all the visits in our logs can be
traced back to a cofounder. Which makes sense, as we haven't given out our URL
to anyone but yCombinator.

I'd actually be a little disappointed if they had looked at our demo, because
it's rather disappointing. We've been doing a bunch of cleanup work so far
this Good Friday, and will likely be replacing our mockup layout with an
approximation of the real thing over the weekend. So I'd be grateful for a few
extra days...

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yaacovtp
Shhhhh, patience is a virtue.

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theoutlander
Once they have identified the promising ideas, they might look at the demos to
narrow it down....

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phony_identity
No. (It's not really a demo, just a fun, unrelated little thing. But it has an
URL which hasn't been hit yet from Mountain View or Cambridge.)

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theoutlander
I can't even tell because I am not tracking anything at the moment....to keep
things simple, the database is not even in the picture right now!

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mukund
sheeessshhh its rather bad to check on this one. We have done our best and
given links to demo, we need to have patience to wait till the results are
out. When u give u r exams you wait for results, not break into prof's room
and check on the stack and see if he has corrected u r papers :D...this is
real bad habit ;-)

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palish
While it may have been better to wait another few days, the application
process is nearly over. I'm trying to determine how much an online demo
actually matters in the process.

In the case of Zenter, things they'd previously built helped them get
accepted. They didn't actually have an online demo of what they were
proposing.

~~~
mukund
Well online demo may be just a rain-check to show that you know the technology
you are using, you know what you are doing and in short to show you are on
right track. Sometimes describing how you would go about doing stuff will also
go a long way too

~~~
palish
Right. So this experiment is to determine if online demos matter at all.
Perhaps all Paul, Jessica, RTM and Trevor care about is a good idea (or not so
good idea) with a solid team. In fact, they probably only care about a solid
team. Reddit's idea was entirely changed after they applied.

I'll be interested to see if by tomorrow anyone's actually confirmed that
they've looked. Then next cycle we can refocus our efforts on areas that
matter more.

~~~
nostrademons
Gaming the applications process already? ;-)

The big advantage to working on the online demo is _it gets you working on the
product_. Ultimately, that's what'll make you succeed or fail, not whether you
get YC funding. I can't imagine anything else in the application process that
matters more.

My team isn't really focusing on the app demo for YC's sake. It actually looks
kinda ugly, since layout and design is one of the last things we're working
on. But we were planning to launch on the weekend of the 20-21st, and still
probably will if we aren't invited to Mountain View. So in order to hit the
launch date, we need to work on it anyway.

~~~
palish
_Gaming the applications process already? ;-)_

Nope. I didn't apply to YC because I feel it'll increase my chances of
success. I know I'm going to succeed; how 'bout you? ;)

I applied because that's where I want to be. Out of all the places I could go
in life, I can't imagine a better place than with a bunch of smart and
motivated people working on businesses.

So let's assume we're all going to succeed, and we all want in. Knowing which
things matter more than other things is invaluable.

Of course, they wouldn't tell us to focus on question X. If they did, it would
skew the results. So the only way to determine what matters is to run
experiments like this one.

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blader
I haven't seen any account signups that seem to be from YC, judging from logs
and signup email addresses.

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palish
I'm also looking for "No"'s as well as "Yes"'s. So if they haven't, please
speak up! :)

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juwo
And how would we know if they have?

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Goladus
Check your web server logs (or whatever traffic measurement tool you have) to
see if the links you sent have been requested.

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juwo
I have sent my links to several people.

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nostrademons
Check your hosts and referers for domains that look like yCombinator. You are
using a traffic-analysis tool like Webalizer or AWStats, right?

(Even if you aren't, you can still get them by grepping the access log. It's
just harder to compile statistics.)

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juwo
what fields should I grep for, that will tell me they were pleased with my
demo?

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staunch
Timestamps and total page views.

~~~
juwo
I was joking!

