

How to Apply to Y Combinator - pg
http://ycombinator.com/howtoapply.html

======
staunch
> _Whereas if we can see obstacles to your idea that you don't seem to have
> considered, that's a bad sign._

If I listed the top 10 _actual_ obstacles for a given project I'd bet half of
them would seem totally unintuitive. I'm skeptical of anyone (even other
hackers) trying to judge the specific technical or business obstacles of
something they don't know much about.

~~~
pg
Yes, and in fact we look for that. We love it when people tell us things that
are non-obvious. That's a sign they really understand the problem.

~~~
alain94040
The funny thing is that given the space allocated to cover all those
scenarios, the applicant ends up in a situation very similar to game theory (a
post yesterday on HN pops to mind).

You, as the applicant, have to figure out what PG will consider non-obvious so
you cover those, but keeping in mind that if there is anything obvious that PG
would have thought you should cover, then you should cover those as well, but
don't cover stuff that PG considers truly obvious and not worth covering...

Just like game theory implies, winning at this game pretty much means that
both you and PG are on the same wavelength (from a though-process point of
view).

Which sounds kind of obvious( __), once I reach that conclusion.

( __) extra credit will be given to people who cover the question of whether
this post was useful from a game-theory standpoint. Was this post obvious in a
useful way, or just plain obvious, or...?

~~~
pg
Actually there is a standard for non-obviousness: what's not obvious to your
competitors. We have a question specifically about that.

    
    
        What do you understand about your business 
        that other companies in it just don't get? 
    

The amusing thing is, this question turned out to be an instance of itself.
Many of the YC clones who copied our application form cut this one, because
its purpose wasn't obvious.

~~~
10ren
I had thought that question was _clearly_ about competitive advantage through
new and unique perspectives, as part of evaluating the business/technical
idea. As such I'd expect the clones to include it. I'm twice mistaken.

I now see it's also about noticing non-obvious things, as a way to evaluate
the founders; and that this better fits YC's philosophy of funding people not
products.

------
skywalker
PG, please tell us about the time you most successfully hacked some (non-
computer) system to your advantage.

~~~
rms
<http://ycombinator.com>?

~~~
Jimmy
I think that would count as a computer system.

~~~
eru
It's not the website. It's hacking the startup eco-system.

------
pg
If anyone has any questions I didn't answer, please ask them on this thread. I
still consider this essay a draft; if anything important comes up here, I'll
incorporate it in the next version.

~~~
jacquesm
It seems to me that to have people make videos and then discard a lot of them
without ever looking at them (which the text suggests is the case) would be a
lot of wasted effort ?

~~~
michaelfairley
The amount of effort that gets "wasted" per unwatched video is probably
relatively small. Per the video instructions
(<http://ycombinator.com/video.html>), producing the video really shouldn't
take much time at all (my guess is less than five minutes for a group that a)
already has well defined goals and b) has a macbook, where there's almost no
overhead to record a video). Additionally, the very act of making the video is
likely beneficial to the groups, by forcing them to solidify their ideas
enough to be comfortable talking about them and by having them practice giving
an elevator pitch about their idea.

~~~
rythie
I see you are subscribing to philosophy of no planning required and only one
take. I once spent about 3 hours to do a 1 minute pitch.

~~~
michaelfairley
I agree that it take lots of time to make a "professional" looking pitch, but
based on the instructions, it looks like pg wants as much spontaneity as is
practical.

~~~
wheels
Try recording yourself doing a one minute pitch. You'll be amazed at how short
(to explain what you're doing) and how long (to not blow it) a one minute
pitch can be. Now try coordinating 2-3 people doing that.

We're doing a little 1-2 minute video explaining our stuff at the moment and
staying rather lo-fi and plan at least 10 hours of work on it.

------
dcurtis
All of the things discussed in this essay are problems I see with product
design as well.

Lots of people ask me for advice, and the first thing I always tell them is to
change the first sentence a user sees on the homepage from "Abstract
technologies to help people live better." to "We make a database with a Wiki
UI."

This sort of thing fascinates me because the people I talk with who are clear
and concise in the beginning are the same people who tend to succeed in the
end. It is an amazingly good litmus test for finding good entrepreneurs.

------
andreyf
I remember reading about a study which showed that, at least for certain
companies, judging from first-decade performance, hiring based on interviews
was less intelligent than hiring based purely on GPA [1]. The reasoning was
that judgment during interviews is suceptible to various human biases to which
GPA's are not.

At least part of PG's reasoning seems susceptible to similar biases: for
example, whether or not he recognizes a username might have a lot to do with
how memorable the username is. I wonder if sorting users by a subset of their
upvotes - say, those received from news.YC alumni - would make more sense in
"highlighting" intelligent applicants.

1\. Would appreciate if anyone who recognizes this links it for me.

~~~
pg
We have lots of biases, but I don't think we're much influenced by how
memorable usernames are. It's the comments that make a username memorable, not
the name.

~~~
andreyf
_I don't think we're much influenced by how memorable usernames are_

Well, by definition, biases aren't intuitively obvious. But I'd love to hear
explicit introspection about this in the essay: what are your biases, and how
do you eliminate their affecting your decisions?

~~~
pg
That's a question we think about a lot, because bias basically equals things
we judge wrong. I like energetic founders, for example, but one wouldn't call
that a "bias," because energetic founders are good. So what you're really
asking is what makes us pick wrong, which is something we're constantly
thinking about.

When I pick wrong, it's often because the founders seem really nice. That's
probably my biggest weakness. The other YC partners have it too. It's much
harder to get funded by YC if you're an asshole. But who knows, maybe this is
actually an advantage. It means the atmos within YC is really good. Everyone
tends to trust one another. So maybe it's a win overall, even if it decreases
returns in individual cases.

It's a complicated problem.

~~~
messel
The more eyes you have on it, the more varied the views, the weaker the bias
becomes but also the more watered down the perspective. You have a solid
"review board" size at 4-5. You guys & gal will minimize cognitive biases. I'm
only commenting because I spent a few hours recently reading and writing about
the topic, it's all new to me though (blog links are in HN).

------
kyro
Great info. Thanks a lot for this, pg. You've pretty much told us exactly what
you are and are not looking for in the application.

~~~
icey
It will be great info for everyone who decides to read it and _pay attention_.
I bet you that over 80% of the applications will still be garbage.

Of course, I see this as a good thing for everyone who applies who has some
clue as to what they're doing.

~~~
jacquesm
Are you privy to the applications ? 80% would seem to be a fairly high number.

I think that there is a nice benefit from applying to YC for many small start-
up companies, which is that for the first time (on that level of funding I'm
assuming it's the first time) you have to get precise about stuff. So even if
you do not get selected you're still going to be a big step further.

~~~
icey
I'm not privy to anything, as the only thing I have to do with YC is posting
here.

However, I acted as a technical adviser to some investors during the first
dotcom boom in the 90s. Even in the face of specific requests, there were a
shocking number of people who started their responses clearly intending to go
into detail, and ending up with a heavy dose of hand-waving.

Having since moved on, I still do hiring and see similar problems with people
being unable to read and comprehend simple instructions. There is a shocking
amount of _bad_ out there; it just gets worse when people are looking for
money.

As an aside, I was being generous with the 80% guess. Anywhere else I would
have figured the garbage submissions to have crossed the 90% barrier.

~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
A friend of mine was a sound, power, and lighting technician for some pretty
prestigious concert venues. According to him, the "green m&m clauses" of
certain bands' touring agreements were a test specifically to see if someone
from each venue had actually read the band's technical specification
requirements. If you got to the concert location and the green m&ms were not
ready, it was time to panic and start finding out where the power was going to
cut out when you turned on all the kit...

------
lacker
It would be great to see previous successful applications, if they don't mind.
(Unsuccessful ones would be interesting too but that might be weird for them.)

~~~
dhouston
Hopefully I won't feel stupid posting this, but I wished someone had done the
same thing when I applied. (pg -- if you'd rather I not share this, feel free
to delete)

Original Dropbox YC app: <http://files.getdropbox.com/u/2/app.html>

Had to remove some names and one sensitive thing but otherwise unedited

~~~
swaroop
You seem to be already doing well at the time of the application, why were you
applying to YCombinator? Was it the money, the networking, or something else?

~~~
messel
This is exactly what I want to know. Must be the networking to sharp folks and
help building the business from concept to concrete.

------
newsio
I read this, and I like your thinking about the types of people you are
looking for.

But I have to say: You're asking for clarity, want applicants to avoid
unnecessary or confusing language, etc. Why not practice what you preach? Why
not include some of the "read between the lines" bits in your essay ("If this
wasn't already clear, we're not looking for the sort of obedient, middle-of-
the-road people that big companies tend to hire. We're looking for people who
like to beat the system") and copy and paste them directly into the
application form? It will make your life easier, and it will make it easier
for YC applicants who are struggling with the process. Judging by the fact
that you had to write this essay, people obviously _don't_ know what you want.

------
mcotton
How many repeat applications do you see? I am interested in applying and,
likely, re-applying while I work on the idea.

Is this common? Does it clutter the application process to see previously
rejected applications again and again?

~~~
pg
Quite a lot, and we sometimes fund them.

It's only a problem to see an application again if it doesn't change.

------
immigrant
Would YC consider accepting founders who can't work full time on their idea?
We have been working part time on our product for the last few months and will
launch later this year. We don't expect to clear immigration hurdles till
sometime in 2010. Does it make sense to apply?

~~~
pg
Yes. There ought to be at least one person who will work on it full time in
the fairly near future. You sound close enough.

------
benreesman
It seems to me that there is some very useful advice here for someone trying
to write a resume, even if that wasn't the intended purpose of the posting.

------
bgnm2000
Thanks pg! I was worried that entering too many secondary ideas would almost
appear as a drawback. As if the team wasn't truly dedicated to the idea they
were submitting the application for. Its nice to know the team itself is more
important.

Also, I'd love to know what percentage of teams have business people, rather
than 100% hackers

~~~
pg
Off the top of my head, I'd say 10-20% of groups have someone who's a pure
business person, in the sense of not being able to program. More commonly
there's one programmer who's more outgoing than the rest, and he or she does
sales initially.

~~~
epkann
It's interesting that YCombinator, which values hackers so highly, included
one pure business person (Jessica) among its four partners. Could you explain
the reasoning behind that decision? What expertise did Jessica bring that
Paul, Robert, and Trevor lack? More generally, when should founders consider
bringing on a non-hacker as a co-founder?

~~~
pg
Jessica came from an investment bank. She deals with all the legal documents,
gets startups incorporated, and so on. She also organizes all the events; we
have a lot of those.

At least, that's what we _thought_ we were getting. She also turns out to be
an extremely good judge of character, better than any of us. One of her
nicknames is "the social radar."

~~~
messel
Some folks don't know how lucky they are at meeting the right people at the
right time, but you don't sound like one of them Paul. It's hard finding folks
to cover all the needs of an early business. I've written about coupling
social media with relevant ads for months, so far I've only discovered one
business type interested. I gave up and started coding it myself (very limited
web programming, desktop c++ for a little under 14 years).

------
yumraj
How about someone who needs guidance more than money. Like, someone who is
currently employed and wants to do something on the side till it makes sense
to go solo and maybe would need funding at that point. Would YC be
interested/willing to consider this model and engage with such founder(s) to
help review ideas, business models etc.?

~~~
pg
What would have to change for it to make sense to go solo?

~~~
brlewis
Since the OP hasn't replied yet, I'll chime in with an example: Suppose his is
the sole income supporting a family of 5, and he needs financial resources to
feed, clothe, house, educate, and entertain 5x as many people as the typical
YC founder. What would have to change would be the availability of said
resources.

------
aberman
"The first thing I notice when I look at an application is the username it was
submitted under. If it's one I recognize for making thoughtful comments on
Hacker News, I give the application extra attention."

I was actually surprised by this. In retrospect, it makes perfect sense, but I
would never have even thought of this.

------
terpua
Would you consider a competitor to an already YC-backed startup?

~~~
pg
Probably. We're going to have to face this eventually. Plus any sufficiently
rich market probably has room for several permutations.

~~~
fallentimes
Like photos?

~~~
brlewis
Or words, or anything else that can be used in a variety of ways. See real-
user discussion here: [http://friendfeed.com/seemsartless/d4728c4a/saturday-
june-27...](http://friendfeed.com/seemsartless/d4728c4a/saturday-june-27-2009)

------
thedob
One thing that's confused me about the "Please tell us about the time you most
successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage." question is
the parenthesis. My guess is that they're included because you'll accept
either a computer, or non-computer related example.

If it's confused me, chances are it may confuse others as well.

~~~
pg
The reason for "(non-computer)" is that we wanted to distinguish between
hacking in the sense of programming, and hacking in the sense of beating the
system.

~~~
smikhanov
"Beating the system" makes me think of rebellion. Is this really what you
looking for in applicants? Does non-conformism really matter that much?

~~~
christonog
I think what pg means by this question is: "how resourceful are you in getting
want you want/need?" I believe Entrepreneurs need to be creative and
relentless in finding exactly what they need to succeed.

------
david927
Isn't this also an admission that the application process is a bit broken?

I think a lot of people would be open to submitting their application to
others first, to help flesh out the weakpoints. On the menu bar, can we have
"new", "threads", ..., and "YC applications"?

~~~
pg
Yes, of course. All application processes are. But we're working hard to
improve it. We tweak the process in some way almost every cycle.

The idea of having everyone look at one another's application sounds like a
minefield, though. Plus I don't want to clutter up HN with YC stuff. Only a
minority of the users of this site are even interested in startups.

~~~
david927
I realized after I wrote that about twenty reasons why it's a bad idea. But I
think some sort of Q&A could be invaluable, especially given the brevity the
answers have to conform to and that knowing the right words is something that
comes after a lot of baking with the idea. Without it, preference goes to
ideas that can be conveyed clearly and simply at the expense of more complex
ones.

Would it be possible for the applicant to chose those HN users and YC alumni
who have requested to view it? (With full comment threads and voting.)

------
araneae
On the other hand, maybe you don't want to help people submit better
applications, because you can still only select a few of them. As the overall
quality increases, it becomes more difficult to select between poor and high
quality work. At least in the case of my intro bio students, essay 1 is always
terrible and therefore easy to grade. I give them lots of tips, etc., for
essay 2. The essays all improve, but I still have to assign the same mean
grade so all their grades are the same. Basically it just makes my life
harder.

~~~
Xichekolas
I think you analogy with grading papers is flawed. Sure, it's easier to grade
bad things than good things, because you don't have to look too deeply, but YC
does not have to assign mean grades. They are reading in order to find useful
information. If all applications become more concise and useful, that is a net
gain, even if it makes the choice of who to interview less obvious.

~~~
araneae
It's not the analogy that's flawed at all. You admit that this might make that
choice of who to interview less obvious, which is exactly my point.

However, if the goal of teaching is to teach students, then obviously one
should try to improve their writing! Similarly, as you point out, if the goal
of YC is to find useful information, then of course they should provide this
additional help.

tl;dr:

Of course, most intelligent people I know would have found everything in this
link perfectly obvious. In this case, you'll fail to separate people with good
projects and reading comprehension from people with good projects AND good
business sense.

It reminds me of applicants to our dorm (residents reviewed applications and
rated them, which decided admission). It was easy to get into the dorm if you
had any idea what the dorm was about. But some people just "didn't get it" and
they were easy to pick out and rate poorly. (Bad application: I want to live
here because I'm an architect and the architecture building) (Good
application: I want to live here because I like getting naked in a kiddie pool
in the middle of winter.)

~~~
swolchok
OT: was this that crazy dorm at Cornell?

~~~
araneae
Yes :). Ah, college. I miss it.

------
pegobry
Re: describing your product matter-of-factly instead of grandiosely.

At a Startup School, Greg McAdoo of Sequoia described how they wanted each
company to have a one-sentence masterplan and described how they made Cisco
change their self-description from "We make boxen that do X,Y,Z" to "Cisco
Systems networks networks".

If you're applying to be the next Google and most importantly if you guys look
for the next Google, I think that sort of implies that the founders have some
grand vision for the future of the company and that's the thing they'd want to
put forward -- and that you'd want to see put forward so that you're confident
they can be the next Google.

I guess what I'm asking is, would it have been better for 1976 Apple to apply
saying "We sell a neat microcomputer kit for $666" or "We want usher in a
technological revolution by making computers so darn pretty and easy to use
that everyone will buy one"?

The former is more accurate, but it's the latter that really represents what
the company is about and what its potential is.

------
Radix
I like how PG coralled applicants. They shouldn't puff up their idea as they
are the actual investment, but they shouldn't directly puff up themselves
because that they should assume the investors will do it. All that is left to
do is make an objective, consise description of their idea, its flaws, and
their actions.

Simple thoughts.

------
benmathes
As someone who interviews developer candidates, this is not just good advice
for applying to YC, but to tech jobs in general. Putting bullshit on your
resume in _any_ form is the same thing as putting _shit_ on your resume. As
with all useful communication, you're limited. Cut to the essence.

------
messel
Maybe because I'm a little older I'm confused on this one Paul. Why so much
competition for 20k? Why are young founders racing to give away up to 10% of
their business for such a small amount of capital? I can see the value of the
YC network and that's worth a lot to me right now. But rent and fast food
money for 3 months seems a little low of a reward on "winning" applications.
Is the success rate of YC founders low? (success measured as
sustainable/viable business in 5 years or a liquidity event)

~~~
messel
I found a good answer on this nest of a comment page:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=715530>

------
zaidf
_Please tell us about the time you most successfully hacked some (non-
computer) system to your advantage._

What if it was potentially criminal? Would you still want to know:)?

------
jacoblyles
You get what you measure. The application selects for the ability to
communicate in pithy statements. Fortunately, this is likely to be somewhat
correlated with intelligence. Unfortunately, there are no obviously better
methodologies.

------
pclark
I never know what to write about unfair advantages or "why can only you guys
do this"

------
Mz
Suggestion: Add a word counter to the application to help people keep it under
120. (Or tell me how to use it if it is there already. :-) )

------
korch
So let me get this straight--if you make it through the gauntlet of rather
arbitrary, hype-driven judgements, you get a whopping $10k and you have to
move to the Bay, which has among the highest real estate and cost of living in
the country?

How is this not a complete waste of time since it's so exploitive of
developers? Oh, that's right, being part of the startup-hype bubble machine
entitles you to a magic wand that allows you to step beyond economic reality.
Wave the wand, voila! _we're so awesome, we're the next Google, we might as
well print our own money!_

If you're a good developer, you'd probably do better soliciting micro-loans
through paypal and Prosper. I suspect any developer who has another option
takes it. I myself have several modest software ideas I've been kicking around
for two years that might have a small chance for making a good startup. But
being paid a subsistence wage, even as an alpha-stage startup, is worse than
just keeping the ol'day job and pushing the prototypes as a hobby.
Y-Combinator seems to be more for high school and college kids along the lines
of Google's annual summer of code.

~~~
jamiequint
YC for us was much more about the connections than the money. It makes getting
in the door a lot of places much easier, VCs/Angels are big on referrals and
YC is kind of an insta-referral to anyone you want to talk to.

The value of YC also depends largely on what kind of company you want to
start. If you're looking to start a small shop making $500k-$2M (max) a year
in revenue with 2-3 people than YC probably isn't for you because that type of
business is not venture fundable and thus the venture connections that YC can
get you aren't really worth much. However, if you're looking at something that
has the potential to be VC backed scale ($10M/yr+ at some point in the future)
then the introductions and connections are necessary and the value of YC is
clear.

Also, I would add that I think the YC alumni network has become one of the
most valuable parts of YC. There are enough alums now that basically someone
has had experience with what you are going through and can offer good advice,
imho that is the hardest thing about YC to duplicate.

~~~
paraschopra
No offense, but I am curious about the number of YC startups who are currently
doing (or done in the past) "$500k-$2M (max) a year in revenue with 2-3
people"?

~~~
jamiequint
I only know one, which is exactly my point. You won't find many of them
because that isn't the type of company YC was designed to fund. You will find
more than a few companies that have raised multiple rounds of VC and are in
growth mode (Justin.tv, Xobni, Scribd, Songkick, Dropbox, Loopt, etc) because
those companies better match the type of company that YC naturally fits.

------
Ardit20
So if the applicant is completely open about their idea and tells you
everything, projected data, perhaps past or present data also, fully lay out
the idea, how it would work, marketing, everything basically, what is there
stopping you from simply executing this idea yourself?

