
The “Interview” with Y Combinator That’s Not - wheels
http://blog.directededge.com/2009/11/05/the-interview-with-y-combinator-thats-not/
======
madmotive
This is exactly how our "interview" went.

Despite being given the same advice by others that had been through the
process we still foolishly wasted time preparing a short 1 minute pitch.

We might have had a better result if we'd invested more time in getting the
user experience in our demo right and answering the one critical question -
"Why would people want this?"

Don't make the same mistake we did. :)

~~~
chrischen
Is a demo required?

~~~
rantfoil
I think its incredibly foolish to try to get funding for something that has no
basis in reality yet. That's what a demo really is -- a toe-hold. But that
toehold is usually enough to know whether a team can make it a reality, and
whether they have a chance in the real world.

There's so much competition from great teams that it may well be a waste of
time without showing your best.

~~~
chrischen
I understand but Paul Graham really makes an emphasis on the _team_ , and that
a demo is not required. I mean there has to be a way to prove that that the
team can produce what they claim: past work, past startups, etc right?

~~~
joez
I think YC is sufficiently competitive that teams without a demo (on the
application) will not even get an interview. Also (I believe it has been
said), the two weeks from when you're notified to the weekend of the interview
should be sufficient to produce some kind of early stage demo. Your startup
idea might be unfit for YC if you can't at least have something to show in two
weeks of fervent work.

~~~
chrischen
Thanks for the advice. I was under the impression that the demo would be
unimportant, and since I'm in school right now, I thought I'd go slow at it
unless I am accepted.

I can whip up something in two weeks easy (even with school), but I didn't
submit a demo in the application because I didn't think it would be necessary,
so I focused on developing the idea instead.

~~~
wheels
Trevor talked about this in the comments to my article on applying to YC:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=854088>

~~~
chrischen
I guess what my situation was that I could balance school and the application,
or school and the prototype. While I had an urge to work on the prototype I
always felt guilty because frankly the application has a deadline, the
prototype does not. Actually after the application deadline I was able to get
back to the prototype.

~~~
jlees
If you get an interview, unbalance school to get the prototype ready - 'don't
worry be crappy' - for the interview.

~~~
chrischen
Oh definitely. In fact I did that the last time I prototyped a site and not
only was I not doing it for any investors, I had finals the same week.

------
hussong
Heh, waiting for the post-interview phone call was a real nail-biter, we
basically spent the entire evening waiting for the phone to ring. But it
didn't.

It didn't even occur to us that they might call our land line back home until
we got the email the next morning. Remotely checking the answering machine was
fun too, hadn't used that feature in ages and the code didn't work (turns out
you can't send DTMF tones when calling via Skype).

At the time we weren't sure if they give everyone a call or just the ones they
accept, so we didn't take the absence of a call as a 'no', but kept wondering.
In the end, we got the answer about 26 (pretty exciting) hours after we left
the interview room.

So, unless you're a thrill seeker, put your cell number in the application :-)

~~~
jl
Or just be sure to tell me at the end of the interview which number you'd like
us to call that night.

~~~
btilly
From the article, _We’d given Jessica cards with our cell-phone numbers on
them during the interview, but that didn’t seem to have registered._

I take that to mean that they tried to make it clear how to call them, but for
whatever reason signals got crossed.

------
ramidarigaz
Slight sidenote. On an 800x480 screen, overflow:hidden is a royal pain.

~~~
hussong
Not sure why you got downvoted. Thanks for the note, I appreciate it and will
look into this.

~~~
ramidarigaz
No problem! Thanks for looking out for us netbook users.

~~~
wheels
Fixed.

------
peripitea
First, congratulations! I'm curious how you are setting up a company in the
United States if you or one of your co-founders is from Germany? I've been
trying to figure out the whole startup-as-a-foreigner thing (I'm Canadian),
and so far I haven't been able to find any good info.

------
leelin
Did you guys happen to do much mingling in the waiting area just before or
just after your interview?

We got to the interview super early and ended up chatting with Kate (we asked
her how to get to In and Out), Skysheets Dan (saw his demo), and two other
interviewing teams that were accepted. Then there were two less social teams
who sat in the corner with their laptops, I guess nervously testing their demo
one last time.

Maybe I'm over-fitting, but for me the nerve-calming benefits of being social
in the waiting room was helpful.

~~~
anateus
They did. I remember them as the first other YC team we talked to.

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mahmud
Anyone know if YC is doing traditional companies? i.e. advertising and real-
estate.

Don't need the money but could really use the "blessing". They have some of
the most enviable media contacts in the industry right now.

~~~
pg
We'll fund anything that scales like a startup. We had a very promising
startup doing real estate two cycles ago, but they fell apart due to disputes
between the founders. I still think it was a great idea.

~~~
theli0nheart
What company was this?

edit: why am I getting downvoted?

~~~
ghshephard
From: <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

"Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it
makes boring reading. "

~~~
theli0nheart
Sure, I'll keep that in mind.

One point I'd like to make though is that it's less about the karma itself
than it is about the reason that people don't like the question. I could
understand why if I was trolling, insulting, etc.

Honestly, I don't care if my karma goes to negative infinity, unless that
would automatically ban my account, or something to that effect.

~~~
ghshephard
My first year on YC was depressing, as comments that I put a lot of work,
energy, effort and thought into would sometimes be downmodded into oblivion.

I would write an expose on Hiring practices we used to have at Netscape,
detailing precisely what hiring managers though, and how - and people would
downmod me like there was tomorrow.

Over time, I realized, that sometimes it's just a popularity contest. Your
comments, even if well meant, may just not be in agreement with somebody
elses. I just learned to deal with it - over time you get a sense for the Ebb
and Flow - and can learn quite a bit about the community. Don't always
consider a downmod to be negative - sometimes it's just a reflection of what
other people think - not a reflection of your comments value.

------
SlyShy
Thanks for the insight into the process. That sounds a lot more useful than an
actual interview, because it seems like _you_ are learning something from the
meeting through the brainstorming.

------
bastian
Wheels, this is brilliant and it mostly matches what we learnt from other
startups during StartupSchool and the Y-Combinator reception last month.
Thanks for putting this in a post.

------
gord
Interesting read and nice success story...

On DirectedEdge home, can I enter any search term, or does this need to be a
well formatted Wikipedia entry url ?

~~~
wheels
If you type the beginning of an article name it should autocomplete after a
sec (it's a little slower than it should be...) There's also an easter-egg you
can use:

<http://www.directededge.com/?Y%20Combinator>

~~~
davidw
BTW, time to put up a nice looking 404 page or fix whatever's wrong:

<http://www.directededge.com/dsfdsfds>

~~~
wheels
If you were trying to hit the easter egg you have to put it in the query
string, not just as a sub-url.

~~~
davidw
Yeah, I noticed that, but there's definitely an ugly page there that I thought
you might want to fix.

------
JLaramie
This is a great breakdown of your journey. Thanks for giving us the info.

------
endlessvoid94
I just spent 10 minutes playing with the flash visualization on your homepage.

Good luck!

~~~
pmorici
Is it flash? When I right click it lets me save the graph image as an image...
what are you guys using to do this? It's really neat.

~~~
kam
It's a <canvas> element.

------
marknutter
Wow, I'm going to have to be a lot more thoughtful when I post on
news.ycombinator from now on.

~~~
btilly
And you'll start with your next post, right? :-P

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sailormoon
I am sorry if this is completely obvious and I am missing something. But I
just do not understand, not one little bit.

Why did you fly to America to get $5000? It is not a large amount of money. I
am surprised it covered your air fares.

So why? I do not feel the need at all. You did. I would like to here why. Did
they really say something in the interview that justified all that time and
expense?

update: I have no idea whatsoever why this is being downvoted. There is no way
I would fly to the US to collect a pathetic $5k. I'd genuinely like to know
why people think it is a profitable thing to do so. Thanks.

~~~
gruseom
You're being downvoted because people think the answer to your question is so
obvious that you must be trolling. However, I'll assume you're being sincere.

The money is the least important aspect of getting in to YC. What matters is
the advice they provide and the community/network aspects. These things are so
valuable that they are a huge state change for most startups.

~~~
sailormoon
This is not obvious to me at all. I admit I have difficulty conceiving of
advice so compelling I'd travel to America to receive it.

Fair enough I guess. People pay what they think it is worth. That's
capitalism; no argument from me. I am not trolling. Carry on.

~~~
pg
It shouldn't be that difficult to imagine. It's a very old tradition to travel
long distances in search of specialized knowledge. Practically every famous
medieval scholar did. But of course the tradition is way older than that. In
the mid 6th century BC Pythagoras went to study in Egypt, and his biographer
Porphyry said "It was from his stay among these foreigners that Pythagoras
acquired the greater part of his wisdom."

~~~
tomjen2
Sure, but the world has changed in the several centuries since.

Today travelling across the world to receive information isn't something most
people would do - or even think about. After all, the price of information has
crashed even more than stocks in Lehrman Brothers.

~~~
pg
Actually travelling great distances as part of one's education is more common,
not less. I wouldn't be surprised if at least a million people a year move to
distant towns to go to college or grad school every year in the US alone.

