
Here is my YC application. No interview - pacifi30
http://blog.truffle.io/truffles-yc-application
======
mlyang
Feedback:

1) I feel like including in your limited app space/pitch "finding people of
your class" is a poor indicator of your ability to market the product. While
there is some way to spin the whole "find people with similar intellectual
interests/career aspirations/etc.), referring to "class" specifically seems
elitist, and would be poor marketing IMO.

2) In the "impressive things," Nishant wrote "getting scholarship" though it
should've said "getting a scholarship."

3) The tone of the app seems childish at points (references to "fat little
boy," "I want to spread love"). While it's good to not take yourself too
seriously, it might've been a little too much perhaps?

4) I don't think you explained/framed very well what exactly is the problem
that people are facing that you are solving. If you can draw upon some
references to people really preferring to date others with similar
educational/professional background or something, that would've probably
helped.

Just wanted to give some constructive (but conjectural) feedback. Good luck
guys! :)

~~~
pacifi30
-> class thing specifically backfired for us but the intent was as you said "people with similar intellectual interests/career aspirations/"

Thanks for the feedback, I guess this is going on our next one.

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waterside81
I'll say this, I feel for the YC partners reading through submission after
submission. After reading the few that have been posted on HN the past few
days, I'm exhausted. It's hard to give a lot of attention to each of these
without skimming through and just saying "meh, next".

Much like an English teacher reading through 30 essays.

~~~
VladRussian2
>It's hard to give a lot of attention to each of these without skimming
through and just saying "meh, next".

>Much like an English teacher reading through 30 essays.

An English teacher gets it worse as s/he forced to actually read and comment
through "meh" content (i pity ones who read my essays back then in Russian and
here in English)

For this application I read only first couple phrases until "3 matches every 3
days", and just being an HN reader for 4 years, i see that this startup isn't
YC-material (that isn't saying that they aren't A+/brilliant grade material in
general as i didn't read further)

~~~
pacifi30
>For this application I read only first couple phrases until "3 matches every
3 days", and just being an HN reader for 4 years, i see that this startup
isn't YC-material

Please elaborate on this so we can circle back on our marketing pitch.

~~~
VladRussian2
Boring, sounds like something that has been done before. 3 by 3 and bonus 4th
on fish taco Thurdays. To put it in the terms of your business area, [my
impression that] YC is looking to be swept from their feet.

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sannabonner
I would use Truffle if it were in my locale (British Columbia).

I like how you wrote the application answers. You come across as smart (but
not cocky), engaged, and enthusiastic.

~~~
pacifi30
Ah thanks, I guess writing YC application answers helped me in defining my
vision and pitch better.

BC is not far from Seattle, should be there by end of this year :)

------
wellboy
I think if you want to get into YC you have to fulfill one of the three
criteria:

1\. You are hugely changing the world

2\. You can completely disrupt an existing industry

3\. You can be a billion dollar company

Good apps do fulfill all the three, however I think yours wouldn't be able to
fulfill one of these unfortunately.

Let look at the points:

1\. It looks like you have a cool app, but it's not much different to other
dating sites. You will probably be a good dating website, but not "change the
world"

2\. You are not specifically in an industry like taxis, golf or cars. You are
in the dating industry, which has 1000s of established competitors

3\. I'm confident you probably can be a $50M company, but not "billion-dollar"
company. There are 1000s of established competitors already in the market and
it will be very hard to be 10x better than everyone else. It's also hard,
because dating websites were competitive 10 years ago. Nowadays you might get
a market share in the super competitive Dating-space as a viral mobile app
like Tinder, however as a website it is just impossible.

Didn't want to shoot you guys down, but hope I could give you useful feedback
so that you know what is important to focus on.

~~~
pacifi30
I love your feedback, I do agree that there is a lot of competition in the
online dating market but still I believe that the way it is done currently
will be disrupted. People are just used to the current way of browsing a
catalogue of images and brute forcing their way to get some one reply to their
messages.

~~~
wellboy
Hey thanks!

I think you can monetize pretty early with your model, so once you rake a few
thousand dollars in per month and show that it will be in the ten thousands in
three months, you can easily get Angel investment.

Once you have decent traction, nobody cares about the "billion-dollar" startup
anymore and everybody invests ;)

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physcab
I met my girlfriend on an online dating site and being able to send messages
was essential. I know it's a drag for guys to constantly send messages without
a response, but for women it's a critical safety filter. Tinder strikes a good
balance where you get to message only of there is a match, but if there were
no chat, then I'm positive no one would use it for dating.

------
Cookingboy
Seems like the quality of application really is sky high if something like
this didn't even get an interview.

The team sounds smart and accomplished, and objectively interesting. You guys
have done a lot of data driven user research as well, which shows maturity
when compared to a lot of the other startups out there.

I wish you guys the best of luck, don't give up and keep working on that :)

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nilkn
Please keep your chins up on this one. I think this is a great concept and it
could legitimately solve the one major beef I've always had with dating sites
like OkCupid (for long-term relationships, I'm only interested in working
professionals, and it's quite a hassle to filter out the right profiles
sometimes; I also generally find the messaging phase to be worthless, as most
people decide whether they want to meet someone based only on the profile).

~~~
pacifi30
Yes, YC rejection has made us even stronger to improve our product further.

------
dsrguru
Given that the YC partners have a ton of applications to read, and given that
your second sentence ("It simple.") suggests you didn't proofread your
application, it's possible they didn't continue reading it.

~~~
msvan
"...people using traditional online dating loose hope..."

It is nitpicking, but when you're in ultra-intense competition with lots of
other good applications, I'm sure these things matter at least on a
subconscious level. If I were to apply, I'd proof-read my application until it
was perfect.

Oh, and is it just me, or was this one very long? If this is the hundredth
application you're reading, you might look at this and be scared off by its
length. Not saying anything about the quality of the applicants -- I'm sure
they're talented and motivated -- but this little text they're submitting is
what gets them either in or out. It's important.

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pacifi30
OP here. This is great, YC doesn't give you feedback on the rejection but the
HN community does. Thank you guys so much for reading through our application
and giving us some very useful feedback.

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barce
The grammar was atrocious. There were too many grammatical errors to list
here, but for God's sake please use a grammar check. Paul Graham's grammar is
perfect and yours should be, too.

------
austenallred
You only have 57 users? That's not enough traction for a dating site with _a
lot_ of assumptions regarding what users want to garner any attention from the
likes of YC.

~~~
pacifi30
We have 315 users now(still not much, I totally agree in terms of YC numbers).
"57" is the number that we converted from the likes of okCupid and match on to
truffle

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wehadfun
Dating meets Groupon meet Uber.

Guy and Girl both pay for a date

Site matches Guy, Girl selects 1 activity and 1 dinner a driver and autopays
for everything. The two people just show up and enjoy there date.

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kamilszybalski
1) Can you elaborate on the 'no messaging' logic?

2) I hope you have a rockstar marketing/leadgen guru.

~~~
pacifi30
OP here. On dating websites like okCupid and match.com, you have to write a
message to the other person to start a conversation. On Truffle, there is no
online messaging. You are presented with 3 users every 3 days, if you like
them, you send them a coffee invitation at one of our Truffle meet up cafes.

~~~
mladenkovacevic
Why this? Why no messages?

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pacifi30
OP here, would love to get comments from the HN community.

~~~
a3camero
It offers to match you with people in the same "class". Class is verboten in
Canada/US unless it's "the middle class". There's probably a nicer way to say
that.

~~~
paul
This isn't one of the apps that I read, but that would definitely be a
negative for me. The world doesn't need more class divisions.

~~~
pacifi30
OP here, I agree. I guess @mlyang put that in better words than us "people
with similar intellectual interests/career aspirations"

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ddevan
Maybe because this isn't an original idea at all.

