
What We Should Have Said To PG - drupeek
http://blog.rocketr.com/what-we-should-have-said-to-pg/
======
pkteison
Opening with "Rocketr is a bottom-up approach to knowledge management" - this
is an entirely useless fluff sentence, tells nobody anything, doesn't provide
a useful frame of reference for what's coming next... I feel like the story
here is that Mr. Peek needed a harsher critic when he was practicing. It's
surprising how rarely we encounter good critics in our lives, everybody is
focused on supporting and validating and has little practice at really
challenging, reviewing, evaluating.

I don't really see a problem with PG driving, I see a problem with not being
ready to clearly and concisely differentiate. How is it different from
Evernote and how is it different from Wikipedia should be completely
anticipated ready-to-handle followups with great one-sentence answers that
focus on the customers.

I really don't like the alternate suggested approach because I'm not willing
to grant the premise. Does work get done using team based tools? Work gets
done to a shocking degree with email, excel, individual text editors,
powerpoint... none of which are really 'team based'. My first thought is to go
with something like "We help individuals collaborate by [whatever it is this
thing does]" simply because that gets me a frame of reference faster and gets
to talking about the interesting part sooner. But I'm still not sure what the
interesting part is... so far this sounds more like Google Wave than anything
else, and that alone might be enough to pass on backing the idea, under the
"will fail because it's too hard to convince people they need this" category.

~~~
mgkimsal
"It's surprising how rarely we encounter good critics in our lives, everybody
is focused on supporting and validating and has little practice at really
challenging, reviewing, evaluating."

This is a bit off-topic but I was reading some time ago about Dan/Dani Bunten
(of MULE fame, among other things), who had gender reassignment surgery. More
info here: <http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Warning.html#Dani> but
this is what I was reminded of:

"Despite following the rules and being as honest as I could with the medical
folks at each stage, nobody stopped me and said "Are you honest to God
absolutely sure this is the ONLY path for you?!" To the contrary, the voices
were all cheerfully supportive of my decision."

No one really challenged Dan at the time - possibly for fear of being labelled
as a bigot or hater or whatever - and Dani later regretted the decision.

Again, somewhat off-topic, but finding people to really challenge you (in a
supporting way) _is_ hard to do.

~~~
debacle
Pathological skeptic here. Being critical, challenging ideas, and evaluating
possibilities is something that makes people _very_ uncomfortable and being
honest can burn a lot of bridges, _no matter how nice you are about it_.

We live in a very lonely world, and most people would rather shut their mouth
and damn the consequences that have a healthy argument. It's cold comfort
knowing you're right when no one wants to listen.

We are born into a cruelly honest world. Children, before life beats them
down, are cruelly honest. Somewhere around that first full time job and the
first pregnancy scare, all of the piss is taken out of us. We don't want to be
judged, so we don't judge others.

It's a very sugar-coated world to live in.

~~~
sdoering
But the question stands in what a world one wants to live. In a world of
sugarcoating, or in a world of truthful edges?

Me, I would love the edges. But that's for everyone to decide for themselves.

~~~
jmduke
False dichotomy.

~~~
fatbird
Ego gratifying false dichotomy.

------
pg
"And most importantly, drive."

This advice is disastrously wrong. That's not how YC interviews work. They're
interviews, not presentations. We want random access to your thoughts, not to
listen to a single path through them, prepared in advance.

When people walk into the room with a predetermined pitch that they're
determined to stick to, things usually end badly.

~~~
drupeek
"We want random access to your thoughts, not to listen to a single path
through them, prepared in advance."

You can have both.

Without having true insight into exactly what information you hope to take
away in 10 minutes, I would think that a cohesiveness to the order of the
information, the pain felt by the potential customer, and a picture of that
customer - are all valuable inputs.

My suggestion is that startups put that information in order themselves.

~~~
bokonist
My reaction from reading both your original pitch and your revised pitch is
that you were being quite vague. PG knows about the problems of collaboration,
limitations of current tools, etc, you don't need to sell him on the existence
of pain points. What you do have to sell him on is how your tool is uniquely
suited for solving these pain points, which is what I missed entirely in your
blog post. His interview style is to cut you off when you are telling him
things that he already knows or when you are being to vague. He will force you
to be specific and drill down on the points of your idea that are most
critical.

~~~
tg3
The part that is most striking to me about the vagueness of the pitch is:

> _“Not really, no. A wiki is more like a google doc – it has one true version
> at any given time. Sure, there’s a revision history, but nobody lives in the
> revision history. Rocketr is about having one author for a given note, and a
> threaded conversation around it.”_

The answer to that question is _yes_ it is like a wiki - with these key
differences. With only ten minutes to pitch, anchoring your concept to
something that is well understood by your audience is critical.

If you really don't think it is like a wiki at all (which would be hard to
believe), then anchor it to something else that will be easy to understand,
e.g. "it's like email, but the conversations get stored and revisited and
edited at will by any of the participants." Anything you can use to make your
concept clear in an instant is extra time to sell them on your team and your
vision for why this idea can take over the world.

------
ErrantX
Hmm, my analysis (writing as I go):

\- Too much "fluff"; his response sounds like a marketer not a builder

\- In the opening two answers he basically contradicts his description; "co-
authored notebooks" vs. "one author for a given note, and a threaded
conversation around it". It's confusing.

\- The alternative opening is even worse; I still have no idea what problem
your solving. You just gave me a marketing pitch..

\- The alternate answer for "Who needs what you’re making?" is better - but
immediately begs the question "how are my labels necessarily effective for
_both_ myself, and the YC alumni" and "How do you know the YC alumni don't
have their own tag system which they apply as they read emails" or even
"sounds handy, but how are you overcoming the convenience factor associated
with email"

\- Any sensible listener will realise that a) and b) are not the only choices
(this is a variation on my last bullet point) and be concerned that you are
limiting yourself to only those outcomes.

\- It also seems risky to pitch such a personal use case on a _supposition_.
The "problem" might already have been effectively resolved for YC's
communications.

All in all it reads a lot like a business person pitching to an engineer. One
that is attuned to the problems of "gloss", and is looking for disruption and
good engineering rather than a glossy pitch. I get that all the time and it is
off putting. It strikes me that the key problem is _you possibly don't speak
the same language as pg_.

As with other commentators; even with the revised answers, I'm still not sure
what Rocketr is beyond a note taking app with social features.

~~~
drupeek
My thoughts...

\- What does a builder sound like? Aren't we all just trying to speak to
customers? Are builders naturally better at that?

\- "Co-authored notebooks" and "one author per note" are not contradictions at
all. They speak to entirely different units (notes and notebooks).

\- While you are correct that you and the startup may have different systems
for categorizing, that's exactly the problem we're trying to point to. The
siloed nature of how we capture and categorize information.

In closing, I am trying to speak to customers... not engineers.

Thank you for the feedback. I know it took time to write.

~~~
ynniv
_What does a builder sound like?_

"When I write in emacs, it's inconvenient to share that with my team. When I
write in the Wiki... well, I don't write in the wiki because it's annoying. I
have been more productive doing X, and I think you will too."

 _In closing, I am trying to speak to customers... not engineers._

That's marketing speak for "I don't know who my customer is". You are pitching
to a customer who is an engineer, so you should be speaking to engineers.

 _Thank you for the feedback. I know it took time to write._

That's what we do here... this sounds hollow.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
I couldn't disagree with this comment more. You are not trying to sell your
_product_ to YC, you are trying to sell your _company_ to YC. You do that by
understanding your product and your customer and how you will bring the two
together. Not by pretending some person in YC is suddenly your ideal customer
and shifting your entire pitch around that.

 _That's what we do here... this sounds hollow._

Wow. Nice.

------
btilly
People say that hindsight is 20/20. No. Hindsight is speculation with the
benefit of never being able to be proven wrong.

Having read this "what we should have said" article, I'm suspicious that if
they had done everything differently like they suggested, that they would have
still come out to the same result.

Why? Because the idea of an article with a revision tree and multiple current
versions is naturally confusing to users. No matter how nice the formalism is.
Until you can start to think about and present things in terms that the users
can "get", you're going to have a serious UI problem that limits adoption.

And even once you have that version, you still need to be able to compare and
contrast it to things that people are familiar with so you can talk to people
who don't "get" it yet.

~~~
rexreed
It's interesting how many people see PG as the test of their company's
viability (did he get it, didn't he get it?) when what really matters is what
the customers think. Did they get it? Did they not?

All this handwringing over a post-mortem with PG, and I rarely see the same
with regards to customers. Customers are walking from your site, failing to
respond to your marketing, failing to convert, choosing competitive solutions,
etc., and where's the post-mortem?

This is a valuable lesson. Not about what to say or not to PG, but rather, how
much a poorly crafted value proposition or explanation of your product can
instantly and quickly turn off your customers.

Make your products easy to understand, easy to purchase, and easy to get value
from, and you will win. Make it complex on any of those fronts, you will lose.

~~~
mindcrime
_It's interesting how many people see PG as the test of their company's
viability (did he get it, didn't he get it?) when what really matters is what
the customers think. Did they get it? Did they not?_

Well said. Pg is an awesome dude, but I definitely wouldn't take his word as
being final, vis-a-vis the possibility of my startup succeeding or not. I'd
certainly appreciate his feedback and insights - as I think any one of us
would. But, in a hypothetical world where our team did a YC interview and got
rejected - we'd still take the attitude that we were the ones who'd been out
on the streets talking to customers, that we had the deeper domain knowledge
of our domain, and the deeper insights into what our business is going to be.
So Paul's advice would be valued, but a "nay" from him would almost certainly
not be sufficient reason for us to go "oh, sure, let's quit."

 _Make your products easy to understand, easy to purchase, and easy to get
value from, and you will win. Make it complex on any of those fronts, you will
lose._

I mostly agree with that, but note that some complex products still sell and
make a lot of money... and they're complex because of the nature of the
problem(s) they're addressing. SAP's ERP suite, for example, is very
complex... but SAP make a ton of money from it. I'd say the goal is to be "as
complex as need be, but no more."

 _Aside: this may also be an argument that SAP's business stands to be
disrupted by someone who can do what they do, but with less complexity. Doing
so is left as an exercise for the reader._

~~~
rexreed
I'm on it ;) Seriously! (in regards to disrupting the SAP business).

~~~
mindcrime
_I'm on it ;) Seriously! (in regards to disrupting the SAP business)_

Interesting. If you're willing to talk about what you're doing at all, drop me
an email. I'm working on an enterprise focused startup as well, maybe there's
some synergy to explore or what-have-you. If we're not pursuing the same space
(and we aren't doing anything ERP related, per-se) then - at worst - we could
bat some ideas around and maybe help each other out in some fashion.

~~~
hef19898
Hey, that means I'm not the only one thinking about start-ups and products in
this area. And I totaly agree, SAP's business is about to be disrupted. The
only point is, I'm not sure the time is right yet. And when it is, it will be
quite a battle... And that's exactly why it's worth it.

~~~
rexreed
I'm always up for collaborating and communicating - I'll drop you both a line
and maybe there's something we can do together.

~~~
hef19898
Would be great, just added a contact in my profile! :-)

------
debacle
While this is a good piece in theory, and provides some good HN publicity for
rocketr, I'll play devil's advocate for the other side of the coin: maybe you
just weren't good enough.

I'm not saying that's the case, knowing nothing about the batch that made it
in ahead of you or the rocketr team, but the startup scene right now is like a
track meet.

Making the YC interview is like making nationals - you're the fastest sprinter
across several states, and you were born to do it. But at the nationals, so is
everyone else there. You can do better than your best and still lose. That
doesn't mean you're not faster than 99% percent of the population, it just
means you're not the fastest, and YC is looking for the fastest.

The analogy breaks down in a few places - running is purely objective,
choosing who to fund is much more subjective. YC will always make mistakes,
and timing ideas is important, but I think the core takeaway is that just
because you didn't make it doesn't mean you're not fundable.

~~~
batista
> _Making the YC interview is like making nationals - you're the fastest
> sprinter across several states, and you were born to do it. But at the
> nationals, so is everyone else there. You can do better than your best and
> still lose. That doesn't mean you're not faster than 99% percent of the
> population, it just means you're not the fastest, and YC is looking for the
> fastest._

Well, it's not like they have not picked lots of lame ducks too...

~~~
debacle
Startups fail for a lot of reasons. We'd have to do a fair assessment of the
percentage of failures compared to the industry as a whole to really get a
feel for whether YC is successful or not.

~~~
pjscott
You'd also have to consider the magnitude of the successes and the amount
invested per company. The handful of companies that make it really big pretty
much dominate startup investment economics.

------
olliesaunders
Reading this I find myself in the same position as PG: I know nothing about
the app and trying to “get it”. The later explanations are more enlightening
but I still don’t get what this app does.

~~~
asto
I think it's like what I used wave for soon after it launched. Let's say
you're coming up with a business plan with your friends to pitch for VC money
and you're putting your thoughts together. You add in your stuff the wave.
Others add their stuff. If somebody has an epiphany later, they can add it
then. A week or two later you'd have a document with everybody's thoughts in
one place that you can run through and compile a slideshow.

I wonder if I got that right.

Anyway, great blogpost!

~~~
drupeek
This is exactly correct.

~~~
Matt_Cutts
I don't see how this is different from a Google doc, where you have one doc
owner and you can set permissions so that other people can view, edit, or only
leave a comment?

~~~
drupeek
Who gets attribution for every thought embodied in that doc?

~~~
Matt_Cutts
I believe Google Docs keeps all the revisions, so if anyone cares a lot, they
could go back and check.

But what I've found with Google Docs is that if someone is making a trivial
change (like correcting a typo), they'll just go ahead and make the edit in
the doc. If they're suggesting a substantial change, they'll add the
suggestion as a comment and let the author decide whether to incorporate it.

------
lambda
I stopped reading once I hit "action every idea immediately."

This entire thing drips of the kind of marketing speak that he says he ripped
out because YC demands it. Did he think that YC demands it just to be
arbitrary and capricious? This style of presentation turns me (and likely many
others) off immediately.

The real problem is that he's trying to sell a product that solves a problem
that most people don't have. People have tons of ways to write down, organize,
and sort ideas. They can stick it in a wiki, in a Google doc, in email, in a
bugtracker. All of these have ways of sorting and labeling content. I have
seen nothing, in either you original or "what you should have said" version,
that answers the question of how what you are doing is better than all of
these things that people already have access to.

What problem are you trying to solve? What does your tool do that other tools
don't? If you can't answer these questions in 10 minutes, nor at your leisure
afterwards when writing a blog post about what you should have said, nor in
all the time you spent setting up a slick website with a "sign up to try us
out" form, I have to ask whether you actually have a product or are just a
bunch of empty marketing.

------
rexreed
I you have to carefully wordsmith and "spin" so that others who don't have
much time for you get it, then I think you really are in a tough spot.

Forget PG for a moment. What about your customers? If THEY don't get it in a
short amount of time and you have to carefully control ("drive" as you put it)
the conversation just so they understand it (nevermind actually buying what
you're selling), then you really are in a tough spot.

I think PG called this right - your product has to be intuitive to the point
that someone understands what you have and how you compare to the rest of the
universe without verbal jousting. Now, whether or not they agree or buy into
the value proposition is another matter. But you got hung up on the "what are
you doing and how does it relate to what I know" part.

------
sachingulaya
“Rocketr is a bottom-up approach to knowledge management. We connect people
through their notepads. Basically, people take notes and decide how to share
them. The primary mechanism by which they share them is through co-authored
notebooks."

"2. I stripped out so much of the marketing jargon (a YC rule)"

No, you didn't. I couldn't understand what you were talking about. "Knowledge
management" is jargon."Connecting people" is jargon.

"Rocketr is about having one author for a given note, and a threaded
conversation around it."

I thought Rocketr was about "co-authored notebooks"(your words). So we co-
author notebooks but not notes?

"Rocketr bridges two worlds that could not be further apart right now how we
capture information (using personal tools), and how we get work done (using
team-based tools). We’re betting that these worlds will converge, because if
they don’t, it will get harder and harder for teams if they can’t collaborate
at the speed that information is changing around them. Oh and the medium we
use to facilitate all this, is note-taking something we all know how to do."

That still doesn't tell me what Rocketr does.

"Organizations need this to drive innovation" = Marketing speak that says
nothing.

I still have no clue what Rocketr does or how it works after reading your blog
post. Keep it short and simple.

------
nl
I've read both the version you told PG, and what you say you should have said
a number of times and I _still_ don't get it.

It sounds like Google Wave. I'm not sure if that is a good thing or a bad
thing, but it sounds like you are having the same problem they had: explaining
what the hell it does.

When I tried to explain Wave to people I said it was a combination of the
ideas of Wiki, email, chat and a forum, designed to make accomplishing shared
work easier. It's still not great, but I don't think it's an easy thing to
communicate.

------
Udo
After reading this I have no idea what Rocketr actually is and what it really
does, and from that I infer that nobody in the room understood it either.

I see a lot of statements that apparently should be prefixed with "our vision
is" or "we want to" - statements of intent. I don't get the impression that
the team actually knows how to build this thing.

Just out of curiosity: are product demos allowed at these meetings? If so, was
it done in this case? I think sometimes all it takes is one minute of actual
UI presentation to determine whether there is anything of substance behind the
idea or not.

~~~
nostromo
Yes, live product demos are common.

------
parfe
He thought you were making a wiki and you countered with "No no no! We're
making another threaded forum!"

How does rocketr differ from the news.yc interface we're all using to comment?
We're collaborating right now, are we not?

~~~
drupeek
It takes the same approach to productivity, that news.yc takes to news.

They are, in fact, very similar in that regard.

~~~
parfe
Thanks for the reply.

I still have no idea what your product does.

------
shimon
Can a YC-accepted startup confirm that it's possible to drive a PG interview?
In my experience we had a story and demo but these were immediately declined
in favor of PG-driven questions.

I'm trying to figure out if I could have driven -- perhaps I'm just not a good
enough pitchman -- or if this is just the YC interview style and rather than
perfecting a story you'd be better off steeling yourself for the inevitable
barrage of tough questions.

------
rdl
After reading that, I still have no idea what they're actually building, who
would use it, or why.

"Driving" is horrible advice, too -- even in sales. The best introduction to
sales is SPIN Selling by Neil Rackham; in short, "consultative" vs. "slimy
used salesman", where you work with the prospect to develop needs and then
show how your product addresses them.

In the 10 minute YC format, I wouldn't put more than 30 seconds into
developing needs (i.e. getting buy-in that a certain problem exists and is
worth solving), since I'd assume the YC people are both informed and generally
biased towards accepting that problems exist. If they don't believe a problem
exists, having a few great datapoints to justify your position is worthwhile
("medical transcription is a $10b/yr industry, and 0.1% of people are killed
by iatrogenic errors traceable to mis-transcription every year. We want to
make billions of dollars and save 50k lives per year with our direct neural
interface for doctors, and we're the team to do it because we've each earned
MDs and started 3 fortune 500 companies in the past 5 years...)

------
danielpal
I read your whole blog post and I still don't understand what you do. My
advice, when pg asked So what is Rocketr? You should have just answered the
question with a straigh, no BS answer.

PG: What is twilio? Twilio is an API for developers to build apps that use SMS
and Voice.

PG: What is Google? Google is a search engine.

PG: What is twitter? Twitter is a social platform were users can send small
messages and others can suscribe to them, so they can read those messages.

------
nopal
I don't like the part about using people's names.

I personally don't like it when someone I don't know uses my name
unnecessarily. It strikes me as odd and makes me think they're trying some
psych 101 tactic on me. It's completely counterproductive because it makes meh
mind jump off topic.

It's fine to show that you know someone's name (like at the end of a call),
but if you wouldn't throw a friend's name into a sentence, don't inject a
stranger's.

~~~
waterlesscloud
When anyone trying to sell me anything in any way uses my name, it throws up 4
or 5 extra layers of defense. At that point I know you're trying to manipulate
me, and you've just made your job infinitely harder.

Having said that, I've tried the trick myself on others and they seem to
respond very differently from the way that I do.

So I guess the point is to be very careful of this approach. It might help a
little with some people, but it might be a gigantic turnoff to others.

------
jakeonthemove
I still don't understand what Rocketr does :-).

It's like a shared notebook, right?

I've been using the OneNote WebApp lately for collaborative work (mainly
sharing ideas/notes) and while it's not perfect, it's better than Google docs
IMO.

Does Rocketr do something like this?

~~~
drupeek
Yes. It is just like a shared notebook.

------
pclark
I don't understand why people do not just speak like humans when it comes to
marketing. Succinct and explicit. It is as if people are embarrassed to speak
in simple terms and feel the need to big their product up with verbosity.

------
demachina
Focusing on your blog post more than your pitch, do you think it really adds
value to your message to use gratuitous language like "shit the bed" and
"f*cking". Dave McClure and Brad Feld have made it in to an art form but
they've already made it. It doesn't add any value to your message but does
distract from it. Your blog post suggests you haven't learned to carefully
focus the words you use in your message for maximum positive impact.

------
dsrguru
gbattle's comment in the article is gold, possibly the single most useful
thing I've ever read on making pitches. For those who didn't read it yet,
gbattle provides a strict template for wording one's mission statement in a
highly descriptive yet highly concise manner. The point isn't that your
optimal mission statement should use the exact wording of the template, but
rather that if you're unable to produce _a_ mission statement using the exact
wording of the template, either you don't understand your product well enough
to bring it to market or your product has serious issues that need to be
addressed immediately.

~~~
prawn
Thought the same and wish I could upvote you more. HN comment readers, if you
are rushed for time and don't think you'll bother even clicking through to the
blog entry, here is the best takeaway from either blog or gbattle's comment:

\--

...mission statement exercise that I stole from famed marketer/author Marty
Neumeier...

    
    
      o WHAT: (productname) is the ONLY_________
      o HOW: that _________________
      o WHO: for _______________________
      o WHERE: in ________________________
      o WHY: who ___________________________
      o WHEN: in an era of __________________.

------
Maro
I would ask how it's different than Evernote, and how it will compete with
Evernote.

~~~
drupeek
It does the social side of note-taking extremely well.

~~~
jpeterson
You keep saying this, but what does it mean? What is social note-taking,
exactly?

~~~
drupeek
Have you tried a shared task management app like Asana or Flow? Same
premise... applied to note-taking.

~~~
jc4p
I... I still don't get it. I haven't used any of those applications before but
I'm assuming it works by different people putting different things in a to-do
list and assigning them to members, etc. How does this work in a notebook? Do
you assign different part of notes to different people? Do you just come in
and work like a wiki without revision history (just removing what others have
written and writing your own things in its place)? What does your company
actually do?

------
sgdesign
Sorry if this is a dumb question, but can't you just do a demo of your product
during these interviews?

~~~
drupeek
Yes. You can. We did do a demo as well, though we got to it a little too late
in the interview and were caught between our first version of the app, and the
latest (which wasn't quite ready yet).

~~~
Maro
It'd be nice if the site had a screenshot at least. Anything to give a clue
how this could be different/better than Evernote.

------
eddmc
Here's a suggestion for your value proposition: Collaborative notetaking made
simple.

I actually started with a more complicated sentence [Real-time collaborative
editing made simple] but then I saw Helen's comment below your blog post and
think she has a more concise description.

I suggest you follow this up with a way (such as a story) of how a customer
uses your product. This is where you can use the phrases: notetaking,
realtime, and capturing ideas.

I understand why you're trying to steer people towards "notes" and
"notebooks". You might not like the fact that people are going to assume your
competition is [strike]Google[/strike] Apache Wave or Wikipedia (ok - I mean
wiki software) or Evernote, but you need to come up with good answers to those
questions and this is where you can focus on important features that you have.
It doesn't matter who you think your competition is - it matters what your
customers think your competition is. Keep in mind that people are familiar
with Wikipedia, and understand the idea of editing a wiki. Use this to your
advantage. You need to paint the picture of how this affects them by making it
real to them i.e. zero in on their pain point - they may not even know that
they have it.

Hope this helps

------
devgutt
I´d love to hear from PG whether what the OP thinks that is better, is really
better.

------
sopooneo
The phrase "...the questions of an impatient (if not, widely respected)
mind..." implies that Paul Graham may be neither patient nor widely respected.
Also, the comma in the parenthetical is unnecessary. I have never read any of
PG's code, but I've read his essays, and he would not make those mistakes.

Edit: While I stand by the above correction, my tone is obnoxious. It's a good
essay and I enjoyed it and learned from it.

~~~
drupeek
Good catch. It should have said ("yet", widely respected).

~~~
qntmfred
well now you just have an unnecessary comma AND unnecessary quotes

~~~
rayval
I think he is using quotemarks to highlight the revised wording, and that
these are not intended for final consumption.

------
jgrahamc
I think if I'd been PG I would have said "So, it's like Google Wave?"

------
CookWithMe
If you don't want PG to drive - then why are you applying for YC?

You don't trust him to ask the right questions for HIS understanding. Judging
from your blog post, you don't seem to trust his judgement in rejecting you -
the only reason you came up with (in your blog) is that your pitch/answers
were badly delivered. Maybe they were fine, but you have been rejected for
other reasons (e.g. UVP not strong enough, market crowded with strong
competition, customer segment too small, ...).

I guess the real value of getting into YC is to get great, personalized
advice. (You can get great, non-personalized advice from books or blogs). For
that, you need to let your advisers drive. If the need your input at a turn,
they will ask you - otherwise let them go wherever they want to. You need to
understand why they are driving the way they do. In the end, you can and
probably will take a few different turns than them (because you [should] have
more domain knowledge). But by understanding where they would want to drive,
you learn a lot from them.

You may ask yourself, why PG was driving the interview the way he was. Maybe
because he questions your UNIQUE VP (So what is Rocketr?), thinks there is
strong competition solving this problem already (So it’s like a wiki?), or
that your customer segment is too small (Who needs what you’re making?). Maybe
because of completely different reasons.

Comparing your two answers for "Who needs what you’re making?", it is the same
content, but wrapped differently. While there is definitively value in making
your message as clear as it can be, I think a good adviser will be able to get
to the content. And then give you the same advice, no matter how the content
was wrapped.

Think about it: Would you really want to take advice from someone who would
reject you with the first answer, but not with the second answer? I wouldn't.

Anyway, good write-up nevertheless. I still think it is worthwhile to try to
make a message as clear and easy to understand as possible.

------
drupeek
I have to say that this comment thread is far beyond what we expected when
publishing our post.

Our original intention was to start a discussion around honing your pitch,
telling your story - and to demonstrate how costly it can be when you don't do
that well. By no means do we feel that we are "there" yet, but at the time of
the post, we felt there was some progress from when we had interviewed.

Interestingly, this thread has now provided us with a tremendous amount of
additional value (for much less of a cost) which we intend on putting to use
in the coming weeks.

Thanks to all those who took the time to read the post, sit with it for a
moment, and then carefully and compassionately construct their feedback in an
honest and direct way.

We genuinely appreciate it.

------
robot
"Rocketr bridges two worlds that could not be further apart right now – how we
..."

This is also an entry that is trying to sound nice to the listener. Use
wording that doesn't try to look nice, only give facts straight. it will sound
more pro (because shows you only care and focus on facts) also you will get a
more candid discussion. (because your entry was candid in the first place,
without adding an artificial tone)

One of the VCs that I talked to had the harshest comments about my
presentation but his tone was so candid, it felt like he is the one that cared
the most, gives the best advice, and I also thought he was a really cool
person to know.

------
ekianjo
Interesting story. This is something I can relate to as I have seen in a
number of occasions people presenting new projects/products without being
clear about the end user benefit.

There's several ways to do it, but the "classical" one is to first talk about
WHO your users are, and WHAT problems or needs they are currently facing
without a reliable solution. Then, you bring your product, and you need to
explain HOW it will modify their condition and solve their problem. Then,
explain what your users will feel, what actual or perceived benefit they will
get through it.

It's the basis of Marketing: Framing, framing, framing.

------
macspoofing
Having read the amendment, I still don't know what the product is, or rather,
how it's different from something like Evernote.

------
perfunctory
> Organizations need this to drive innovation

The ability of a note-taking app to drive innovation is highly overrated.

------
clarky07
Still not sure if this helps me, but as others noted it sounds like Wave. If
it actually is, I'd pay for it today in a heartbeat. While wave didn't reach
the critical mass google wanted or needed, I suspect there are enough users
that a small startup could make a few bucks with it.

------
Tichy
I wonder if YC keeps statistics about coffee consumption. I can't imagine how
much coffee I would need to make it through so many interviews. Is there a
kickstarter for a coffee machine that keeps track already? Would be a fun
graph for any company...

------
grout
Rule of thumb: If any part of your pitch sounds like Microsoft marketing,
you're not ready.

------
slyrus
Your WWSHS version suffers from two major problems. First, it identifies
(arguably, muddily) a pain point while offering no solution. I need a robot
that does my dishes in a big way, but I doubt your startup has a product that
addresses that need. Second, you're suggesting that a VC needs your product as
a customer, not as an investor. What VC's really need is to make money for
their limited partners (PG is perhaps an exception here, but that's beside the
point). A gold-plated golf club cover that measures wind speed (oh and makes a
damn good cup of coffee on the side) might be needed by a particular VC, but
it says nothing about whether or not that's likely to be the basis of a
reasonable investment thesis.

What you describe sounds like a big hairy problem and you haven't even begun
to address how your product/offering/team are going to tackle the problem.

------
dgurney
I read that entire blog post and I still have no idea what the product does...

------
larrys
I like your idea and would like to know more about it. I'd consider angel
investing in it (and I'm not an angel investor currently throwing money at the
fan). If you are interested get in contact with me.

~~~
drupeek
Will do. Appreciate the interest.

------
ricardobeat
I'm sorry to interrupt this lively discussion, but I still have no idea what
Rocketr is. Could somebody _please_ explain? Is there a video, screenshots or
mock-ups somewhere?

------
mnl
Probably you should have said what exactly does your product do, which real
problems does it solve, and what is your USP. Just answer, leave 'drive' to
the one with the money.

------
dangrover
Great advice. I screwed up a PG interview the same way!

------
raheemm
This is one of the best post-portems of a YC interview. Thanks for being so
open. And also, solid advice!

~~~
alexro
I wouldn't call it a solid advice. Others on the thread have already noted
that the problem isn't really in not driving the conversation. It's how you
differentiate and make it easy to grasp what you do. I find both advices in
the end of OP blog post to be misleading.

------
millions
Not related to the article, but you have a very solid front end designer on
board. Beautiful front page.

~~~
drupeek
We actually have two of the best in Toronto. :)

------
derek1800
A great book to read in regards to this is: "Made to Stick"

------
engtech
has anyone used rocketr vs asana?

I've been using Asana for a 16 person team and enjoying the experience.

------
perfunctory
no matter how you prepare your “benefits” pitch it's hard to sell a wiki.

------
orph
How is this different from Hackpad (YCW12)?

------
alttab
Trello

------
maxcameron
Why are so many of the commentators entirely missing the point of @drupeek's
article? Folks - this isn't about screenshots, whether to blog or not,
grammar, or market segments. I know Andrew, and he's really not in need of
most of the advice being offered to him in this post.

His point is about pitching, breaking through the noise, and controlling the
frame while you have ten minutes with an type-A personality. We all need to
learn how to deal with this, and Andrew's making a valuable contribution. A
lot of Andrew's advice reminds me of a book called Pitch Anything - I highly
recommend you read it.

The book is mostly about two things: using stories to capture and excite the
most basic parts of the basic human brain, and controlling the frame of a
conversation _in order to_ make sure your story is heard by an audience which
is naturally hostile. I believe anyone who's pitching deals should take a
look.

In conclusion, please stop patronizing Andrew, and contribute something
meaningful to the conversation.

~~~
waterlesscloud
He's top of the page on HN, a great position from which to promote his
product.

It's pretty clear from the responses here that nothing in the post
communicates clearly what his product does, despite being about finding a
better way to do just that.

That's a shame, and there's a rapidly vanishing opportunity here to correct
that.

So the feedback he's getting here is the most valuable he's likely to ever
get.

~~~
corkill
After reading the post (and not understanding the product), I went to the
homepage and yep still don't get what it is or who it would be for.

