

The F|R Interview: Y Combinator’s Paul Graham - kungfudoi
http://gigaom.com/2008/05/03/the-fr-interview-y-combinators-paul-graham/

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pg
The questions and answers have been edited so much that I often seem to be
saying something different than I actually did. So I posted my original
answers:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=180299>

I used their new questions when possible, but the original ones when they'd
changed so much that my answer would otherwise have been mysterious.

Edit: Problem fixed. They replaced the interview with the original questions
and answers.

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fleaflicker
_Can your model be replicated?_

YC's competitive advantage is their "brand", which existed before they funded
their first startup.

I'd bet a huge chunk of YC applicants read PG's essays long before they even
heard of YC. Applicants completely and wholeheartedly trust YC before they
fill out the application.

I would not have felt comfortable submitting the most intimate details of my
company (including financial) to another company but I revealed them to YC
without batting an eye.

~~~
ph0rque
Out of curiosity, how many times did you apply to YC? If more than once, were
any applications with something other than fleaflicker?

~~~
fleaflicker
Once. Fleaflicker is the only startup idea I've ever pursued.

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byrneseyeview
Perhaps I'm missing something, but: did they link to a page about doing
recursion in C++ to explain the concept of a Y Combinator?
(<http://www.cprogramming.com/tutorial/lesson16.html>) .

For better explanations, this is sort of from The Little Schemer:

<http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~sweirich/cse340/04/why_of_y.ps>

This is also good:

<http://www.dreamsongs.com/Files/WhyOfY.pdf>

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dennykmiu
"... but it is not our model that distinguishes us. It’s the people that make
the difference ..."

I don't know much about YC since I am of a very different demographic but I
would say the same thing about the people who comes to this discussion site
(YC News or Hacker News) which I discovered by accident six months ago. I bet
most people who keep coming back to YCN do so because of the quality of the
discussion (i.e., people) as well. And my observation is that many are coming
from all over the World, with very different startup experience, and obviously
of different age group (i.e., very few are YC candadates).

And I bet it would be difficult to replicate YCN for the same reason that it
would be difficult to replicate YC.

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ph0rque
is zecter (<http://www.zecter.com>) a misspelling?

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bigtoga
Nice - thanks for posting.

