

Insights on the Y Combinator interview - nateberkopec
http://rtabl.es/ycombinator

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pg
Anyone curious what interviews are like can get an idea from the office hours
we've done at TC Disrupt and Startup School. Interviews are similar, but with
more questions (partly because there are more of us asking them, and partly
because we need to arrive at a decision, not just have a conversation).

[http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/25/absolute-must-watch-
office-...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/25/absolute-must-watch-office-hours-
with-paul-graham-at-tc-disrupt/)

[http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/12/tc-disrupt-office-hours-
wit...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/12/tc-disrupt-office-hours-with-yc-
partners-paul-graham-and-harj-taggar/)

<http://www.justin.tv/startupschool/b/298808297>

~~~
collint
Almost everybody seems to miss the mark in the "What do you do?" type
questions. What do you think it is about these interviews that prevents them
from describing it in the way you want them to? Or do you try to make
everybody be more specific than their first pitch?

~~~
pg
It's a big problem. We sometimes spend half the interview trying to figure out
what the startup is doing. A lot of people are bad at explaining this type of
thing. In fact I'd say most are.

The solution is to practice beforehand, preferably on people who will tell you
candidly when you haven't yet explained yourself clearly.

The test of how well you've explained a startup idea is how accurately the
listener could reproduce it from your description.

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brandonb
I originally tried to post this on the roundtable, but was discouraged by the
requirement to "apply for membership". I'd love it if the roundtable just let
anybody post, but allowed the moderator to filter/sort/organize the content.

By far the most useful thing we did to prepare for the interview was to build
a FAQ. The FAQ had everything we thought the partners might ask. For example:
* How will we get users? * How do we know users have the problem we're
solving? * What's the rocket science? Why can't other people do the same
thing? * What existing services exist, and what specifically will make our
product better than each of them?

For each question, we tried to have as many concrete details as possible,
e.g., statistics, research papers, specific advantages we had over each
competitor.

The other really useful thing was to spend about $50 to run a small
AdWords/Facebook campaign, and measure the click-through-rate we got with
various keywords and ad texts. This let us figure out, 1) did users actually
want what we were building?, 2) how many users total could we drive to our
site per day?, 3) what is the average cost per user would be? If you're
building something that requires getting lots of users, I'd recommend doing
this. Just seeing the most popular keywords that are relevant to your product
will give you a much clearer idea of what people want.

~~~
ha470
Ah, perhaps "Apply for membership" is a misnomer. It's just a way for people
who want to host their own to reach out to us. Anyone can comment on the
Roundtable itself. We'd _love_ to see your comments up there.

~~~
brandonb
I may just be really tired and missing something obvious, but I see how to
comment on other people's posts, but not how to post to the main roundtable.
There's a message at the bottom of the page saying "You are not a participant
in this roundtable," is that expected?

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rmorrison
Since it's only ten minutes, it's pretty hectic as the YC partners try to
understand the company/team. Because of the time constraint, they interrupt
you, and they even interrupt each other.

It's on the interviewee to get his or her key points across. Go in knowing the
three or four main bullet points you want to convey, and make sure you get
them out.

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24pfilms
Great work on the site BTW.

~~~
josh_miller
thanks! we welcome any and all constructive criticism on UX/UI

~~~
joeblossom
Maybe this is just me, but it would be nice to have an indicator (perhaps
changing the color of the text box) to show who's leading the
conversation/asking the questions. I know not all of the roundtables will be
in this format, but having it be an option when starting the roundtable may
not be bad.

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josh_miller
if any past interviewees or YC founders want to contribute please do so in the
comments section of each post!

~~~
prayag
I tried to comment as a fellow YC S11 alumnus but got a message saying "You
are not a participant in this round table." It seems like an invite only
thing. Anyways, so I'll put in my comments here.

Before we interviewed we had been pitching to a lot of people including other
incubators etc. This was the only preparation we made. The questions that YC
partners asked were similar albeit more pointed and direct. We showed them a
demo that we had created and basically told them what we do. There were a lot
of questions about the business. A lot of them we've heard and answered
before. Some were new and we were honest with our answers (more or less). I
think what we did well was the convey the passion we had for the business we
were building and I distinctly remember our interview ending with my co-
founder's 30 second monologue about how we really aspire to help people.

I think 10 mins is just enough for people to understand what you are doing and
a little bit of how you are doing it. No one should waste time in actually
trying to convince the partners that you bigger than you actually are. You
might be able to pull it off but it requires a whole lot of BS-ing skills.

