
Reddit Founders' YC Application - ptn
http://alexisohanian.com/our-y-combinator-summer-05-application-what-w
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mikeryan
So I have to wonder if this application would have gotten anywhere if pg
hadn't personally met these guys previously?

ie. is this really a sample of a "winning" YC application?

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ig1
I imagine the quality of applicants to YC has gone up considerably in the last
five years, and many of the applicants who were selected then may well have
struggled to get through the current rounds.

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nandemo
> _We are going to build an infrastructure that will allow consumers to order
> food from their cell phones (via a text-interface, rather than voice), drive
> to the restaurant and pick up their order._

That sounds like a much more promising business than "a site where users
submit news and sites, vote them up and write comments about them". I don't
mean this is in a snarky way, I'm a reddit user too. Am I missing something?

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psawaya
This was like five years ago, before mobile internet was available to most
consumers. Also, writing mobile apps before the App Store was a real pain, and
involved dealing directly with carriers, I believe.

It was a good idea, just ahead of its time.

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ergo98
_This was like five years ago, before mobile internet was available to most
consumers. Also, writing mobile apps before the App Store was a real pain, and
involved dealing directly with carriers, I believe._

J2ME apps involved no carrier participation (though often you had to target
all of the profiles), and most devices, including standard Nokia feature
phones, could run it. Windows Mobile apps...well that was always completely
open and with little carrier control.

And of course...WAP. Largely forgotten now, but the Gopher-like WAP was usable
on pretty much every feature phone, optimized for limited displays and input
technologies. It was a giant dud for a variety of reasons, but it was always
an option back to the turn of the century. And you didn't need a data plan,
which remains the #1 impediment to the mobile revolution, though you did get
charged usurious rates for the packets you did use.

~~~
city41
But how many people really used these things? I consider myself pretty techy
and I can count on one hand the number of J2ME apps I've used (heck, I can use
my other hand to count the number of times I used them).

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wallflower
I like Steve's answer: "Steve: Ten years from now I hope that we would have
either sold the company for gazillions of dollars, or realized we could not do
so and tried to come up with something new."

The application content seems remarkably normal. Even the Restaurant idea.
Nothing stands out other than the 'Animal' question. Like, within the realm of
most of us at HN (even if the quantity of YC applications has raised the bar
since Summer 2005). Thanks for posting this.

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karzeem
PG, when you read this did you remember them as the guys who met you after
your talk in Cambridge?

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fbnt
I just realized that Alexis = Reddit founder = kn0thing = the author of this
-> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Isk88nT0sRY>

That is one of my favourite youtubes. Big kudos! I couldn't stop laughing the
first time I watched it. It's amazing how most of it still applies after ~5
years

~~~
kn0thing
The jig is up!

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pclark
It's interesting to see how the application form has evolved.

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ciscoriordan
They used to ask for your Slashdot username!

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ilovecomputers
Now what do they ask for?

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zck
From <http://news.ycombinator.com/w2011form> :

>For each founder, please list: YC username; ... personal url, github url,
facebook id, twitter id;...

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younata
"Sorry, the application deadline has passed."

Edit: Anyone have a copy of it?

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jackowayed
You can still get to the application form to apply late, but they seem to do
some session stuff making the direct link not work (which means you have to
acknowledge that you're applying late).

Anyway, go here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/apply>

Click "apply late". Click "Edit your application online" (number 3).

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piers
So how on earth did it get from that to what is currently reddit?

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kn0thing
When PG offered us a chance to be in YC, we agreed to hop off the train in CT
and grab the next one back to Boston to brainstorm with him about a new idea.
From that ~1hr conversation came the idea for reddit. PG summed it up well: we
were building a "front page of the web."

~~~
alexophile
Sounds like a great scene for the Social Network 2: The Upvoting.

~~~
ilovecomputers
Way ahead of you. I wrote the script after spending 30 min reading blog posts
that interview reddit founders. Than I realized the movie wasn't Hollywood
enough, so I added frat parties, cocaine, and made PG 30 years younger and
more eccentric and more of a ladies man.

I think I'm on to a blockbuster here. Does YCombinator invest in film
productions?

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kn0thing
Please let me be played by Christopher Walken.

~~~
eru
If you add a dance routine, he may even do it for free. At least he did so for
Weapon of Choice.

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jmtame
Made me laugh: "animals? were a freaking zoo!"

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tomjen3
this is actually pretty close to an already existing service in Denmark called
just-eat.dk, except it focuses mostly on fast-food, and you order over the
internet.

So pg missed the boat on this one. Fortunately I haven't seen this anywhere in
the us and it will take some times before these guys will branch out of the
country, if at all.

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mseebach
Just Eat is expanding pretty aggressively, currently in eight countries, UK is
the largest. <http://www.just-eat.com/>

~~~
ojilles
From personal experience (lived in 3 Just-eat.com "countries") I would say
Denmark is the biggest. In the cities, there's a really high coverage of
restaurants -- and not just fast-food either.

The problem for restaurants is pretty interesting, and reminds me of the
disintermediation RoundTable is doing in the US.

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JoeBracken
This supports that investors invest in the founders and not the idea. This
isn't the most compelling application/idea however the founders made an
impression and that got them a slot.

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wcarss
I actually have been planning to send an application in with this exact idea.
I came to the site today to check in case the next application round is open,
and to conceivably fill an application out with this information in it.

I'm not sure what to do, at this point. We still think this would be a success
but, good god.

Edit: In the opinion of anyone reading this; do you think it's a better idea
to put our application in as planned (using this exact idea...), or to try to
differentiate ourselves somehow?

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meterplech
I find the number of poeople who end up not working on the startup
interesting. We also saw that on a few of the other yc posted apps recently.
As a college senior I try to put myself in their shoes. I think a good
barometer for startup success could be how good the offers they are willing to
turn down to start it. If nothing else, the need to validate their decision
could add extra motivation

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callmeed
This is totally a service I've discussed building recently. With 3rd party
payment aggregation, you could totally take payment and dispurse funds to
restaurants fairly easily.

Could do native iOS/droid apps or even SMS ordering with twilio

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nutjob123
Interesting idea for the time. God aweful business plan though. I hope that
they had a thorough document with much more market reaserch before courting
investors.

