
How to get to YC interview - Insider's Guide to YC W13 Application - gleb
http://www.acunote.com/blog/2012/10/y-combinator-application-insiders-guide.html
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pg
This is actually fairly good advice. There are only a few things I'd disagree
with.

* You don't have to use 4-5th grade level English for our sakes. It might force you to explain things better though.

* When answering the question about the most impressive thing you've achieved, it's not necessary to "focus on things that can be useful in a startup." In fact that's a common mistake. If you won an Olympic gold medal and can also write hello world in Ruby, we want to hear about the former, not the latter.

* How you hacked some real-world system to your advantage is not a super important question. Probably not even in the top 10.

I don't know about the other YC partners, but the two most important questions
to me are what you've done in the past that's impressive, and why you chose
the idea you're working on.

The biggest mistake founders make when applying is to confuse us. Half the
time when I'm reading an application I'm thinking "I have no idea what this
person is even talking about." I suspect this often the writer's own confusion
showing through.

It's surprisingly hard to explain oneself. Even startups that we've accepted
and have spent months working with say things in draft Demo Day presentations
that make me ask "what does that even mean?"

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gleb
Thanks.

"things useful in a startup" does seem like misleading advice. Because people
applying don't yet know what's useful. So it's obvious to me that having won
an Olympic medal is super useful, but it's probably not obvious to the
applicant. Hmm, and "useful" is probably not quite the right word here ...
I'll try to cover this more in emails.

You comment above rates 6.5. Your writing style is very unusual though. It
remains easy to understand despite being somewhat complex linguistically. 6 is
about the maximum I can usually understand in a single pass. And after reading
a bunch of applications my abilities degenerate. Best direct response
copywriters consistently rate at 4.

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biscarch
Is this linguistic scale available somewhere?

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napoleond
gleb linked to a grader in the article. It probably uses one of the formulae
listed here: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Readability>

~~~
biscarch
Ah, thank you. Missed that when I was skimming.

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mitchellwfox
Thanks for going out on a limb and providing some additional insights here,
especially since it's clear PG and others in YC saw / reacted to your
thoughts.

As applicants, my co-founder and I have certainly striven to balance the kinds
of advice you lay out here ("Focus on things that can be useful in a startup"
and generally being "impressive") with also providing "human" responses that
demonstrate our personalities. Hopefully both sides shine through.

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e1ven
After the Application Process is over, I'd appreciate it if you'd collect your
emails and add them the blog.

I'm not planning to apply, but I always enjoy reading quality posts.

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prasoongupta
Rather than making a strategy around the first draft of my application,I just
went with the flow.Helped me pen down ideas better without boundaries and
further refinements were easy and effective.

