

Scoble talks with Paul Graham - akshat
http://scobleizer.com/2010/11/13/tea-with-the-guy-who-stole-a-big-fish-from-facebook/

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rriepe
Anyone else think it's interesting that he described the Y Combinator
application process as "holding a contest"?

I guess it fits the technical definition, but it sure makes it sound like PG
is drawing names from a hat.

~~~
Scobleizer
The New York Marathon is a contest. Contests are not necessarily lotteries. If
there are winners and losers it's definitely a contest. And with Y Combinator
there's usually about 30 "winners" and more than 1,000 "losers."

~~~
rriepe
Like I said, you're technically right. But nobody describes Harvard admissions
as some contest that they hold. YCombinator is a lot closer to that than the
New York Marathon.

~~~
Scobleizer
Heh. OK, I'll give you that. Language is such a funny thing.

~~~
tav
Oooh, Scoble is on HN. Welcome Scoble!

Is it just me or have the major bloggers taken an interest in HN recently? I
noticed that Dave Winer started engaging about two months ago and now Scoble.
Did something major happen to prompt this or is it just a general response to
the increasing levels of traffic that we send to the various blogs?

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olivolive
The worst YC interviews being the ones where people cannot explain what their
start-up is going to do is interesting. The same thing happens when talking
about past projects in technical interviews. The worst candidates cannot
clearly explain what the project was, or give specific details about their
work. I'm never sure if they are actually confused about it or just aren't
good at explaining, but either way it is not a good sign for how it would be
to work with them.

~~~
bambax
A useful follow-up question should have been "how are startups invited to do
an interview when they're not able to describe what they're doing in two
sentences?"

It does not seem possible that an application where the only description is
"we're improving the way people interact" gets an invitation; so, when the
interview is a little shallow (because of stress, etc.) why not start back
from the application?

Or maybe the interview is not about the idea, but about the ability of the
founders to communicate effectively...?

~~~
olivolive
That would have been a great follow-up question.

The application must have had a description of an idea that was good enough to
get the interview. Probably the interview starts by asking the team to explain
their plans in more detail. If after 5 minutes pg & friends don't have a
clearer picture than what they got from the application, then is the team
going to be able to explain the idea to customers (who are not going to give
them 5 whole minutes)? Or be ready to pitch VCs in a few months (which is even
more stressful)?

