
Lollipuff's Y Combinator Experience - beambot
https://www.lollipuff.com/blog/102/lollipuffs-ycombinator-experience
======
tptacek
It's interesting to me how a simple-seeming bit of technical infrastructure (a
blog -> auction site for a specific vertical) can become a vector for
delivering and monetizing an expert service like fashion authentication. There
are lots of "little" expert services like that which aren't well served with
the professional services model, but are maybe hugely valuable when plugged
into some kind of e-commerce or online fulfillment service.

Also: is this the first demo day video that's ever been published by YC? Wow
are those short. What does a "good" audience reaction look like? Can you get a
read on the room while it happens?

~~~
randall
I attended every demo day session (and the practice sessions before demo day)
for about 2 years* and the real difference between the audiences depended on
time of day. I think a "good" presentation had a lot of people writing things
down, vs BlackBerry / iPhone reading.

Also, back when there were more sessions and they happened at YC HQ, the time
of day played a big difference. The later sessions (I think they started at
4?) had people actually laughing at jokes, whereas the earlier sessions some
of the exact same jokes, seemingly delivered the exact same way missed really
badly. (I remember people actually cheering for Hipmunk's presentation. It
felt like a home run.)

I don't know what it meant for follow up, but two notable presentations at
least generated some memorable notes that I spied over people's shoulders.
Jason Shen from Ridejoy did a cartwheel on the way in (he's a former
collegiate gymnast) and I saw a lot of people drawing stick figures
cartwheeling. Also, during SiftScience's presentation, one of the founders
punctuated his presentation by saying something to the effect of "We're going
to stop people from fucking with our customers." A lot of people wrote down
"fuck" next to their name :)

I don't know what happened to most of the companies post demo day with their
applicable raises.

*: I did behind the scenes work with YC as the audio / video guy for a bit, before they went to the CH museum.

------
clicks
I wonder how the YC guys feel about the abundance of "how to get accepted to
YC" articles. Just as you can prepare for the SAT you can now prepare for the
YC tests -- there are a lot of examples of accepted applications, videos,
thoughts from founders, etc. just like this very submission. The point is,
there is probably less differentiation in the new pool of applicants in terms
of their submission applications which makes YC's job more difficult. My
theory is that now they're going to place more importantance on filters like
past work experience (I've noticed a considerable amount of acceptees having
ex-Googlers in their teams) and academic pedigree (I've noticed a high amount
of acceptees having big-name school people in their teams).

~~~
beambot
I share your concerns -- I don't want YC to get inundated with masquerading
applications.

However, while you can prepare for the SAT, those scores alone are
insufficient to guarantee you admission into top universities. You need
something unique. In the case of YC, this will be either team, traction, or
idea. It's pretty hard to fake a history of making (or pedigree), numbers, and
wild ideas.

~~~
clicks
(Just to be clear, I wasn't knocking on you guys for writing this article -- I
enjoyed reading/watching your writing and submission video, thanks!)

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sfpirate
Outside the Bay Area, few people know about YC. An article in 2006 by pg made
me plan for 3 years to finally move to SF in 2009 (I had googled "how to start
a company"). There are a lot of ambitious people out there that don't even
realize people here compete for not having a job. Articles like this can
change lives if they can raise that awareness through the right channels.
Thanks for taking the time to publish it.

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saturdayplace
Having no qualifications whatsoever about such things, I'd fund them. To me,
this application (including video) make Lollipuff's success seem inevitable.
Everything is stated just so matter-of-factly, but without bravado. They've
found a market with customers, and have a product that appears to serve their
needs, and to an outsider, it appears that the business will happen whether or
not YC (or Silicon Valley at large) gets on board.

I don't know if the YC reviewer(s) for Lollipuff's application is hanging
around, but it'd be interesting to hear if their reaction matches mine.

~~~
pnathan
Agreed. Success breeds success. This is an attempt to pivot from an existing
ad-hoc business into an accelerated & more formalized business. There are
customers, there is money coming in, the brand (CEO) is known in the field.

IMO, the only question is if it can _grow_ beyond the existing niche, and how
far it can grow.

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mbesto
To the founders - feel free to get in touch (contact details in profile). I
work with global luxury brands in the UK (Manolo Blahnik, Burberry, etc)

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wf
OT: Just a heads up to the lollipuff team if you're around, the meet the co-
founders blog you link to in the OP shows up like this for me in FF 23 on
Windows 7. [http://i.imgur.com/db4Lr48.png](http://i.imgur.com/db4Lr48.png)

Great insight, though! I really like lollipuffs concept, I would also have
funded you guys; I love it when the perfect solution for a pain point takes
off.

~~~
beambot
Thank you so very, very much! I fixed it (I believe).

~~~
wf
Yes, looks great!

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beambot
Lollipuff was in the Winter 2013 batch. We also released our YC application
materials -- see the HN link.

We recently helped with a VentureBeat article about "writing a winning YC
application" [1]... I personally believe the most useful thing (besides "being
really good already") is to look at other successful applications. Most of the
applications found online are from already-successful companies (eg. DropBox
and Reddit), so we figured a more-recent, rising company should share theirs
too. This might be useful to folks who aren't doing "pure tech" startups -- as
Lollipuff is a women's fashion company.

[1] [http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/20/how-to-write-a-winning-
y-c...](http://venturebeat.com/2013/09/20/how-to-write-a-winning-y-combinator-
application/)

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wellboy
Not trying to be a downer, but how are you an interesting company to invest in
when your entire opportunity, if you take 100% of the market, is $5M/year?

~~~
beambot
Our MVP launched with just 3 of the hottest brands, which had that level of
transactions on eBay alone. Across all women's fashion brands and all designer
resale, there are roughly $100B in transactions per year (see the Demo Day
video at the link). Start small and grow outward. ;)

~~~
7Figures2Commas
Is there a reason you want/need to be the commerce platform on which these
resale transactions take place?

Two-sided markets are generally more difficult to crack, and displacing eBay
in particular is going to be challenging. I'd expect your cost of customer
acquisition to grow quite significantly once you've tapped out the low hanging
fruit.

If your core competency is your ability to detect counterfeits, however, maybe
there's an opportunity to convince legitimate vendors to pay you to certify
that their items are authentic, something that they then promote to
prospective customers in all of their sales channels. You'd probably need to
offer a buyer money-back guarantee for this model to be viable, but if you did
this, you could try tying your pricing to the vendor's sales price (i.e. it
costs more to certify a handbag being resold for $750 than a dress being
resold for $250).

If you're wedded to the idea of running your own commerce platform, you could
provide vendors that certify their goods with you a free listing on your site,
and reimburse the certification fee from the sales commission if their product
sells through you. By getting listings this way, you can avoid some of the
questions you're bound to be asked if your only proposition is that you're an
eBay competitor (think "How many sales do you generate a month?"). And you
avoid having to grow your buyer base to make money.

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pstack
I'm really surprised by the "auction" foundation. That seems like a really
dated internet fad, at this point.

I built and ran a large (not eBay large, but 100k+ members and maybe $6m in
transactions) niche auction site and community for about a dozen years and I
recognized that interest in the whole "auction" thing was dying out about the
same time eBay probably did. Only difference is eBay had the resources and
interest in trying to pivot (something they're still trying to do) and I was
ready to move on to something else _entirely_.

If you can still find just the right niche, there's probably an avenue, but
for the most part, I think there's an uphill challenge against the bias of
most users against auctions (what with so many other cheap outlets that have
usurped everything short of collectables).

Will be really curious to see how this plays out, in and after 2013.

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jcampbell1
It is great to see a YC fashion/e-commerce company getting traction. High
fashion authentication makes a ton of sense, and is definitely a valuable
service. The sealed auction model is interesting. It is a good model, but
misses on all the engagement that real bidding offers. I think it is a good
fit for them. Standard auctions are full of tasteless bullshit such as
sniping.

Standard auctions offer the best available price. It would be interesting to
see if they A/B test vickrey auctions where the price paid is the second
highest bid. That prevents buyer's remorse, and could generate higher prices
as people would bid higher without worrying about doing something "stupid".

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apu
I'm surprised to notice (perhaps it's always been there) that the YC app asks
for facebook and twitter ids. Are these just additional contact mechanisms, or
used for anything more?

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hnriot
I'd fund the cat.

~~~
bebefuzz
The cat says, "oh really? how much and at what cap?"

