
Show HN: iPG - YC Interview Simulator - jamescun
http://www.jamescun.com/ycs12/
======
qdot76367
To prepare for demo day, I've decided to use iPG with M-x doctor (she's from a
small, not widely known country that has some native naming eccentricites and
is in constant war with their two lettered neighbors), the CEO at my new
health startup Psychologr. Obviously I'm the technical cofounder and she's the
ideas person, so I let her do the talking.

\-----

iPG: Who might become competitors?

M-x doctor: What do you think?

iPG: How big an opportunity is there?

M-x doctor: I'll ask the questions, if you don't mind!

iPG: What do you understand that others don't?

M-x doctor: Can you elaborate on that?

iPG: Why will you succeed?

M-x doctor: I could ask the same thing myself.

iPG: Who would be your next hire?

M-x doctor: I would appreciate it if you would allow me to do the questioning.

iPG: Would you relocate to Silicon Valley?

M-x doctor: Why do you say?

iPG: How much does customer acquisition cost?

M-x doctor: I have asked myself that question many times.

\-----

So, the tactic seems to be stay firm, and let him know who's asking the
questions.

Can we have our money now?

~~~
davidw
If someone's looking for a fun, kind of silly weekend hack, I've always
thought it would be lots of fun to feed PG's essays and comments into Megahal
or something like that that is more advanced than M-x doctor.

~~~
KaeseEs
Incidentally, Hailo is in pretty much every way a much better Megahal (esp.
when your text corpus is large):
<http://search.cpan.org/~hinrik/Hailo-0.70/bin/hailo>

------
michael_nielsen
The person who is perhaps the brightest [1] person I've ever met would - if
this is a fair simulation - be rejected by YC. When answering a question he
often won't even have begun to reply after fifteen seconds. I wonder how often
YC rejects people such as that.

[1] I mean this in a particular way: capable of extraordinarily deep insight
very, very rapidly. Just not 15 seconds rapid.

~~~
zck
This page really has a different lesson than what you think. The lesson is not
"respond quickly"; that only shows that you can think on your feet. While
that's useful, you don't build a business by thinking on your feet. The real
lesson is that you should have _already answered_ these questions. Before you
try to get funding, you should already know who's going to use your product.
Before you launch, you should know who your competitors are. Before talking to
anyone you don't know about your product, you should be able to describe your
product quickly.

You're trying to convince YC to invest in you. Why would anyone want to give
money to founders who haven't thought about these questions?

~~~
lusr
Right - none of these questions are difficult to answer quickly and concisely
_or_ to prepare for - _if_ you have a valid business model. Applying for
investment without a business model you understand through and through is like
applying for a job without a resume.

~~~
sparknlaunch12
So do you disagree with the questions or technique/method?

If the questions were better or more relevant would it help you?

what are your feelings on this method of reversal?

~~~
lusr
Oh no don't get me wrong - the site is great and I expect it'd be very useful
for _any_ entrepreneur, whether seeking investment or not! I'm commenting on
the GP's post, which implies some people aren't capable of answering questions
this quickly because they have a different mental processing style.

The reality is they need to realise they're approaching people with little
free time who have to quickly sort the wheat from the chaff, and asking basic,
targeted business model questions like these are a fair way of doing so.

These types of questions aren't meant to make any sort of statement about the
person's worth; they are there to determine (a) if the person, at this point
in time, is _investable_ as an _entrepreneur_ at the most basic level, i.e. do
they understand the basics of business, and have they done their homework with
respect to their business; and (b) whether the results of that homework
suggest a _business_ potentially worth investing in.

A person with positive scores on both these accounts would be able to easily
answer these questions in the time allocated. For the remainder, either they
don't have a viable business model (fail at (b)), or they aren't familiar with
business (fail at (a)), and that's why the site is valuable -- it gives the
latter experience validating their business model before the pitch, which may
otherwise cost them a missed investment opportunity.

(That being said I didn't like some questions: "Tell us something surprising
you have done" or "What's the funniest thing that has happened to you." Have a
few beers with me and _all_ kinds of stories will come out, but I don't have a
reverse lookup for my experiences -- my mind goes blank when I'm asked
questions like these! That being said, it's good to be aware they might be
asked, and to at least prepare in some way to respond.)

~~~
sparknlaunch12
Okay. Thanks for the clarity.

So the actual rehearsal process would be beneficial? Maybe without a timer?

~~~
lusr
Yes, and keep the timer! It's a critical aspect of evaluating whether your
answer is solid.

------
mceachen
When talking to PG and the other YC partners, be substantive, and get straight
to the point.

DO NOT BEAT AROUND THE BUSH. Do not hem and haw. "Uhm"s and "uh"s don't lend
an aura of intelligence.

Use precise and concise language. You aren't pitching a VC that will ask you
what your "secret sauce" is.

He talks quickly, and so do the other YC partners. Try to match their tempo
(as you should when talking to anyone).

~~~
CesareBorgia
Does anybody else find it ironic that pg uses an abnormally high amount of
filler words himself?

~~~
mceachen
Not in person, and not during the YC dinners.

~~~
ntoshev
So these seem to be low stress situations for him, unlike public speaking. YC
interviews are obviously high-stress for the founders though.

~~~
bgilroy26
Having a well thought through business plan is the main thing, the filler
words are a secondary issue.

Obviously someone with a solid business plan who speaks cautiously is in a
much better position than a smooth talker who is selling vaporware. That's the
value of the YC group, they have their priorities determined and they don't
get taken for a ride.

------
Animus7
Heh, I thought my team was the only one that made this kind of thing before
interviews. This one's got much better content than ours though; thanks for
sharing!

For those like me who are curious what the RNG missed, here's the data list:

<http://www.jamescun.com/ycs12/data.js>

~~~
sparknlaunch12
Why do your team use this approach?

Does it improve your performance? If yes, why and how? What do you do better
in the actual pitch?

------
OpenAmazing
Are you guys affiliated with <http://www.backblaze.com>?

If not, you should change your logo and website design fast. Possibly your
name too.

~~~
jamescun
We are not affiliated in any way. We have come across them before and we feel
the name and market is different enough to not be a problem. As for the logo,
it's kinda difficult to make a fire (as in, blaze) look different.

Our name story is that, our original project name was just "stack" but
stack.com was taken. After struggling for a new name, a historic chimney stack
local to us caught fire and the newspaper headline was "Stack Blaze".

~~~
benohear
IANAL, but I have had to deal with trademark issues and as I understand
trademark law you would be considered to be in exactly the same market. The
difference between, say, pet food and hosting would be considered relevant,
not between storing backups and storing PHP websites.

Also, regardless of whether you did so or not, the logo _really_ does look
like a slightly masked copy. Do an image search for "blaze" to see a number of
possible treatments on that theme that would not result in such a resemblance.

I am less sure about the name, but the difference is swapping "b" with "st",
so I wouldn't be surprised if that would also be considered trademark
infringement.

Anyway, it depends how you understand "not a problem"; You might feel morally
justified, but I believe that legally you are on pretty shaky grounds. On the
other hand, Backblaze would have to kick up a fuss for that to actually
matter.

------
rooshdi
Holy macro! This is like a never-ending interrogation! But one hell of a good
one, nonetheless. Great piece of stuff James and iPG! Should help out a ton of
interviewees.

------
mindcrime
Given the nature of this conversation, I'll throw in a gratuitous plug for
"pgbot" a half-baked "AIML implementation of pg" that I cooked up one night in
response to something somebody said here (or on #startups).

<https://github.com/mindcrime/pgbot>

It might be fun to get some other people to fork that and start making it
"smarter."

------
martin_k
Press N

~~~
jamescun
Wow, you found that fast.

~~~
jerf
Are you suggesting that this is in some sense the answer to all the questions?

It probably would at least have the distinction of being an answer that
pg/YCombinator had never heard before...

 _Where's the rocket science here?_

~~~
evincarofautumn
He applies next round and gets an interview. He surreptitiously brings a boom
box. When asked what it’s for, he says “please, hold your questions till the
end of the interview”. After all of the questions have been asked and
answered, he slams play and rips off his shirt to reveal that he’s been
covered in strawberry Pop-Tarts and rainbow Spandex the whole time.

Verily, this is the hacker equivalent of professionalism.

------
elliottcarlson
Are questions such as "How will you make money?" answerable in 15 seconds? I
tried it with my personal concept, and even with trying to remain concise and
to the point, I can't answer that question without it becoming a string of
words that would not pass as a sentence.

~~~
ebiester
<http://book.personalmba.com/12-standard-forms-of-value/>

It is likely you fall into one or more of these.

"We're depending on user aggregation to drive advertising revenues initially,
but hope to move to move into white label SaaS as we develop our platform."
would be a good 15 second answer.

------
sparknlaunch12
Wow! This is exactly what we have been playing around with. The tool looks
really good.

Is this something you are looking to take further?

What has been the feedback in terms of usefulness? Do users this this type of
mock interview works?

Have you done any research or analysis on the effectiveness?

~~~
ColinHayhurst
Thanks. We put it together in a couple of hours for our own purposes and a bit
if fun. A YC alumni suggested we put it out here. It's great that it's helping
other folks.

------
ColinHayhurst
Take a look at this great list of questions too by Francis Dierick who created
an iPhone app too. <http://fr.anc.is/2012/01/21/top-100-startup-questions/>

~~~
c1sc0
Thanks for sharing this Colin, I originally wanted to do something more fun &
pg-like for the iPhone as well but I decided against doing fancy stuff in
favor of actually prepping for the interview. I actually only published the
app to the AppStore quite a bit after our interview.

------
tzury
The speed of question makes it more like RPG than iPG

(*) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket-propelled_grenade>

------
CompiledCode
Clever and fun!

Please fix the misspelling though... "quick, consice [sic] answers"

------
makeee
Love it! It helped me a lot before my interview ;)

~~~
ColinHayhurst
Great to know it helped you today. Best of luck.

------
tonyjwang
Any way to make this a generic tool? Would love to be able to use this with my
own questions for other purposes.

~~~
jamescun
It's completely static and javascript, so just download all the files
(index.html, functions.js, data.js and style.css) and edit the array in
data.js.

~~~
sparknlaunch12
Thanks for sharing!

------
metaphorical
This is both stimulating and depressing at the same time. As if there's only
one correct way of thinking and communicating. Why conform yourself to someone
else's nature? You're not Steve Jobs, and you're not pg, you are yourself --
forget the pro-tip and be yourself.

~~~
lusr
You can be yourself after you've spent 3 to 5 minutes getting through these
questions qualifying yourself as somebody worthwhile getting to know better.
Investors are busy people with thousands of proposals crossing their paths
every year - they need a quick way to disqualify the proposals that haven't
been thought through properly.

------
charlieok
...however, there is also a “separate application track for groups that don't
have an idea yet”

<http://ycombinator.com/noidea.html>

------
freshfey
I don't like the timing effect, but I believe that those are super important
questions to ask yourself before attending an interview (be it for/at YC or
somewhere else)

------
DTrejo
Record the person's response!

Would be great if you could replay each of your responses at the end to see if
you sounded horrible (or good).

------
xanadohnt
I have some good engrish for you today: What resistance will they have to
trying you and how will you overcome it?

------
aorshan
This is pretty clever. Well done guys.

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thenonsequitur
Well done.

I'd like to see some more pro tips!

------
reso
We're using this right now to prepare for our interview. Nice work guys!

------
pbreit
Seems to require a keyboard so not usable on iPad.

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amarcus
Link seems to be down. Anyone got a mirror?

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aoprisan
it would be nice if sample answers could be recorded and votes recorded,
pushing higher score responses up..

------
jansen
Love it, good luck guys!

------
dr_win
Brilliant!

