
Inside the Y Combinator office - niico
http://areallybadidea.com/inside-the-y-combinator-office
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acangiano
I think part of PG's success in working with entrepreneurs is due to the fact
that he comes across as extremely approachable.

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zachcb
I always remember a tweet that he sent out:

<http://twitter.com/#!/paulg/status/29256073985>

So true.

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jayzee
It is a very good question that pg asked while just joking around something
that I guess all entrepreneurs should have an immediate answer to, _'Why
doesn't this already exist?'_

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prpon
It is a great question. However, I look at some of the YC funded
companies(including justin.tv) and I wonder what the answer would be?

Off the top of my mind, I can think of hipmunk,1000memories etc and would like
to know how the founders would answer.

It is a much more piercing question than _What are users forced to do today
when your product does not exist_.

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justin
Justin.tv (neither an online streaming live show of some guy's life, nor a
streaming platform for live video) didn't exist before we were funded, fyibtw.

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prpon
Justin, I totally agree that what you did with Justin.tv was novel and didn't
exist before. However, how would you have answered _Why doesn't it already
exist?_

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justin
Ah, sorry, reading comprehension fail.

Why didn't the platform exist pre-Justin.tv?

1) Bandwidth prices were much higher in 2007, and have plummeted in the past
few years, making the economics more attractive.

2) There were no good, stable streaming servers commercially available. Flash
streaming in FMS 2 was a joke (it would fail constantly) in 2007. Fast forward
a little while and you had Red5, FMS 3, and Wowza all with video streaming to
a Flash client.

3) Video advertising market grew significantly starting around 2007, providing
a monetization model.

Hope that explains it!

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Johngibb
Could you really have provided these answers back when you were at the
interview stage of getting funding? These all seem accurate in hindsight, but
the kind of things you never would have known up front...

Edit: This isn't meant to be critical; I'm just curious how you would have
answered back in a 2k7 interview?

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justin
Doubtful. We didn't even have the idea of the platform when we came up with
Justin.tv. Our pitch was more along the lines of "Here's something we're
passionate about that is cool" -- PG believes in funding people and believed
in funding us. We figured the rest out as we went along.

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jl
Boy, it surprised me how much like a real interview that seemed!

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DanielN
This is pretty off topic but it interested me so I thought I would share:

This video more than anything got me interested in socialcam (of which I had
never heard of before), so I did a little reading and decided to sign up for
updates to the product. After I signed up the page refreshed and informed me I
was ranked last (4000 and something) on their list because I hadn't gotten
anyone else to sign up yet. Instantly my competitive juices started flowing
and I wanted to get higher up on the list.

It just struck me as a really original interesting way to encourage sign ups
(presumably for eventual beta testers).

(also you can help my ranking if you click here:
<http://socialcam.com/?referred_by=BEA3CDhw> )

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tomjen3
I don't know why you can't see it, but frankly they are playing you for a
fool. What they do is a classic pyramid scam, albeit with signups instead of
money.

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jessedhillon
He's not losing anything, except a few minutes' time to sign up, so how is he
being made a fool? For being excited enough about their product to want to be
invited to use it? There's nothing foolish in that, especially if they have an
interesting product.

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tomjen3
He is being used as a tool to do their marketing for free.

I don't know about you, but I find it extremely tacky to use friendships to
sell stuff (and he is selling your time and attention to that company for an
invite) even if it doesn't involve money directly.

And that causes me to lower my opinion of both him and (especially) the
company. Use sleazily marketing => you are a sleazy company.

But hey thats apparently just me.

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edanm
'[...] I find it extremely tacky to use friendships to sell stuff '

Why? Most of the good products I hear about, I hear through friends. Much
better than "traditional" advertising.

I'm guessing if the product itself wasn't any good, no one would bother
"playing the game". The game is only there to encourage people even more.

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oldstrangers
This would make for some good mental preparation and visualization. Sit back
and stare at PG asking you questions over and over again and perhaps it'll
help reduce your nervousness come time to interview.

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rokhayakebe
Get the invitation first, then worry about the rest.

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oldstrangers
I assumed my advice would be heeded by those with invitations. Didn't think I
needed to spell that part out.

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stevefarnworth
I know it's a short, light-hearted video, but that's what I imagine the YC
interview to be like for some reason. Probing questions, asked politely and
framed in a way to see what _your_ response is, not just ticking questions and
answers off of your mental tick sheet.

I'm based in the UK and am a single-founder, but this sort of thing just makes
YC look like an even more compelling experience - all for an under 2 minute,
friendly video. Good job!

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jmtame
socialcam holds the record for fastest interview ;)

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tjmc
Just a heads up - the Blue Coat web filtering service has classified
socialcam.com as "pornography"

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lfx
Maybe some guys who already had interviews with PG, could tell more questions?

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Johngibb
Really, I'd say this is really accurate. Any further questions grew
organically from answers to the questions in this video.

For us, they made a big point of knowing that our market really existed, even
though no company was targeting it yet. In fact, our lack of solid evidence of
the market is the main reason for our rejection (W11). However, maybe this was
only such a large focus because it was our biggest weakness, and other
interviews focus on other things.

Keep in mind that the interview is only 15 minutes, so there don't need to be
many questions...

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reason
You've got a few grammatical mistakes in there. Anyway, very cool video!

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justin
Thanks, I fixed them. We've been working late :)

