

YC interview advice - apwalker
http://sam.bluwiki.com/blog/2009/04/advice-for-yc-interviewees_12.php

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pg
"the answer probably shouldn't involve ads"

Actually we're not as down on ads as other investors seem to be. We liked
Heyzap, and they make money from ads.

"The last thing you want to do is argue with the partners."

That's an overstatement. We don't like people who supinely agree with
everything we say. That's as bad as refusing to listen to anything we say.
What we look for is a middle ground: people who respond intelligently to our
suggestions.

Some of the suggestions we make are stupid. If people agree with those, we
conclude they're stupid. (We don't do this on purpose to catch people. We just
don't understand very well yet what each group is doing.)

~~~
palish
What do you do when you realize you invested in a stupid team?

~~~
pg
I don't think it's happened yet. Between the application form and a 10 minute
conversation, we can usually tell roughly how smart people are. And being
super smart is not that critical anyway. Determination is more important.

The real problem is when a team turns out not to have enough determination to
see a startup through. Startups are hard; most people wouldn't be determined
enough.

When a group we've funded seems demoralized, we try to encourage them. It
takes a few iterations to tell whether a group is just suffering from a
temporary setback, or whether they intrinsically lack energy. If by Demo Day
they've gotten nowhere, we start to think it may be the latter. But we're
naturally optimistic. Usually groups give up before we give up on them.

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danielrhodes
The YC interview is so quick you are going to be out of there before you
realize it has started. In other words, be on top of your game. Anticipate
questions, especially the ones that you don't want to answer about the
weakness of your product (they will come up). Don't be defensive. Have a demo
ready to go when you walk in the room which gives a quick and good first
impression. It's not going to be a lot of idle chit-chat, they are going to
dive right in.

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sho
_"It has become clear that in this market you should have revenue by demo day.
Ideally you're ramen profitable. It'll be much harder to find investment if
you're not."_

If you're "ramen profitable", why do you need a VC at all? You're self-
sufficient by that time, you have proven your product - you should be talking
to a bank, not YC.

~~~
Sam_Odio
You're partially right, although this is outside the scope of my article. The
article is simply stating that it's easier to find _any_ investment (debt or
equity) when you have revenue. Ironically, its easiest raise money when you're
already making it.

Regardless, there are still good reasons to seek VC investment when
profitable. Several YC startups are going down that path. A bank might lend
you $10-50k if your net is $2k/month while a VC might invest $1-5 million.

~~~
sho
_"Regardless, there are still good reasons to seek VC investment when
profitable."_

Oh I agree of course. VC will be judging you on future potential; a bank will
be judging on current performance. If you need a million dollars to _really_
scale up, you need the VC. Facebook or Youtube come to mind, they could have
never achived what they have without VC.

But if you don't need the huge cash injection, if you just need to
incrementally ramp things up slowly, then VC is not your only option; that's
all I'm trying to say.

~~~
medianama
I am not convinced that Facebook needed all the money that they've spent to
reach this level.

What do they need money for?

~~~
sho
Early on they needed money, and a lot of it, for servers. They were highly
cashflow negative and realistically only VC or outright acquisition could have
paid for it.

A case could certainly be made that they took too much money, and I would
agree with that, but they did need money from somewhere.

