
Guide List for Startups Applying to Y Combinator - kevinwdavid
http://kevinwilliamdavid.com/blog/the-ultimate-guide-list-for-startups-applying-to-y-combinator/
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sillysaurus3
Whenever someone makes a system to select for the best, someone else will
figure out how to game it. Preparation past a certain point might actually do
more harm than good.

It's a very comprehensive list, and I don't want to imply it's bad to organize
such a list. I was just surprised at how much stuff has been written about
"how to impress YC." The goal is to make something people want, not to impress
YC.

Thank you for the list though. It's an awesome collection. I just realized how
negative I probably sounded, so I wanted to clarify that your time is very
much appreciated in organizing this. I was just wondering how much time YC
actually spends defending against people who are primarily trying to game YC
rather than trying to make a valuable startup. Maybe it's not even an issue.

~~~
amirmc
I haven't looked at all of it but I noticed that some of the content is from
YC itself, or Partners and alums. As such, I imagine it's the kind of advice
that YC might _want_ to have widely disseminated. It's not really gaming the
system if you're doing what they suggest (build product, talk to users, etc).

~~~
tkinom
Follow on the "build product" point, I love to see the list of actual product
demo video from YC company.

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AhtiK
I have no data to back it up but if YC interview setup is even slightly
inspired by the YC video guidelines [1] then being genuine is better than
having scripted answers for everything.

Of course there is a point for balance and being unprepared is not the way to
go.

[1] [http://ycombinator.com/video.html](http://ycombinator.com/video.html)

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matthewarkin
Yea, I and a couple friends interviewed for S13 (maybe it was S12), and while
preparing is definitely helpful there is no way you can have scripted answers
to everything. That assumes you know what they are going to ask (and chances
are if you know what they are going to ask, you didn't make something clear).
We did a couple practice interviews with YC alums and the questions they asked
ended up being quite different from what was actually asked in the room. To me
at least, the interview seemed much more like a discussion about our idea and
its merits and issues than what people may normally think an interview to be
(of a VC asking you intense questions and pulling apart every single hole in
your financial model).

On the other hand, maybe they saw three college freshman and decided to go
easy on us.

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krambs
Just have a great product (or idea), and be absolute domain experts. The rest
will take care of itself.

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kamikazi
Hi, I'm applying this batch.

Is there a way to print-preview my application to see how it'll look after
submission? I'm mainly concerned about some of my answers which look lengthy.
And does YC have bias against explanatory lengthy answers if they add
substance to the meat?

I've read somewhere that each partner gets only 2-mins to spend on an appln.
With a 1.5 minute video and two founder profiles (which they seemed to have
made out separately this time) how do they even skim through these apps?

Or is it the alumni who reads deep and based on their comments (say if we are
already pizza profitable, yes we are!) our app gets bumped up in priority
queue of partners?

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kevinwdavid
Do let me know of any other links from YC partners or Alumni that could be
useful for startups applying for Y Combinator.

~~~
ModernMech
I think you missed this one from Aptly, posted just last week:
[http://www.nancyhua.com/2014/10/08/successful-y-
combinator-s...](http://www.nancyhua.com/2014/10/08/successful-y-
combinator-s13-application/)

edit: Also, this site has a list of interview experiences of people who got
accepted and rejected: [http://ycuniverse.com/yc-applying-
interviewees](http://ycuniverse.com/yc-applying-interviewees)

In some ways reading about those who got rejected is a little more
informative.

~~~
kevinwdavid
Thanks will update now.I added ycuniverse link in other resources section
already!

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eatitraw
Tip: you can get advice posted on dead blogs(e.g. posterous) by using the
wayback machine: [http://archive.org/web/](http://archive.org/web/)

~~~
kevinwdavid
did u find any dead links from the list I posted ? Please let me know if you
find.I checked before posting each link .

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jndsn402
Great list. Thanks.

