
Lessons from a Failed YC Pitch with Paul Graham - josephwegner
https://keen.io/blog/116400439081/lessons-from-a-failed-yc-pitch-with-paul-graham
======
rboyd
I think Kyle's pitch could have been fine and he could have avoided 2 years of
feeling shamed if pg was a bit more encouraging and patient during the
delivery. A little more "yes, and" less "but, why not". Give the founder the
benefit of the doubt they might be starting with some idea. If they really do
have nothing it's going to be apparent, you don't need to try to sniff it out
in the first 15 seconds.

"Yes, and we're really starting to see the metrics space pick up steam with
the likes of mixpanel and others. That's a pretty exciting place to be. Tell
us what Schmetrics is going to do amazingly well that some of these other
players may not be tackling yet."

vs

"You can't even use the microphone correctly. We've already funded Mixpanel,
what could you possibly do better?"

~~~
SandersAK
Between friends I think you're right.

But the discussion here is a pitch to investors (or YC). The point is that you
need to be very deliberate and explicit.

The questions asked are very focused on sussing out not just what the product
is, but if the founder has a clear and concise vision of what makes it super
valuable.

In this case, presenter gets really rattled, and ends up defending all these
weird edge cases because PG is throwing him off (on purpose).

Lots of people have great ideas, and even great products, but as PG says at
the end - if you can't explain precisely what your product does, it speaks not
only to issues of the product, but to the team that runs it.

And OF COURSE, that doesn't mean it's the only indicator of success, but it's
a good sign.

But more importantly than being able to pitch, Kyle demonstrated something far
more valuable - the ability to pursue his vision doggedly year in and year out
until he built something people wanted.

~~~
bbcbasic
So in a nutshell: tough love.

------
zaroth
How many times had you tried to pitch before that day? My guess is less than
50 times. It takes several dozen practice runs before, really, the ideas gel
in your mind, the questions people ask are all predictable, the confusion
points are already planned for and navigated around. This is just an example
of how _everyone_ feels when they've done 'the pitch' an order of magnitude
too few times.

I think it's also worth pointing out, listen to just the very next person who
comes up to speak. PG hands a big gift-wrapped present to the speaker, "with
that in mind, please, tell me precisely what you do" and look what the
entrepreneur does... launches into a thing about something Bill Gates said,
and you can see PG just going right back into that pain zone.

So I think it's a terribly common problem, and really, it's something that
pretty much everyone works through manually just by getting out and giving the
pitch over, and over, to different people, gauging their reactions, their body
language, their questions, and just adapting, refining, sharpening that pitch
to the point where it really crystallizes exactly the best way to communicate
how what you're doing really makes a difference.

~~~
dorkitude
I believe I had spoken with 1 or 2 investors total about the company before
that moment.

You're right: practice really seems like the key to getting this stuff down.
One can have a clear intuitive understanding of their vision long before they
have a clear way to express it in English.

------
physcab
I was there for that pitch and I remember it only because it was entertaining,
not because I had any judgemental thoughts. If anything I had (and still have)
so much respect for people who talk on stage because public speaking is the
bane of my existence and I need to practice speaking 50 times before I'm not
going to have a breakdown. So kudos for getting up there and kudos for proving
"everyone" wrong.

------
salusinarduis
I watched this online a long time ago and it actually has come to mind from
time to time. I never actually thought it was as terrible as it has been made
out to be though. Kyle was obviously very nervous (as I would be) presenting
to PG in front of hundreds of people.

Now realizing how successful Keen.io, Kyle, and his team have come to be I
find this far more inspiring than the typical success stories that float
around the HN bubble. I run the entrepreneurship club at my university and I
plan to show this to all our members.

~~~
hisabness
do you have the link to the video?

~~~
salusinarduis
The video is at the bottom of the post.

------
tomjohnson3
hmmm...i watched the video of kyle pitching and i understood what was talking
about. i don't see what was so bad about it. to me, given the interruption-
laden flow of the dialog, it was as clear and concise as you could probably
expect (though i'm sure the pitch got better over time)...but i'm a developer
(the target). i think the problem was not necessarily the content of the
pitch, but the fact that he tasked with getting a non-developer (or one who's
been out of the game) to understand the specific problem he was addressing -
in an artificially short time frame. ...he was also talking to someone who was
desperately trying to put his idea in a box so he could understand. it's too
bad that kyle took it so hard. it's great to share this experience with others
so they can learn that pitching is hard and doesn't always go your way.
practice, practice, practice.

------
S4M
I used to be "Data Scientist" in a social game company - one of OP's target -
and I remember the data warehouse and back end teams tried to build something
like Keen IO, but I have to say, in a non structured way because there were so
many teams. All I can say is that Keen IO would help a lot this business, and
I know at least one company that does exactly that.

After watching Kyle's presentation, I was reminded of the real time analytics
problem I experienced, and if I was still working there, I know I really would
have wanted Keen IO.

~~~
dorkitude
Thank you for writing this! We definitely have social game traction, 3.5 years
after this pitch. (I come from that industry as well)

It's validating to hear from an industry veteran that our thesis isn't totally
off base :)

------
ukd1
I <3 Kyle / Keen, but that could have gone better tbh; open office hours seem
to add a lot of pressure. Kyle didn't get what PG was asking though:

1) mixpanel - you = ? 2) why use keen over mixpanel?

Succinctly (+ all in imho of course); Keen is a level lower than Mixpanel; - a
more powerful, more flexible, API driven events platform. Users would be
anyone that wants to track and report on things which aren't the norm for
mixpanel, who's product is good but pretty prescriptive in it's use.

------
mastef
This is a really cool showcase and kudos for being so open! I'm currently
writing up an article on about 18+ (simple) points of what founders should be
looking at before pitching.

But many times it just boils down to the same and only point - and that's the
beginning. Just directly start with the problem, and then naturally move on to
the solution. Like 50% of startups we watched at pitch events just failed at
that - and the crowd was left wondering what they're really doing.

It's like the most important thing. Drop everything else, just throw the
problem out there - to make people think about it - and then how you solve it.

But this, this was a step harder - no slides to back you up, and an investor
in another data tool grilling you on the spot and not letting you off the hook
to validate his own investment - that was a tough cookie. Usually you can just
leave a comment or two about competitors and move on, but here you had to stay
and explain details. So it's not a black and white fail for sure.

( Another point that helped us internally was to pitch in front of the team
first. Because there the fails will become evident much faster, and it's a
crowd you don't care too much about failing in front. Pitching in front of
your team = unit tests before the event )

~~~
dorkitude
Great points here. Wish I had thought to pitch the rest of the team first.

For your article, you may be interested in a piece I wrote about Demo Day
pitching specifically:

[https://keen.io/blog/41079734225/how-to-write-your-demo-
day-...](https://keen.io/blog/41079734225/how-to-write-your-demo-day-pitch)

------
userium
I watched this a long time ago. I actually remember thinking that you handled
the situation well, and seemed quite comfortable. It's a stressful situation,
plus you were alone, without a co-founder to help answer some questions. Also,
there was added distraction with the microphones etc. You were brave to go up
there, many people wouldn't.

------
weitingliu
I was at KeenCon when Kyle did the opening talk in front of the audience and I
remembered thinking how well-spoken Kyle was and how awesome could be if _I_
could pull it off as well.

How funny it is to look at the Startup School video now - a great story about
Keen IO not getting into YC and _then_ raised $11M+ from Sequoia!

------
istvan__
Two things.

One: I don't know what is the idea of keen.io after watching the video. I
guess it is some sort of generic data collection platform with querying
capabilities.

Two: based on the pitch (6 mins) I don't know why should I not just roll with
opensource components are assemble this platform myself, tailored to our use
case.

During the video the keen.io guy kept mentioning mongodb as a competitor, I am
not sure why. Bringing together a very similar platform that is able to
collect metrics, able to process them and query the results for meaningful
analytics is roughly two weeks project for a seasoned guy. The value of such a
system provided is not extremely high. I am pretty sure they got a revenue and
all that, I am just not sure if it is profitable to provide this service.
Seems a little thin to me.

~~~
mwetzler
I think we're almost all in agreement that pitch video doesn't do a very good
job explaining Keen IO. I mean, it was posted on HN three years ago as an
example of a bad pitch :).

The idea for the service was at its infancy and Kyle's ability to articulate
it to pg in front of 300 people just wasn't there yet. If you'd like a more
up-to-date answer, here's one I wrote to the question "Why wouldn't I just
roll my own" that someone else asked in this same thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9378228](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9378228)

~~~
istvan__
Thanks!

------
Jugurtha
I remember Kyle. He was on the same session as those two Stanford girls (PG
told them not to make a recipe site because they were Stanford hackers, if I
recall correctly) and that guy who forgot to shake PG's hand.

From what I remember, I didn't understand a thing from what he was saying but
he seemed to have done two things:

* Solve a problem _HE_ had. * Acquire some paying customers (that early).

Tradeoffs stating that people part away from their money in order to get
something they want/need, his product seemed to matter to someone.

That, to me, was pretty neat on its own.. So Kyle, if you're reading this: I
didn't think you were a fool and actually look up to you, dude. I'm writing
something that solves a problem -I- have right now and I have to learn a lot
about a lot before it works.

Good luck!

------
sekasi
I actually can't see how this epitomizes a failed Pitch. Sure, he was
struggling a little bit, and towards the end went off the rails.. but
generally if this summarizes what a 'poor pitch' is like, then we're in pretty
good shape.

------
meritt
I still don't really grok what value keen.io provides. The storage and
querying of data (including unstructured) is pretty easy (and has been for a
long time) with numerous ready-to-go solutions.

Is the value mostly on the visualization and dashboard portion? Is it some
sort of WYSIWYG query editor?

~~~
ukd1
Sure - you can do most things yourself - doing analytics is actually pretty
hard to get right. From my pov, their value is on not having to do it
yourself, plus a good, flexible API.

~~~
meritt
Sure I get using existing tools but I'm trying to grasp the real value here.
So I should view it as an analytics platform that supports completely adhoc
data types? Because, to me, the first main selling points it makes on their
site I couldn't care less about. Storing and querying adhoc data is a solved
issue and extremely easy.

Now if they are providing the tools to make analysis quick, efficient, and
intelligent - That makes a bit more sense. Guess I'll have to check out a
trial.

~~~
mwetzler
[note: I work at Keen and have a lot of biases :)]

The main alternative to Keen IO is to build your own backend. Some developers
will always prefer that, but many folks don't have the time & resources to
devote to constructing & maintaining an analytics backend. Here are some
things that people appreciate about Keen IO:

\- The ability to start collecting & querying their event data immediately &
easily

\- Keen's uptime and reliability (transferring backend ops from their pager to
ours).

\- Not having to worry about scalability. For customers who are collecting
billions of events per month and planning to double in less than a year, data
challenges are less trivial.

\- A point and click query interface that can be used by some non-devs to run
analysis, create graphs, extract data, etc

\- Query & visualization libraries that allow you to create reporting
interfaces (websites/dashboards/customer-facing-analytics) much more quickly

\- A growing inventory of features & open source tools that build on the API
(scoped keys, caching, notifications, dashboard templates, etc)

------
kidlogic
Kyle is one of the most humble, coolest, down-to-earth individuals I've met -
his personality and ambition is what entrepreneurial communities need.

------
untilHellbanned
Noting that I applaud the introspection: He was embarrassed for thinking he
sounded stupid whereas I think he should have be embarrassed for seeming like
a jerk.

~~~
dorkitude
Now that I've finally re-watched it, I can't help but agree. I definitely
sounded like a jerk (and probably a fairly stupid one). It's funny how one's
defensiveness can be interpreted :(

~~~
staunch
You've figured it out. Most people interpret defensiveness as an absolute sign
that you're a jerk and that you're wrong. It doesn't matter if you're arguing
in favor of the laws of physics, if you sound defensive, you will be dismissed
as an arrogant idiot.

But anyone who would rush to judge someone so harshly is revealing themselves
as the bad person. A little compassion is all that is necessary to see that
you meant well.

Take pride in having gotten on stage and put yourself out there. You tried
something that would scare most people to death. And you did quite well.
Plenty of people like myself have nothing but respect for you and don't think
you're a jerk.

