

Tell HN: YC Summer 2009 application is due today. - sarvesh

The YC summer 2009 application is due today at 10pm PST. I am curious as to how many of you submitted, or will be submitting, the optional video of founders?<p>http://ycombinator.com/s2009.html
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pg
We just passed the number of applications from last cycle, so it looks like
this will be another record, considering we usually get around a third of the
applications on the last day.

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unalone
Now that it's closed - what was the final count?

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pg
Unless my clock is wrong there's still half an hour left. But we never quote
the number anymore anyway, because now that we have competitors we don't want
to tempt them to get into a number war.

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unalone
Damn, I thought it ended at 10 EST rather than PST! All this time I could have
been making teensy little anal adjustments!

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palish
And yet, if your team is solid, those tiny adjustments are probably a waste of
time.

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unalone
Absolutely! I doubt that if we don't get accepted it'll be because we didn't
tweak our application enough. At the same time, it doesn't hurt, and on
occasion I do find things that really could be done better. (As it turns out,
I added a good deal to one question that I'd breezed over the first time.)

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palish
Yeah, I was just musing that us engineers love to focus on things which don't
really matter. It's an interesting phenomenon, and I do it all the time too. I
wonder if the solution is as simple as continually asking ourselves, "Am I
spending my time on one of the most critical aspects of the project?" Anyway,
I didn't mean anything by it. :)

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unalone
Yep! No offense taken. :-)

It's not just programmers, FYI. I got that from the dank world of creative
writing. Spending a month working on a sonnet = not-totally-fun times.

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grinich
I'm just now clearing my room of coffee mugs, pizza boxes, and bowls of soggy
cereal. I'm unshaved, and have hardly stepped outside my dorm room for the
past 48 hours. There's a celebratory beer in the fridge, and then I'll
probably sleep for an entire day.

We've started building something really awesome, and although I'm sleep-
deprived and red-eyed, I'm incredibly excited. I can't wait until the summer
when I can go full time on this project. YC or no YC, it's going to be a wild
ride.

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jdileo
your post is an inspiration.....what it's all about! Best of luck w/ your
startup.

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YuriNiyazov
Submitted on saturday, with a video of me in my living room, unshaven and
underslept. No expectations :)

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kanny96
Oops, the slot for unshaven and underslept is taken! Gotta shave.

It was a good exercise and now I appreciate much better why Cali Lewis, Amber
Mac and Natalie Del Conte - show off their fumbling at the end.

It was done with both hands on the cam. The cam's auto-focus had problem
adjusting to the tube light in the basement and created a few blurs.

It wasn't scripted, but i practiced it 4-5 times, everytime missing some links
or forgetting a key word!

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unalone
After shooting ours and giving it a second look, I was filled with a newfound
awe for Ze Frank, who makes speaking really fast both interesting and
hilarious. I never realized just how hard it is to say stuff quickly and not
be a complete weirdo.

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zaius
We submitted on Monday with a simple photo booth video made in a cafe. It was
just of us talking about the project and ourselves. Took us about 20 minutes
from start to finish - may as well do it!

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siong1987
We did the same thing too. We use photo booth to make a real short video
intros.

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jlees
Yup, Photo Booth is great. +1 to using it to make the YC app video. And +1 to
adlibbing, as well. As an ex-improviser (think Whose Line?), scripts just seem
wrong ;)

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unalone
+1 to all of that as well! We spent about 3 hours just recording a lot and
saying different stuff until it worked. As a result, our final video was a bit
hyperactive and a lot lame, but we managed to actually convey information
without sounding like zombies.

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idm
What about percentages? Frequencies are nice, but I wonder what percentage of
applications include the optional video.

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nanexcool
We'll be submiting the video. You can say so much (or so little) in one minute
though that we're still figuring out if we want to just ad-lib or have like a
mini-script to read.

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pg
From the videos I've seen so far, I'd recommend ad-libbing. The point of the
video is to see what you're like, and most people don't seem particularly
bright when delivering (or worse still, reading) a prepared speech.

Since this was the first time we'd tried videos we didn't realize this would
be a problem. Next year we'll advise everyone to ad-lib.

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tokenadult
_most people don't seem particularly bright when delivering (or worse still,
reading) a prepared speech_

Hear. Hear. Delivering a scripted speech well is HARD, and the people who are
famous for doing that well practice a lot. Most members of the hacker
community are much more practiced in engaging in conversation about the
passion for technology, and thus make themselves look better in speech and in
print by treating each communication opportunity as a conversation with an
unseen interlocutor.

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hedgehog
+1, personally I'm pretty comfortable talking to all kinds of people in person
but our team found that talking to a camera unscripted was hard (compounded by
the amount of information it sounded like we needed to pack in to 60 seconds).
It was still really helpful for getting our message straight though, even if
we don't get in to the YC summer cycle it will be helpful for raising money.

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khangtoh
Paul: Did you guys reviewed early submissions this time round? We submitted
our application when it was only half done 2 weeks ago but have been editing
and resubmitting for the past 2 weeks and there was quite a bit of change from
our very first submission.

We sort of figured out that our application hasn't been reviewed since our
demo url did not register any visitors yet on google analytics.

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andrewljohnson
We submitted a video for www.trailbehind.com.

I have a Macbook, and it was really quick to make the video. MacBooks come
standard with camera, recording, and editing software.

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Eliezer
Remember, everyone, there's no point in sending in more than one copy of your
application!

Applying to Y Combinator twice has the same effect as applying once.

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iamwil
As an aside, I took a look at your submissions, and it's paltry, meaning that
you got most of your 1400 points from commenting. Good comments.

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Eliezer
Thanks.

Either the people here don't get math jokes, or I commented too late to catch
most readers. I'll try reposting on some more appropriate thread later...

...since if any joke can be repeated more than once, it's that one, right?
Maybe everyone's just heard it a thousand times.

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flooha
Props to the YC crew for giving all of us this opportunity and hacking
(machete, not keyboard) their way through the applications.

I hope our video isn't too boring. We tried to keep it light, but we had to
script it to say everything we wanted to say in <= 1 minute. I would have much
rather submitted the outtakes, but we aren't getting graded on hilarity. :)

Good luck to all!

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dustineichler
Solo founders? Anyone besides me.

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unalone
I've talked to a few solo founders, so they're definitely there! Good luck to
you all.

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ohkanon
What if we never got a rejection letter, BUT We also never got contacted for a
confirmation. Does that mean they are still going through them?

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amichail
I wonder if this video will be used to identify founders who would look good
in a TV interview... and so enhance their chances of getting funding from VCs,
especially early on.

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wwwjscom2
You can give negative points? lol, I require that button ;)

PS. Good luck peoples

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suhail
Yes, you need 100+ karma I believe before you can.

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wwwjscom2
Thanks for the example ;)

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pclark
we're literally deploying our demo now, and then submitting.

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pclark
except github is down and we have various gems we need to deploy. Gonna be a
late one, first [many] of many we hope ..

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pclark
done.

