

Ask HN: What YC winter 2011 aspirants should not be doing right now? - skbohra123

We are hacking on code, adding features, everything we were doing as usual. What else we should be doing ?
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webwright
Be talking to customers and building a list of interested people to launch to.
You remove a lot of risk for YC if you walk into the interview room and say,
"We have 25,000 email addresses for people who want our product". (aside, if
you launch successfully that also reduces risk!).

Learn about the market. How do your competitors find users/customers
affordably?

Learn about the competition. What are they doing well? What do people hate
about their offering?

Learn about your users! Surveys, lunches, etc. If your product isn't something
that you yourselves would use, you should spend a lot of time with potential
customers.

Learn how to talk about your product. Test headlines, stumbleupon landing
pages, adwords ads-- whatever it takes to learn that people respond more to
"Nice juicy steak" more than they respond to "Muscle tissue sample of a
castrated bull" (hat tip to Robert Heinlein).

In other words, pre-launch marketing (research, understanding, outreach)!

~~~
mr_luc
I remember hearing that The Simpsons TV show used to have a writer's retreat.

The goal was to have a place and time where the show runner and the writers
would spend a few days mulling over script ideas by their writers. They'd get
away from the grind, away from distractions, away from the studio, so they
could consider ideas on their merits and hear their young writers sketch out
hazy early-stage story visions.

They say it worked well for them initially. They identified good ideas really
early, and because they got involved early, while the ideas were still
malleable, they could give guidance on what the valuable parts of the story
were, and what to focus on; that helped the writer when he went away to work
on the idea to turn it into a real script.

However, they stopped doing the story retreats. Why?

The reason a show runner gave was that eventually, the retreat became a
formality.

People were coming in with a nearly-finished product. They were practicing
their presentations to the show runners, pitching them. Sometimes they came in
with whole scripts ready, or nearly-complete outlines or A stories.

Which is great. But now you don't need a retreat. If you're going to prepare
all of that stuff on your own time anyway, okay ... just do that. If the idea
looks like it merits a slot at all, and you have episode slots to fill, how do
you turn down polished work? Of course, the beneficial effects of experienced
and talented writers guiding a writer's promising first take disappeared.
There was nothing to guide. Again, no reason to have the retreat.

It sounds like pitches to YC have become more polished, and that makes me
wonder. (Of course, the parallels are pretty tenuous, it just got me
thinking).

Clearly, PG and Company are going to enjoy that. It's hard to turn down done
work. It's a good thing if you can pitch. I just hope, for the sake of the
little future Reddits and Social Calendars out there, that pg, jessica and the
gang are protected from the glare coming off that polish.

~~~
philwelch
Brian Chesky's talk at Startup School covered a lot of this--Airbnb had
launched more than once and made a couple of successful PR stunts before
applying to YC, but YC was still a crucial ingredient in carrying them on to
success.

Also, everyone who's gone through the YC interview process and written about
it says that, if they had any intentions to pitch at all, they were quickly
derailed by questions.

------
endlessvoid94
YC would be nice, but it certainly isn't the end of the world. Keep hacking,
keep working, etc.

Too many startups equate being rejected from YC with failure. That's stupid.

~~~
edanm
Do many startups really do that? I haven't seen much evidence of that,
actually.

~~~
csallen
In the chat room someone posted a few nights ago, there were more than a few
people who hinted at that being the case for them and their companies. I'd
consider any number > 0 to be "too many".

I guess they see validation from YC as an absolute guarantee that they'll
reach their end goal, or even as the end goal itself. Really, it's neither.
There's a mountain of evidence showing that startups face cold, dark, and
lonely times whether they're big or small, YC-validated or obscure, well-
funded or strapped for cash. If you can't survive without YC, you probably
can't survive _with_ YC.

I've been rejected 2 or 3 times now, and I'm still going at it.

~~~
fredex
Any lessons you can share after your 2nd or 3rd time? What would you have done
differently?

~~~
csallen
Don't apply while you're still in school, and don't apply late haha. Sorry,
nothing too insightful.

------
dpapathanasiou
Not worrying about whether or not you get accepted.

~~~
dzlobin
Looks like you're the only person who caught the _not_ in the title

------
bl4k
Have a plan B, C and D

ie. you should still be out raising money and doing everything else you need
to do to grow your company.

------
leftnode
I'm continuing my everyday routine of hacking away. Trying to out it out of my
mind, honestly. If I get in, I get in. If I don't, then I don't. Won't stop my
determination to build my product and company.

------
benologist
A tiny % of applicants are going to get in and they've probably already
reached out to the 5 or 10% they're considering.

So we should just be working away on our startups - YC would be great to have
_but_ there's plenty of other paths to success.

~~~
dzlobin
Any actual information re: whether or not that's true?

~~~
StavrosK
It's not true, I haven't gotten an email yet!

------
zbruhnke
Sounds like you guys are doing the right thing ... I am doing the same
personally, living and breathing my idea just like I was before YC and just
like I will be after YC. Whether or not I am chosen I will continue to do just
as I am today. Even if I get an interview I certainly will not change my
routine simply for the sake of YC ... I should have a demo by the time the
interviews come around and I will be happy to show it to the team if selected
to do so.

So many people seem to look at YC as a do or die ordeal. Simply put, it is not
... It is a wonderful program for a number of great minds and startups, they
will likely pass on more good applicants than they will accept, that is not to
say the YC guys do not know what they are doing, they have presumably well
over 1,000 applicants and only accept around 40 companies. If you get rejected
and decide not to continue on your project you were probably not the kind of
founder they were looking for in the first place.

Use YC as motivation for your project, not as a gauge for your company's
success, that is not what is what meant to be.

Zach

------
Zev
Don't sweat things that are out of your control. Unless and/or until you're
invited to an interview, the YC process is out of your control. Just focus on
your stuff, what you can have an effect on. Otherwise you're just creating
stress that you don't need for yourself.

------
skbohra123
would be interesting to know what pg would say ?

