
We just interviewed at Y Combinator – here’s the full transcript - michaelcheng
Last week, we flew down to meet the partners for our YC interview:<p>11:45 am — 320 Pioneer Way, Mountain View<p>YC Partner: So you guys are making a link shortener?<p>Me: Yes.<p>YC Partner: Like Bit.ly?<p>Me: Let’s dive into why Bit.ly is not as good. We built the only link shortener that drives conversion. Bit.ly just shortens your link. We actually allow you to add a call to action to the page that you’re sharing.<p>YC Partner: So what would be an example use case?<p>Me: Let’s say I’m running a charity. I can share a CNN article on the Japanese earthquake, and I can actually add a message inside that says “support these victims - donate now” and include a link to my charity.<p>YC Partner: So you frame the article?<p>Me: Right.<p>YC Partner: They don’t do frame breakers anymore?<p>Of the top 1000 sites, 89% of them have no limitations around iframes. Typically the ones that block it are secured sites like banks, and those are not the typical sites that people share.<p>Me: Do you have customers? How far along are you?<p>We launched 7 weeks ago, as of today we have around 700 users, and we’ve been tracking 13% week over week growth.<p>(due to character limit) Read the rest at https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;p&#x2F;187312cd2cf5
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krapp
The remark about frame-breakers seems to be to bring up a valid concern - the
sites being linked to certainly would not appreciate having their sites
presented in a frameset with advertising which isn't their own.

If it were me (caveat: I have no credibility whatsoever) I would be concerned
about the long-term viability of this as a moneymaker, given that the more
popular snip.ly theoretically becomes, the more animosity it's likely to
create from linked sites, and the more sites (particularly popular sites) are
likely to just break out of the frameset entirely, rather than have their own
SEO and analytics tampered with.

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bpicolo
There's no 100% perfect frame breaking strategy, last I checked.

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semerda
Cheers for sharing.

Why didn't you guys focus on a mobile product vs rehashing stuff from a decade
ago? Imagine a version of Facebook's AppLinks cross linked with your Call to
Action. That would have been a big problem to solve.

The mobile is where the future is at when it comes to engagement.

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minimaxir
The fact that you reconstructed this from memory might lead to a biased
account of events. I'm not saying that the transcript is inaccurate, but the
tone may have been different during the actual interview.

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read
_We’d encourage you to think about what this is a feature of on the path to
being the next Google._

If the way the next Google will win is by making the current Google
irrelevant, one way to make it irrelevant is to take away its revenue from
advertising on the web. And one way to do that, is to add in web browsers the
feature of hiding ads. Browsers could only show snip.ly ads according to a
user's preferences. This might not be as obvious or easy considering for
example how after all these years Bit.ly didn't try this.

Have you considered making a browser plugin?

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applecore
Another interesting aspect of your link shortener is that it gives credit on
the linked page to the person who shared it. Khoi Vinh had a very interesting
idea[1] like this for the _New York Times '_ pay wall, but Snip.ly works for
any site.

[1]: [http://www.subtraction.com/2014/02/12/an-idea-for-the-
times-...](http://www.subtraction.com/2014/02/12/an-idea-for-the-times-pay-
wall/)

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palidanx
Hey thanks for going above and beyond of sharing an experience you didn't have
to. Cheers to you!

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omilu
Very generous of you, this deserves many upvotes!

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dalek2point3
tl;dr version:

snip.ly a startup that is building a link shortner with a call to action
built-in gets rejected by YC for not being the "next Google" (example
shortlink: [http://snip.ly/as6](http://snip.ly/as6))

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swanify
Woah, that site react's badly to that banner being placed on it.

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cmacpher
totally broke when i tried to snip.ly the medium post

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chauzer
thanks for sharing

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fuj
So... your "startup" is something that bit.ly (and similar) could do in a few
hours of work with an already established userbase.

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SuperDuperTango
Aren't many startups like that?

