
The Muse's Successful Application to YC W12 - acav
http://www.themuse.com/advice/the-muses-successful-application-to-y-combinator-w12
======
jl
"We didn't think we were what YC was looking for..."

I'm so glad you took the time to apply! Your idea was slightly different back
then, but I remember how impressive you were during the YC interview. As you
said in your application:

    
    
      Among the members of the founding team we have domain 
      expertise in recruiting; in content creation and promotion; 
      and in directly engaging with women ages 20-­35. What's 
      more, we've been working in this specific field (job 
      opportunities and career advice for professional women) 
      for the last year, and the response from women has been 
      unbelievable. Our user testimonials sometimes verge on 
      the fanatical.
    

We could tell when we met you that you really understood the business you were
in. You were exactly what YC looks for.

~~~
KMinshew
Thanks so much Jessica- we're so glad we did. YC was an unbelievably valuable
experience. To the commenter below who asked how YC changed us & our company,
there's not much that's more useful to an early, growing company than getting
to spend time with people like Jessica & PG, and having their regular/honest
feedback on what's working (and what's not). I'll try to write more about that
here later.

~~~
uiboss
Ms. Minshew, would you mind answering the question that how specifically
targeting women for jobs is not sexist in itself? What if you could find
perfect male candidate for a particular position than women applicants ? Do
you think its fair to pass on such opportunity for male candidate because he
is male ?

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canistr
Don't want to sound like a downer, but I'd also love to see applications where
the founders weren't your typical white MIT, Harvard, Yale graduates/PhDs who
worked at McKinsey GoogleBookSoft.

~~~
beambot
We (Lollipuff) released our application. We were undergrads at Nebraska, Iowa
State, and Idaho: [https://www.lollipuff.com/blog/102/lollipuffs-ycombinator-
ex...](https://www.lollipuff.com/blog/102/lollipuffs-ycombinator-experience)

(Though I did a PhD at GT, and David worked at Google post-ITA acquisition.
:-/ However, our CEO did neither.)

~~~
kirubakaran
From the application: "Women think about fashion more than men think about
sex". Wow! I had no idea!

I wonder if the study had a selection bias (eg. if it was a poll conducted on
the parent website very.co.uk)

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OoTheNigerian
Take it easy people. If what people get after publishing their applications is
divertory criticism, it would discourage others from doing same.

Today is the deadline for YC. The idea is to give applicants final ideas to
help in their application. That's what this thread should be about.

Ladies, thanks for publishing.

If there are international applicants that have been successful, please share.
If you are ok sharing privately, I'd really appreciate it. My email is on my
profile.

------
Asparagirl
Huh, their careers page has several "jobs" available for people to write
articles for them... _unpaid_. You know, the old "it's good exposure" bait for
people who don't know any better.

~~~
KMinshew
Hi Asparagirl, there are 4-5x the number of people who ask to write for us
compared to the number who ultimately get to, so clearly there's some value
there :)

The reality is that most of our writers are also mentors to other people, and
they really enjoy it. Writing for The Muse is their way of scaling that
mentorship to a broader audience.

~~~
zodiac
I think the argument against unpaid internships is not so much that they don't
provide value, but that they're only open to people who can afford to do an
unpaid internship.

~~~
KMinshew
I'm in agreement with you on that - we pay all of our interns at The Muse. The
posting referred to above is a way of recruiting people who are interested in
contributing 1-4 mentoring posts per month, so very low commitment nights-and-
weekends type thing.

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LukeWalsh
The biggest thing that stuck out to me was how long some of your answers were.
Everyone seems to always point to Drew's application with all of the short
concise answers but it looks like thats not the only way to put together a
winning app!

------
icedog
Since today's topic on HN is usability testing. I'm a bit confused by the
connection between the goal stated on the YC application and thedailymuse.com.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see anywhere that says this is a resource
for women or "non-traditional candidates". How are you targeting this
demographic without being discriminatory in your job applications?

~~~
acav
When we applied to YC in 2011, we originally focused on professional women as
that is where we saw the biggest need for our content, although 90% of our
content was not gender-specific. Very quickly we watched our demographic grow
to be 30+% men, and we made the decision to broaden our focus, while
continuing to focus on our core: careers. One reason we made that decision is
because one of the things we originally wanted to combat was women not feeling
welcome in the workplace, so the idea of men not feeling welcome on The Muse
(since they were actively using it "in secret" as they said) didn't feel in
line with our principles.

More info on that change here: [http://www.themuse.com/advice/join-our-new-
journey-updates-f...](http://www.themuse.com/advice/join-our-new-journey-
updates-from-the-muse)

------
thejteam
Out of curiosity, if the founders are reading this thread, how did YC help you
to improve your company? Specifically, did they help you in any way that you
couldn't have done without them?

~~~
muglug
Kathryn talked about the YC influence at the female founders conference:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoF10tFmNmY#t=360](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoF10tFmNmY#t=360)

~~~
KMinshew
Thanks for posting that - YC definitely helped us avoid some classic early-
stage startup mistakes

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spada
Their traffic saw a massive drop in 2014. Google algo change screw them over?

~~~
acav
We've actually seen 30% UV growth from Jan to March - some of that growth has
been search given, though there are other channels driving it as well. In Jan
we merged thedailymuse.com into themuse.com (under
[http://themuse.com/advice](http://themuse.com/advice)) so all of our products
would live in one place

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acjohnson55
I got a kick for a second imagining the band Muse as a YC company.

