
Why We Don't Invite Groups to Interviews  - danielsiders
http://ycombinator.com/whynot.html
======
biot
The title can be parsed ambiguously. At first, I was surprised as I read it
as: "We Don't Invite Groups to Interviews. Here's Why." and expected an
article focusing on interviewing one team member at a time. It's perhaps
better stated as "Why Some Groups Aren't Invited To Interviews".

~~~
sumedh
The title is confusing. I thought I accidentally clicked the wrong link.

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ams6110
Back _many_ years ago when I used to interview people for restaurant work we
had a stock phrase that we would write on rejected applications: "others more
qualified." It's as simple as that. Nothing especially wrong with the
candidate, but we had better choices.

Interesting to see the same dynamic in place in the gamut between mundane
restaurant work and YC applications.

~~~
hayksaakian
"others more qualified" is more re-assuring than 'there was something wrong'
or 'we don't like you' so i'd take that boilerplate response over
silence/nothing.

~~~
pekk
And you would take that boilerplate response even if there actually was
something wrong or they didn't like you. So there is every reason for them to
put it on essentially every application which didn't involve felonies

~~~
trentmb
Sorry to pick on you here: but why is being a felon considered a negative, as
opposed to being convicted of something that isn't a felony?

Does the IRS tax your business differently if you employ a felon?

I mean, I get it: someone did something shitty at one point and got caught and
convicted. In an absolute sense they're 'less reliable' than someone that
hasn't been convicted.

I only ask because I've worked some blue jobs with ex-cons and felons (some of
which were exceptionally bright) who were stuck where they were because of
some dumb choice they made 10, 15, 20 years ago.

~~~
icelancer
> Does the IRS tax your business differently if you employ a felon?

Actually, yes. The IRS often gives you breaks if you employ ex-convicts.

[http://smallbusiness.chron.com/tax-breaks-employers-hire-
fel...](http://smallbusiness.chron.com/tax-breaks-employers-hire-
felons-14421.html)

I have done this before and applied for the tax credit. The employee passed
all his screens wonderfully and his ex-conviction history did not faze me at
all.

------
bretthopper
It's fine if you don't want to tell people since there are legitimate reasons
not to. But this is mostly a cop out.

We know that YC application reviewers make notes and obviously do some sort of
internal ranking. There may be cases where better startups just push slightly
"worse" ones down, but there's obviously some startups that are passed over
for specific reasons that YC knows about. I guarantee most of these
reasons/notes would be very useful for an early startup.

Too bad they'll never know.

~~~
avenger123
If YC states a specific reason, then what?

Does YC now have the responsibility to engage in a dialogue outlining the
details for the reason.

It wouldn't be fair to write a single paragraph and say, "oh, we think your
team dynamics suck, so we are rejecting you." What does that mean? Team
dynamics compared to what? Do you write a more detailed response? Multiply
that response by the number of rejections and all of a sudden you are left
with a lot of new work that needs to get done. The reasons for rejection may
make real sense for the reviewers but may have layers of context that can't
easily be dictated in a simple email.

I'm sure this is some of the thinking that is involved with why it's easier to
not give specific reasons.

If a team takes the YC rejection as confirmation that their startup isn't
going to go anywhere then they never believed in the startup.

------
sytelus
Somewhere YC is _doing_ ranking of applications. When ranking gets done some
function _does_ get applied to each group. It might be beneficial for YC to
know how this function works so they can debug it. For instance the YC's
ranking function can generate set of components that contributes to final
rank.

If YC wants to scale it is imperative to understand their own ranking ranking
function. If we say that I have no idea why group A was considered better than
group b then its not very scientific and there can be not much hope to improve
something that we don't understand. Of course, it's different matter if this
information is passed back to group because I suspect that would make ranking
function more vulnerable to gaming.

~~~
grayclhn
I would be surprised if they're ranking every applicant. When I've been on
hiring or admissions committees, I use a threshold. There's no point in
ranking candidates clearly below the bar relative to each other, and there's
no point in ranking candidates clearly above the bar either. For applicants on
the bubble, it's often easier to decide for each individual whether you should
interview him or her or not, and let the final number of interviews be
somewhat fluid, than to rank them against each other.

Obviously, one could conduct an ex post ranking based on the decisions, but I
wouldn't put a lot of weight on it.

I do agree that one should try to go back and check how the decisions worked
out in a systematic way, but it's not obvious that there's an easy way to do
it (and by "easy" I mean "a way that anyone will adopt for long enough for it
to be worthwhile.")

------
jasonkolb
I think most people would appreciate some feedback on something they work hard
for, even if it's just an "atta boy, looks good, keep on going--sorry it
didn't work out", or even better some productive feedback ("you need to narrow
your focus" or "market already saturated").

I have never applied for YC, but I have applied to other things in life that
seem like a black hole from the outside. Just an acknowledgement of something
that surely took a lot of time would be a nice gesture. I mean, I'm sure
you're nice folks, right? Would you ignore applicants if you met them on the
street?

~~~
BrandonM
I imagine that the types of feedback you're suggesting, such as "market
already saturated", would only be half of the story. A founder who is making
such a mistake is automatically making a second mistake: not being good enough
to realize the mistake in the first place.

A founder who fixes the one mistake pointed out by YC would be missing the big
picture, likely making numerous other mistakes. I don't think that most
applicants want to hear the truth, which is effectively, "Based on problems X,
Y, and Z that we can see after a cursory analysis, we can only assume that
you're not smart enough for other program, else you would have realized those
problems yourself."

~~~
tvo
My entrepreneurial experience so far has been about making a lot of mistakes
and learning from them.

I think for a lot (but not all) of issues in startups and in life, "not being
good enough" or "not smart enough" really just means "not having enough
exposure or practice". Based on this view, constructive, specific feedback
goes a long way in helping dedicated founders improve so that they too, can
add value to society via their startup.

I realize it is unfair to expect this from YC, considering they also have
finite bandwidth. I wouldn't mind paying a reasonable fee for this type of
feedback from YC and I suspect a lot of founders wouldn't either.

~~~
BrandonM
I agree that entrepreneurship is a great opportunity to make and learn from
mistakes _in execution_. It's also an opportunity to try completely new things
that may or may not work.

Other sorts of mistakes, though--like being ignorant of existing players,
failing to explain why someone would use your product, or having no remote
plan to profitability--are more troublesome. They indicate a lack of business
acumen or even common sense that will make success incredibly unlikely.

As with execution mistakes, you can learn these things through experience,
too. However, I would not want to invest my time and money teaching them to
someone unwilling or unable to learn those lessons on their own.

Which gets back to my original point... Who wants to hear, "You seem to lack
common sense"?

------
mattm
This is just one of those things you learn in life. You'll never find out the
real reason someone rejected you. It doesn't matter if it's a girl or an
interviewer. That's just how it is. The only thing to do is to take your best
guess and improve on that next time.

Oftentimes, the people doing the rejecting may not even know the real reason.
Sure, everyone can come up with something that sounds rational but how do you
know it's not because you looked at them weird the first time you met because
you were nervous?

~~~
Theodores
I think there are better analogies than girl/interview rejection scenarios.
More like TV gameshow where there are lots of applicants and only a few get
chosen to make it onto the show. The producers have reasons of their own that
have no bearing on how good you are. So rejection is not to be taken
personally in a soul destroying way.

Just a lesson to learn, no feedback needed.

------
catshirt
there is still valuable feedback to be had, no? why are some companies
"particularly good" where others don't get accepted? "no reason" _is_
paradoxical and i'm not really convinced it's a reason...

~~~
ritchiea
The YC partners have written extensively on what they are looking for in
startups and what impresses them. As have many of the companies that have been
accepted. pg has even participated in the comments here on those sorts of
articles and blog posts. Barring their entire public persona being an
elaborate conspiracy I don't think they could possibly be more transparent
about what impresses them and what they think are red flags.

~~~
shrikrishna
The thing is, the applicants would have read them too. I don't think most
applicants would have the obvious red flags. Many that don't get in would be
the corner case, ie, pushed down by those with a slight edge.

~~~
ritchiea
Reading those pieces and taking the advice seriously are entirely different
things. For instance I knew two non-technical founders with a company who were
outsourcing their app and had no users and were shocked they didn't get an
interview. On paper and in person they are both very bright, had attended
elite schools and done a lot of interesting things in their lives. But I think
that was actually their downfall, they suspected they had enough good things
going for them in general that they ignored a lot of very specific advice from
YC.

My bet is the companies that don't get interviews are a lot more like my
friends who just didn't pay attention than a sea of corner cases. It's
actually really hard to meet the criteria that YC asks for. If you follow
their advice you need the following things:

\- At least 2 founders who know each other well, preferably have worked
together before or known each other for years

\- Have found your domain problem through personal experience

\- Are good hackers

\- Have already put together a decent product/have some semblance of a
reasonable start

It can almost sound simple but that's really really hard. And I say that as
someone who has spent the last couple years talking with my friends about
whether they would be interested in being co-founders for startup ideas and
searching for problems in my own experience that would make for scalable
ideas. I go out and talk to companies and I don't see much of what YC
explicitly asks for. It's not far fetched to imagine they interview nearly
100% of the teams that fit the profile above.

~~~
shrikrishna
> It can almost sound simple but that's really really hard.

It really _is_ hard. No way is it easy

> I say that as someone who has spent the last couple years talking with my
> friends about whether they would be interested in being co-founders for
> startup ideas and searching for problems in my own experience that would
> make for scalable ideas.

That is the biggest problem in getting it going. You have to be able to
convince others to share your vision. But isn't it easier to do with long-time
friends than that guy you met last summer? When you know someone for long
enough, you will have the confidence that you'll stick together through the
friendly breezes and the wild storms

> Are good hackers

That is a requirement for a good reason. The founders are the only guys
initially who give a sh*t about the product. Say a customer makes a support
call, being able to quickly respond and fix the bug can mean life or death.
You need at least one hacker who can do this. Better if every founder is one.

> I go out and talk to companies and I don't see much of what YC explicitly
> asks for.

YC in no way has the magic portion. They just have a set of things they
believe are positive indicators, which are mostly right, but not fulfulling
one/all of these no way means you can't build a successful startup

> It's not far fetched to imagine they interview nearly 100% of the teams that
> fit the profile above.

That's not surprising, is it? If 70% of the slots were filled with applicants
that fulfilled 100% criteria, then they might loosen some of the criteria
(like single founder teams, idea stage etc), but with the momentum that YC's
gotten, I bet 100% of the slots get filled with startups that fulfill 100% of
their criteria (and more, those corner cases). So obviously, they'll stick to
their criteria (which has been working for them)

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Istof
Hopefully the one who wrote this article is not a moderator on
[https://news.ycombinator.com/](https://news.ycombinator.com/). Very
misleading title.

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ecolner
I think the only useful case for an explanation is if your application was
defective per the outline, but I doubt that's the main reject reason anyway.

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bobowzki
I know this is nitpicking... but that box needs padding.

------
anandp29
So just to confirm, if we didn't receive an email or any notification on
Hacker News, we were not selected, correct? Not sure if we were supposed to
receive a 'Sorry' email.

~~~
shrikrishna
They haven't sent out the mail yet. You will get a mail (be sure to have your
mail id in the profile with which you applied) even if you are rejected

