

Lessons Learned from our YC Interview (with Tips!) - bhb
http://blog.pretheory.com/arch/2007/11/yc_interview_tips_1.php

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blader
The #1 lesson we learned from our interviews is to be prepared.

Pitch everybody you know on your idea, and have the smartest people you know
poke as many holes as possible, and address them. Then do it over again.

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wastedbrains
I think that is good advice. If we had tried to show our demo to groups that
had never seen the product before, we might have been better prepared. We'd be
ready to anticipate and answer questions before they come up. We also would
have probably learned about preparing our data so that anything not flattering
isn't included.

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tlrobinson
My best piece of advice... 10 minutes goes by _really_ fast.

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cstejerean
I was very thrown off by the YC interview during Summer 07. The unfortunate
side effect of the 10 minutes is you end up answering YC questions the whole
time and not only delivering your vision for the application. So the whole
interview either becomes a test of how well you can perform interview
acrobatics or how close YC's questions and first impressions are to what you
want to tell them.

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rms
>how close YC's questions and first impressions are to what you want to tell
them.

This really upset me at the time... We spent a lot of time answering the
question "We're going to compare you to yahoo.com" and were rejected because
they didn't see how we solved the essential design problem of our product.

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tocomment
I thought you had a gene splicing product. Why did they comapre you to yahoo?

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rms
We switched products rather drastically. The original product was a web
service operating system for old people.

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tptacek
For whatever it's worth to you, you will readily get more than 5 minutes of
semi-solicited opinions about your prospects and strategy from any VC manager
or partner you talk to. You may even score customer introductions.

The solid "yes" or "no" is a major feature of the YC process though.

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Mistone
awesome insight on the interview process - thanks for posting this

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zach
This seems to indicate that a fully-working demo is not what you want to
present to YC. Since all you have is ten minutes, I would think you'd want a
more focused form of presentation.

Put it this way -- are you a magician? If you present a demo that effectively
says "pick a card, any card," you'd better be. If you're demoing Google (the
site it is today) for YC, it's probably not the best sell to just let someone
type anything they want into it.

When you only have ten minutes, you need to retain as much control as possible
over your message. Present the article to sell the magazine.

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ivankirigin
Showing the sexiest, meatiest part of a working demo is probably a good
compromise. Without a demo, you're left describing that same part, which is
inferior, right?

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DarrenStuart
You could of directed them to comics by explaining that it was the what your
alpha users had worked on. I think demo's are much better than pp, lets face
it a demo proves you can actually deliver a product. Just make sure you take
control and not get side tracked on uncompleted stuff.

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downer
An interesting corollary might be "Lessons for YC". The extreme time crunch
just doesn't seem conducive to making accurate evaluations.

Of _course_ the people with the money make the rules; it's not a question of
power, but every process can be improved.

A 10-minute interview tests presentation skills more than anything related to
the idea, technology, or founders' other abilities. This skews in favor of
quick impressions and existing YC bias (towards ideas they already were
waiting for someone to present).

I wonder if the median application received even that much (10 minutes' worth)
consideration. It seems like a continuous process would work better, with
staggered starts; looking at 20 applications every week rather than 500 in one
week would allow a more thorough review.

Then instead of going to the same 10 weekly dinners, it would be a sequence of
10; e.g. weeks 31-40. The only real trick would be Demo Day; but that could be
rescheduled for every 3 months instead of every 6 months (or monthly, and
investors who are vetted get a card that gets punched every time and on the
11th visit they get kicked out if they haven't invested in anyone yet).

Now the acceptees have a couple months before the "official" start; other
people might be ready to apply _now_ but it's a 6-month wait for the next
batch to get in and 8 months to "start"! That's an eternity in Internet Time.

Another advantage would be allowing the continuous pool of acceptees to
relocate to the #1 spot (Silicon Valley) regardless of the time of year. It's
a little silly that the Bostonians have to move there afterward _anyway_ \--
it's like a conflict of interest for YC, "Help the individual start-ups by
putting them in the #1 spot" or "Try to help the #2 start-up scene play catch-
up via imports".

Of course I could be wrong about everything, it's up to you.

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webwright
Read "Blink"... Thin slicing can work REALLY well if you do it right.

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downer
> Thin slicing can work REALLY well if you do it right.

Any "X" can work REALLY well if you do it "right". Doing it right, now there's
the trick...

