

Ask PG/YC: How verbose can the YC app be? - nurall

We are in the process of submitting our YC application and we do get the feeling that it might be a bit heavy. Any tips on how verbose the application can be or is it purely a case-by-case thingy?
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icey
If you're starting a company, and you can't explain it in that amount of
space, you either need to try harder or you really need to consider refining
your ideas.

The reason the elevator pitch is such a highly stressed aspect of start-up
marketing is because investors have notoriously low attention spans from
listening to pitches all day, every day.

A solid pitch that is concise at least lets them decide if they have any
interest at all before going into the deeper details.

The Human Genome project can be explained in less than 120 words. I have a
gut-feeling that that you aren't talking about decoding DNA.

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danielha
Don't count 120 characters and stop typing. Look at it from the perspective of
YC - they read a lot of applications. Get to the point and realize they won't
hang onto every word (or sentence, even) you write.

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pg
If your answers are less than 120 words that's fine.

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nextmoveone
I'd like to know, what happens if your answers are over 120 words, are they
cut off? less likely to be read? not read for not following directions?

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SwellJoe
pg has a deeply felt longing for brevity. Our application, which did get us to
the interview, was long, as I tend to chatter on quite a bit more than
strictly necessary--I feel the engineers compulsion to cover all of the
caveats and interesting (to me) details--but I don't think that helped our
case. You should fight the urge to chatter on.

Think about the following questions:

What are you going to build?

Why should we believe you are willing and able to build it?

Everything else is fluff...so, for every sentence you write, think, "Does this
answer one of those two questions?" If not, cut it. That's pretty much what
all of the questions on the application are about--they just want to hear it
from multiple angles.

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dhouston
articulating your idea concisely (under the 120 word limit or whatever) and
getting to the point quickly will be useful for yc and beyond (other investors
or whomever else you need to sell.)

make it easy to parse what you're doing and why it's valuable. part of that is
being focused, and brief.

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rms
I think you're fine as long as you have an average of less than 120 words. If
some questions are more pertinent to your product, then you can answer longer,
just try and be a little shorter on other questions.

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sgoraya
After my first visit with a VC last week, and inline with a lot of the advice
already given, the point the gentleman stressed was having a concise and tight
pitch/overview document.

The verbose application/business plan can wait until the VC is actually
interested in your company and requests a more detailed plan. (not to say that
you should wait until the last minute to draft your BP though)

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brlewis
Since the application is submitted on the web, they might be reading it on the
web. Ruthlessly cut text. Some tips here:

<http://www.useit.com/alertbox/intro-text.html>

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nextmoveone
is each answer less than 120 words?

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nurall
it actually depends on the question.. but a couple of 'em go upto 300 words..

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nextmoveone
I was under the impression everything after 120 words gets cut off so I had to
revise my 800 word 'What is your company going to make?' answer!

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nextmovetwo
Indeed. This was one of the problems that we faced early in our application
for this session. From what I've gathered as far as the YC app, they want to
know that your company would do, not a complete run down of the process. My
advice would be to get to the point as quick as possible and use whatever else
space (<= 150 words) for additional, essential details. Good luck!

