
How to Get into Y Combinator - mixonic
https://www.aptible.com/blog/y_combinator.html
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dreamweapon
_Before our interview, Frank and I:_ \- _Collected all of the known Y
Combinator interview questions we could find_ \- _Wrote out 1-2 sentence
answers_ \- _Agreed on which founder would lead on the answer, and_ \-
_Practiced with flash cards until we could answer every question fluently_

Sounds like YC has turned into something of a cram school.

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vecter
You mean figuring out answers to important business issues like "who are you
users?", "how will you acquire them?", and "how will you make money?" and then
having a plan how to clearly communicate them is cramming and nothing more?

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codingdave
No, needing sessions with flash cards is cramming. Knowing those answers and
communicating them should be something you can do on the fly.

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kyro
So I guess people should stop preparing for Google interviews by looking at
and practicing the myriad of coding puzzles they've previously asked. You'd be
stupid not to.

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hkmurakami
Consider Management Consulting interviews, where the firm tells you exactly
what to expect and even points you towards prep books.

They test for how prepared you are and how motivated you are in working to be
given an offer.

Asking "what the interview tests for" is a pertinent one as any entrance
process becomes increasingly formulaic.

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wanghq
Very helpful! It's good to answer those questions even if you are not aiming
to apply YC very soon.

I converted all the questions to a google spreadsheet. Feel free to make a
copy and answer them privately :) [http://goo.gl/r3RXck](http://goo.gl/r3RXck)

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pariya
You are awesome.

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norseboar
All this advice looks excellent for running a startup, succeeding at it, and
pitching to investors. However, Y-combinator's partners in particular have a
habit of advertising "we don't care as much about your idea as about your team
because the idea usually gets overhauled drastically anyway". This advice
seems a bit contrary to that; at best, it's proof that you can go through the
thought exercise of imagining what all of this looks like. But being able to
do plan out a killer business with one idea doesn't necessarily translate to
being able to do it with another.

Has YC changed its standards about people vs. ideas now that they can afford
to be so selective? Or is planning a business a skill that's generic enough
that proof of doing it in one instance is good enough to prove that a person
can do it generally?

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swartkrans
> However, Y-combinator's partners in particular have a habit of advertising
> "we don't care as much about your idea as about your team because the idea
> usually gets overhauled drastically anyway".

This is not true for any ycombinator startup I have worked at. The idea has
always been key, but the team is also very important.

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norseboar
That certainly used to be an attitude Y Combinator had
([http://old.ycombinator.com/noidea.html](http://old.ycombinator.com/noidea.html)),
although it sounds like that didn't work out. Paul Graham's essays also
perennially mention that the people are far more important than the ideas
("Another sign of how little the initial idea is worth is the number of
startups that change their plan en route.", "What matters is not ideas, but
the people who have them. Good people can fix bad ideas, but good ideas can't
save bad people"), but it might be that I've been projecting too much of PG's
views onto YC as a whole.

It makes a lot of sense to me that the idea would absolutely be key, which is
why I've always been a bit suspect of the "people >> ideas" attitude. Not to
say that the team isn't the more important piece, but I'm suspicious of the
idea that a great team will usually gravitate towards a good business, left to
their own devices.

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thrwy10
Most blogs that describe tips and best practices when applying to YC have one
advice in common - "Get customers", "Prove that someone needs your product",
"Get signups, email addresses" etc. And while that is a *very8 valid and
important point, for some of us though its harder than that. Even if one has a
prototype, the companies they work for have strict policies that prevent doing
business on the side, let alone the fact that the H1 visa also explicitly
prevents you from having any other source of income or starting a corp. The
only options would be to go all in and go to their home country to develop the
product further, at which point they've abandoned everything they've worked
hard for all this while, - or - wait for a green card, which is elusive if you
are from one of the populous Asian countries. What other options does one
have? Have any H1s successfully made it to YC? Could they describe their
experience?

Also, please correct me if I'm wrong here, but despite assurances from YC folk
and Sam himself that you can and should apply even if you have just an idea or
prototype, blog after blog suggest you need to be much further than that to
get through the tough competition.

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d0m
YC is just three months, you don't need a visa. (Although most experts say
you'd put the chance on your side to get one and move to the bay.)

>> [...] should apply even if you have just an idea or prototype, [...]

Yeah.. this one I'm not sure. I would say it really depends of how formidable
the team is and what's the idea. Most YC companies joined with _some_
tractions and market validation. If you really don't have a prototype, then
you need to _somehow_ convey that it has product market fit and how you can
execute it. Just speculating here, but it could be that you have had previous
startup experience, or maybe some unfair advantage, or you have an exceptional
team that have been working together for 10 years, whatever.

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thrwy10
The question is not about the visa after you get into YC and moving to the Bay
area, its about starting a business while on a visa that prevents that.

For After, you could move from an H1 to a B1, or apply for a H1 using the
newly formed company with the money YC gives you. But what about before? Looks
like no one has done this yet.

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d0m
If this is really what is stopping you from starting your business or applying
to YC, feel free to send me an email and I could walk you through what process
we used (Same situation here: different country, applied to YC, establishing
ourselves in the bay).

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wyc
I have used Aptible and can confirm that Chas & Frank follow through with
"Step 0: Make something people want." Deployment on their platform is based on
git and a Dockerfile in your project directory. For me, it's definitely an
improvement over Ansible and its hacked-on AWS support.

I wish them the best!

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swartkrans
> How to Get into Y Combinator

Luck. Competence, execution and a decent enough idea are requisite, but mostly
luck.

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rokhayakebe
For being a disruptor, YC should do away with the interview as the gate.
Focusing on the interview is similar to focusing on a resume. People are
engineers, scientists, artists, makers, doctors, and certainly not resume
writers.

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issa
I have a cousin who is a barrister. She studied Ancient Greek at Oxford. She
was hired out of school on the grounds that anyone who can do well at ancient
greek can learn to practice law. From a hiring perspective, this makes a large
amount of sense.

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ManuelSalazar
Most questions seem to be geared for tech base companies, but with the request
for startups some other type of businesses are going to apply. Which questions
our Food based company should focus on?

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lalos
The questions provided cover everything in a business plan so it's interesting
to see the overlap with a plain old business plan and an agile question-answer
based template.

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tzier
Batchmate of Aptible here (Zen99) - this information is spot on! Great guide
by Chas and team.

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rohunati
lol @ the clinkle joke

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jseip
I enjoyed that one as well :)

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lazyant
s/make something people want/make something people want to pay money for/

