"We want random access to your thoughts, not to listen to a single path through them, prepared in advance."
You can have both.
Without having true insight into exactly what information you hope to take away in 10 minutes, I would think that a cohesiveness to the order of the information, the pain felt by the potential customer, and a picture of that customer - are all valuable inputs.
My suggestion is that startups put that information in order themselves.
That's a very open-ended question. If you had taken things in a good direction from there, I bet he would have just let you talk.
“So people can all write to the same place. So it’s like a wiki?” he asked.
This question isn't really driving either. He's just reflecting his understanding back and giving you more of a chance to explain clearly.
The missteps continued when he asked, “Who needs what you’re making?”
Here's where pg started driving. And he was doing you a favor. You only get 10 minutes to convince him that you're making something people want, and you've wasted minutes already. If you're someone who's bad at interviewing but is good at understanding customers, this question might sift the gold nugget from the sludge. Unfortunately, your answer was just more sludge.
I'm zeroing in here on what you did wrong, but overall I'm encouraged and impressed that you not only owned your mistake, but made a public blog post about it. And now I'm watching to see what you do with the feedback you're getting.
My reaction from reading both your original pitch and your revised pitch is that you were being quite vague. PG knows about the problems of collaboration, limitations of current tools, etc, you don't need to sell him on the existence of pain points. What you do have to sell him on is how your tool is uniquely suited for solving these pain points, which is what I missed entirely in your blog post. His interview style is to cut you off when you are telling him things that he already knows or when you are being to vague. He will force you to be specific and drill down on the points of your idea that are most critical.
The part that is most striking to me about the vagueness of the pitch is:
>“Not really, no. A wiki is more like a google doc – it has one true version at any given time. Sure, there’s a revision history, but nobody lives in the revision history. Rocketr is about having one author for a given note, and a threaded conversation around it.”
The answer to that question is yes it is like a wiki - with these key differences. With only ten minutes to pitch, anchoring your concept to something that is well understood by your audience is critical.
If you really don't think it is like a wiki at all (which would be hard to believe), then anchor it to something else that will be easy to understand, e.g. "it's like email, but the conversations get stored and revisited and edited at will by any of the participants." Anything you can use to make your concept clear in an instant is extra time to sell them on your team and your vision for why this idea can take over the world.
My experience with potential investors is that it's helpful to have a general order in your head, but you should also be prepared to jump around. I've heard this advice from other YC startups as well.
It helps to start by framing your problem space and audience. That's where a story and empathy can come in. But there are people who will "get it" right away and jump right into your product, without ever asking about anything else.
Then there are those who will be laser-focused on your business model and spend the entire time talking about that.
And I've spoken to some who know my market well and just want to hear about our competitors and how we are different.
It all comes down to understanding your audience, speaking to your audience, and addressing the topics they care about. At least, in terms of an interview with an incubator (or potential investor).
> But it's widely assumed that they won't remember the application at all by the time of the interview.
Really? They're calling you in for an interview and they don't have your application in front of them and haven't refreshed their memory? YC gets results, so I guess if it works it works, but I find it surprising that the assumption is they're going to be unprepared like that?
There is only a minute of deliberation between interviews which isn't enough time to pull out the next application and refresh on it before the next interview is scheduled to begin.
I know from experience it is hard to think objectively right after a YC interview rejection - but use this as an opportunity to be introspective and learn from the experience.
I think whether or not they 'remember' the nitty gritty details of the app during the interview is irrelevant.
You need to sell them on your vision and team during the interview. You should be able to do this within 5 minutes whether or not they have the foggiest idea of what you are doing.
You can have both.
Without having true insight into exactly what information you hope to take away in 10 minutes, I would think that a cohesiveness to the order of the information, the pain felt by the potential customer, and a picture of that customer - are all valuable inputs.
My suggestion is that startups put that information in order themselves.