Your language is highly critical. There's some wiggle room for English not being your first language but you did not have kind words to say about pretty much anyone from YC, and you look really bad because of it.
Things like "(Eclipse Holy God, you really just said Eclipse??)" really come across as pretty negative to me and I'm no big fan of Eclipse.
All the questions asked seemed pretty reasonable to me - after all the person asking the questions is looking at it from a business rather than a technical perspective. If someone who is running a company can't adapt to the type of person asking the question then I would see that as a pretty major weakness in the team.
I read that statement less as arrogance and more as one's internal thought process when an interview starts to go in the wrong direction. Before any interview or presentation, I have an idea in my mind of how the conversation is going to go (some canned answers here and there for info that requires a concise explanation, some general ideas to touch on, etc.).
I'd guess that never in these dev's rehearsals did they imagine they'd be defending their validity as a product over a product like Eclipse.
That's not to say that the question was wrong to ask; in fact, I think it was one of the most important questions asked at that interview because it gives the Creo team great insight into how people are trying to "fit" their product into the current market. I do think, however, that the question threw the Creo team for a loop because it doesn't allow them to highlight the benefits of Creo in a meaningful way.
And so you address that and then you move on. Use that to shape the direction the interview takes you in rather than as a way to get irritated. Having eclipse as an anchorpoint helps because you can now show how you're different from something the interviewer already knows. That's much easier than talking in a vacuum.
These questions quite unambiguously pointed at YC never giving their application proper attention. Perhaps they skimmed it, but even then they should've picked up that the product was for non-developers. So to people who spent days writing the application and planning their life around the interview it would look like a half-ass effort on the YC part. It's only natural that they are pissed about the whole experience. One can hardly blame them.
Yeah but then you could claim asking "why you wouldn't use a banana instead" is a useful conversation catalyst.
Clearly eclipse has nothing to do with their technology or product - it just showed ignorance. He even said prior to the remark, it was a application builder for people who don't code - yet they persisted.
YC do admit they make mistakes, and I think this is one of them. It was a terrible interview on both sides.
...it was a application builder for people who don't code...
People have been trying to build application builders for beginners who don't (yet) code at least since Kemeny and Kurtz invented BASIC in 1964. Successful intentional examples of this include BASIC, Logo, Hypercard, and PHP.
History shows that people are willing to use these until they realize that programming is hard, and then they hire someone to do it for them. History also shows that developers are completely oblivious to the actual challenges that end users will face until they put it in front of them. For a random example, most developers will hapilly expose the file system to users without realizing that in usability studies, most computer using college graduates do not understand the idea of a file system with directories inside of directories, files at every level, and two files named the same thing in two different directories actually being different files.
You can't develop something for people who don't code without putting it in front of people who don't code and accepting harsh feedback. By their own admission, they failed to do this basic thing. Without even looking, I can guarantee that their half-million lines of code and whiz bang technology is entirely unusable by their target audience. And anyone in their target audience who decides to stick with the technology will quickly want to hire a programmer. Whose first question will be whether they can rewrite the application in a more familiar environment. Which they will as soon as they dare. Therefore no matter how much you don't think you're in competition with mainstream programming environments, you really, really are.
Don't believe me? Excel has proven to be an insanely successful technology for getting non-programmers to write useful applications. Ever talked to a programmer who inherited a complex application written in Excel by a non-programmer? My point is made.
I am sure the YC person is as aware of this as I am. What do we have? We have a team that devoted an insane amount of time in creating a piece of cool technology which certainly is useless for its target purpose. This team clearly has no idea how to make something that customers want. Furthermore they don't show any sign of caring about how to make a successful business. They may be fun to talk to about technology, but is this a group you want to invest in?
YC made the obviously right choice here. And asked the right questions.
> ... without realizing that in usability studies, most computer using college graduates do not understand the idea of a file system with directories inside of directories, files at every level, and two files named the same thing in two different directories actually being different files.
That claim seems hard to believe. Would you have a link to one of these usability studies?
I actually would of reacted the exact same way. It's clear that this is a completely new dev environment and an intentional divorce from xcode/eclipse etc. The people interviewing couldn't get that. They showed zero understanding of the problem space. They were clearly stupid.
>The people interviewing couldn't get that. They showed zero understanding of the problem space. They were clearly stupid.
It's always possible that they wanted to see how the team would react to those types of questions. We had a very similar experience during our interview (asked questions that we thought were clearly explained in the application).
The people interviewing want to be educated on why the current solutions aren't good enough. Being snarky or dogmatic isn't a good way to educate someone who wants to learn. The founders could have done a better job.
If you are trying to convince someone of something (customer to buy your product, YC to invest, etc), I think you have to offer a conciliatory approach. Keep the gripes to yourself. If you have to push back, do it incredibly politely.
Every question that YC asked (Eclipse after Xcode, for example) will be representative of what a potential customer thinks when they read the creator's web site.
All of the explanatory stuff was technical and waffly; the description is way too long. If it's "drag and drop app building", then say that and show examples of why this is the foray that will succeed where others failed.
A lot of the language in the write-up was heavily laced with attitude. Noting ages of the interviewees for example implies inexperience in my reading of it. "They must be wrong, not me."
