So you got a YC interview? Now what.. (from the founders of Snaptalent, YC winter 08)

http://blog.snaptalent.com/?p=5

by sharpshoot • 18 years ago

51 37 18 years ago

blog.snaptalent.com

fallentimes• 18 years ago

Very insightful - thank you.

freax6• 18 years ago

> 1. Product advice: Paul Graham is one of the most astute product advisers i know.

I am sure this is true, but how many product advisers do you know?

When I look at that last batch of acceptees... I am very surprised at some who made the cut. I'm not sold on YC's judgement. I think they may hit a few home runs just due to taking a lot of swings rather than due to an ability to identify the good pitches, and get lucky that a couple hundred fair pitches are proffered every time. Which leads into the next point...

> Pg and co get so many applications and have so little time to read them that you should expect that the YC partners don’t have any idea what you do

...Which means you're giving ownership to people who don't care enough about what you do in particular to spend time on it; this is a big mismatch if you've spent a lot of time on your project, so their approach is more aligned with people who come in with ideas sans code. They have dozens of other start-ups to deal with, not to mention all the time some of them spend on this site.

So the main value in YC seems to be demo day -- getting a stage to present to a large number of moneyed interests at once, plus the news coverage, so you either get the real investment dollars you need or get acquired.

All the information you get is pretty much replaceable -- you can find it other places -- but YC takes the write-protect tab off the floppy so instead of just you being stuck in read-only mode you can write out information that is seen by people you want to see it.

At least that's what it appears their primary value is to me.

sharpshoot3• 18 years ago

To point 1: YC backs teams not ideas. Smart early stage investors back teams.

To point 2: AT Interview stage, from one application form how familiar do you expect someone to be once you've read 500 forms. This is a pretty selfish viewpoint. Once you get into YC and get to know everyone YC (in particular Jessica) works extremely hard for you and care about what you do.

Some companies like rescuetime and heroku were well past the idea stage when they did YC. So your comments are a bit of an overgeneralisation.

tptacek6• 18 years ago

Continuing the reasoning of the original comment: have you funded a lot of early stage companies, or worked with people who do?

freax6• 18 years ago

> YC backs teams not ideas.

Every team works on an idea. A lot of the last batch are underwhelming:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/14/y-combinator-demo-day-r...

> AT Interview stage, from one application form how familiar do you expect someone to be once you've read 500 forms

If they're flying you in for an interview you're no longer in the pool of 500 forms. If they are asking questions that make it clear they aren't paying attention to the information you've already given them it just goes to show that your grandiose plans are fairly inconsequential to them and they're only tossing their spare change at you.

> Some companies like rescuetime and heroku were well past the idea stage

Companies that have a lot done already are the ones that are going to run into the mismatch I talked about. Here's this great thing you made; now you're giving ownership to people who don't feel about it the same way. There's not a lot of investment of money, time, or emotion on the part of YC. So it seems to me that the exchange is equity for exposure -- basically you've started off your marketing budget at the 6% that YC takes.

ubudesign2• 18 years ago

All of these are good points but the reality is something else. you can take whatever yc says on its face value or simply look at the types of companies they take and the common theme in them as well as the types of persons.

tptacek6• 18 years ago

They "care" when they accept you. Before that, not so much. These are problems people have with all VC, not just YC. I agree. If you're serious, bootstrap.

gscott4• 18 years ago

Anyone can bootstrap but once you are done do you have an audience with people who if they invest in your product? If not then you have to make a web app that is going to generate an income for you and your co-founders.

pg4• 18 years ago

If you're serious, bootstrap.

Does Google count as serious to you? They took investor money. Practically every successful startup does.

RyanGWU822• 18 years ago

> I am sure this is true, but how many product advisers do you know?

I know a ton. Many aren't that good, but everyone thinks they must be a great product advisor. Isn't "idea guy" just news.yc slang for the same thing?

freax6• 18 years ago

> but everyone thinks they must be a great product advisor

Saying PG is better than the average random person with an opinion isn't giving a lot of credit.

garbowza• 18 years ago

I'm amazed at the people who continually doubt the value of YC. Why not just ask those founders who have been part of YC - nearly all of them will tell you being in YC was invaluable. Isn't that all the proof that is needed?

ericb• 18 years ago

Asking participants is not a great way to judge an activity's value, due to our natural biases. The study mentioned below comes to mind. That said, I suspect the value is high.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance#Empirical_...

daniel-cussen• 18 years ago

Well, there's this bias people have to say whatever choice they made was the best one, so the founder's opinions is not necessarily enough.

pg4• 18 years ago

you're giving ownership to people who don't care enough about what you do in particular to spend time on it

At the interview stage all we've seen is an application form with 120-word answers, and maybe a demo. And we're interviewing 50-60 groups over 3 days. It's not that surprising that we don't know in great detail what each plans to do. But once we accept a group, we spend a lot of time talking about the product with them-- literally down to the shapes of buttons.

And this is true with groups that have already launched just as much as those that haven't. In any startup, most development happens after launch. Every (good) startup is sans ideas 6 months in, compared to what they'll eventually do.

freax6• 18 years ago

> all we've seen is an application form with 120-word answers, and maybe a demo.

The reject group also includes applicants that have stuff to show that you didn't even look at.

RichardPrice• 18 years ago

It's a really well-written and interesting article Sumon, thanks.

So you got a YC interview? Now what.. (from the founders of Snaptalent, YC winter 08)

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