Ask PG: Given that there will be more interviews, will there be more spots?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1859466

by marcamillion • 16 years ago

23 18 16 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

More interviews makes me more nervous that there is more competition.

Or is the competition the same as last batch, because a proportional amount of spots have been opened up?

cperciva3• 16 years ago

PG used to say "if you're not accepted, it doesn't mean that you're not good, it just means that we have a limited number of spots", but recently he has tended towards saying "YC will take as many good teams as we find". I'm not sure if this is a change in YC's philosophy about accepting teams or just that PG is less concerned about not hurting the feelings of people who aren't accepted.

(PG: I apologize if I'm completely off here, but the above is my impression of what you've been saying, at least -- if I've misunderstood what you've been saying I hope you'll correct me!)

In any case, the answer is the same: First, make sure that the YC team knows that they'd be idiots to not accept you; and second, if you're not accepted, go ahead with your startup anyway, and make sure that the entire world knows that the YC team were idiots for not accepting you.

pg3• 16 years ago

You may be conflating two types of acceptance. We have a limited (though now larger) number of interview slots, so there it's the case that we can't interview everyone we want to. E.g. there are groups I voted to interview, but that we won't be interviewing, because not enough other YC partners did. But there's no such limit on the number of startups we can accept out of interviews.

marcamillion2• 16 years ago

Ok Thanks. That's what I wanted to know.

rogerjin• 16 years ago

Hey Paul, when I submitted my app I submitted as a single person. After the deadline I added two critical co-founders to help execute the technical side. Since then, I've been concerned that the app would have been considerably strengthened had I included the other co-founders in the app. Would like to hear your thoughts on this

cperciva3• 16 years ago

You may be conflating two types of acceptance. [...]

Aha! Yes, I'm sure that's what happened.

So the short-listing stage is competitive, but the final accept/reject is based solely on the individual merits?

pg3• 16 years ago

I would guess it's going to be closer to the latter. Which alarms me, because we'd been hoping we'd be able to pause at around the same size for a cycle, after growing so much last cycle.

But so far when we've grown things have always turned out ok, modulo the usual minor breakage.

Anyone know where we can buy one of those vats they use to cook food on navy ships? We use the largest size home slow cookers you can get, and already we have 8 of them, which is starting to get awkward.

bkrausz• 16 years ago

Honestly, I wonder how much more the YC kitchen can scale. In my fraternity we had a chef preparing dinner for ~50, and he maxed out 2 convection ovens and industrial cookware. Granted, it was a larger variety than "lots of glop," but still...

Maybe time for either a kitchen upgrade or some catering.

netcan• 16 years ago

A possible model for copying would be saudi charities' setup for feeding penniless pilgrims on haj. Rice and lentils (sometimes cooked by billionaires) served to thousands.

iamelgringo2• 16 years ago

Groen makes them. You can order them direct:

http://www.groenkettle.com/commercial_kettles_self_contained...

or from Atlanta Fixture company:

http://www.atlantafixture.com/ItemSummary.aspx?CategoryGuid=...

There's also Cleavland kettles:

http://www.webstaurantstore.com/third2857/products/steam-ket...

or, have an Amazon Prime account?

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dap...

pg3• 16 years ago

Thanks! Those things look serious. I wonder how you clean them.

nikcub• 16 years ago

startups are founded in cycles so I guess you can't expect your program size to be constant.

we are definitely on the upswing part of the cycle atm

cperciva3• 16 years ago

Maybe it's time to look at renting a restaurant for the dinners? It seems crazy to outfit an expensive kitchen just for one dinner per week for half the year, and I'm guessing that YC cohorts now are large enough that you could take over an entire restaurant (and thereby avoid the "YC speakers don't want to talk in public" problem, because there wouldn't be any non-YC people present).

robryan• 16 years ago

In line with the idea that if your struggling to keep up with workload then your not charging enough, perhaps here the total value of the program has become a lot higher than the equity being taken, hence the number of great applications.

Wonder if there would be merit in taking some more equity as a way to try and cap the size of future batches.

marcamillion2• 16 years ago

That assumes he wants to cap the size of future batches.

He has said, multiple times, that he is not sure how large is too large and will continue growing as long as he hasn't hit that threshold...sooo....we'll see.

vietor• 16 years ago

My impression is that a change of that nature would select against the applicants with strong alternative routes to funding. Either because they are already well connected and experienced, already have traction, or already have some other advantages.

So while it would reduce the number of applicants, it would also reduce the overall quality of applicants. Given that the problem with too many applicants is sifting through them to find the good ones, eliminating the good ones outright would be worse than merely having a higher chance of overlooking them.

Ask PG: Given that there will be more interviews, will there be more spots?

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