How to Hack the YC Application

by rjpinnell • 14 years ago

30 17 14 years ago

stevear• 14 years ago

I imagine the best strategy is to be yourself, answer the questions truthfully and have a good idea and not dedicate a bunch of effort to hacking the application.

It's like reading a bunch of books on how to get a first date. The actual getting the date is not the important part...it's the overall being a person that is worth dating that is important. If you are worth dating then getting a date isn't hard.

I am curious what PG has to say about this.

SamHo• 14 years ago

I know Rene from the Forecast team and while I also had an initial negative response to the term "hack" everything they say in the application process makes sense.

Really, they just wrote a hack to find YC alumni, then see how they were connected to them to get some intros.

I think trying to meet as many YC alumni as possible makes sense and if you can get a recommendation from one of them even better.

In today's world of so many applicants and noise, I think showing your due diligence in talking to other YC alumni and then having them vouch for you is a bit like a pre-emptive interview process and valuable to the YC application review team.

It's kind of like back at my days at Google when I would interview people and they didn't really even have much understanding of how Google made money (i.e. the online advertising business) I would almost have to immediately veto the candidate.

Just my 2 cents.

boredguy8• 14 years ago

This story is about what you do after you have a product. It presupposes the product then identifies ways to market to a very specific audience. In that respect, the article seems spot-on.

gruseom2• 14 years ago

I am curious what PG has to say about this.

You're in luck. From the link tomblomfield supplied:

"Actually it would be better to expend that effort on your company or the application. Don't spend a lot of time spamming YC alumni trying to collect recommendations. They don't carry any weight with us unless they are very strong. We can tell the difference between a recommendation that's being made for our sake (because the alum thinks it would damaging for us to overlook the application), and one that's being made for the sake of the applicant (e.g. because the alum is benevolent and they begged him to recommend them)."

siong1987• 14 years ago

For those who are thinking about getting recommendations from YC alum should really read this: http://www.quora.com/Y-Combinator/Should-you-try-to-get-endo...

tomblomfield2• 14 years ago

Or this http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3667657

tomblomfield2• 14 years ago

I'm a little skeptical about this.

Recommendations from YC alums that you barely know should be pretty worthless. I've been asked repeatedly by people I've met for < 30 mins to recommend them, and I've always had to politely decline. The recommendation mechanism is meant for people with whom YC founders have actually worked or studied.

My advice would be:

- explain in simple language what your product actually does. Please avoid buzzwords.

- explain why your team is awesome & what you've accomplished (together & individually)

- build stuff, release it early & talk to your users. Then explain in your application what you learned

sumukh1• 14 years ago

-Instead of leveraging your network for recommendations, ask for advice and tips on your product (then go out and execute on them).

I think they are trying to optimize the wrong things. I'd much rather they spend a few days testing your business model and hacking on the business than the YC app itself. You'll probably learn more that way. Plus if your business model is successful and you have traction, it's really helps your app.

Chances are you won't find a spot into YC, but you'll probably still have your company in a few months. Which one do you really want to optimize? I'd go for optimizing the business with less of a focus on the YC app.

nc• 14 years ago

Spend 2 weeks on your product/biz and a day on your application. It will be a lot stronger.

tnash• 14 years ago

My team applied, and we did not get any recommendations. I tried to be as simple as I could but the scope of the project is quite enormous. Hopefully I provided the right amount of information while not overwhelming or being confusing.

We have no product, just a good idea. I hope YC gets the amount of passion and enthusiasm we have for providing the product, not just to make money, but because of its potential to change the shape of technology.

We'll all find out soon, and I wish good luck to everyone that applied. If we get to the interview stage I'll be sure to post our application so people can look at it, and I encourage everybody else to do so. It was nice during the process to read all the apps that can be found around the web.

eli_gottlieb• 14 years ago

Goodhart's Law in action.

gruseom2• 14 years ago

Thank you for this. I hadn't heard of Goodhart's Law. It expresses an intuition in a beautiful way. Really a kind of incompleteness/uncertainty principle, and such things can have profound implications.

namank• 14 years ago

I would be very very surprised if the man who has written Hackers and Painters gave as much weight to recommendation letters as this post would lead us to believe. Then again, I don`t know what YC is like.

Seems to me that talent, hardwork, and all the cliche stuff would take you a lot farther.

mirsadm• 14 years ago

I'd also like to add that "tricking" the YC partners into an interview is not a wise choice of words :)

kristianc• 14 years ago

This reminds me a lot of those "How to get into Oxbridge" type books. Not everything can be reduced to a process.

pedalpete• 14 years ago

"It goes without saying that until we actually make it into YC, these hacks, ideas, and suggestions are totally worthless."

So they are only sharing what they did, not what was successful. I'd rather work on my business than spend obscene amounts of time hacking the YC application process. If I don't get in, I'll still have the product, those who try to hack the system will only have the knowledge of what doesn't work.

colbyh• 14 years ago

Did you read the same article as I did? Nothing they are doing seems that extreme and looks to have actually helped their product - other than possibly reading the PG articles which I think most people should do anyways. I'm pretty sure using the CrunchBase API (such an underrated tool) didn't take long to figure out either, as Eric isn't much of a slouch.

Disclaimer: Current Austinite and fan/friend of Forecast.

How to Hack the YC Application

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