Tales from the trenches: our Y Combinator Interview Experience

http://tomaitch.com/2009/04/16/tales-from-the-trenches-our-y-combinator-interview-experience.html

by tomaitch • 17 years ago

101 32 17 years ago

henryl2• 17 years ago

What happens if you're building an extremely complicated product (not web app)? Is a demo still required?

zhyder• 17 years ago

Nothing is _required_ but lack of a demo will make it much harder to convince an investor that your team gets the market and can build the right product, especially in 10 minutes. You'll have to compensate for that somehow.

If it's a hardware gadget, can you produce renders of the device and mockups of the UI? How have you been able to convince others so far?

henryl2• 17 years ago

We had an old demo but we have since revamped the entire architecture. Would a video suffice?

bentoner• 17 years ago

Congrats! Did you guys move back to Melbourne after Y Combinator?

tomaitch5• 17 years ago

We're back in Melbourne now, planning to return to the Valley in a couple of months and bracing ourselves for the immigration minefield.

siong1987• 17 years ago

May I know what do you have to do to get working visa in the states? I am having the same problem right now. I am currently now in US on student visa.

ananthrk• 17 years ago

Make sure you think and talk about your idea so much that you understand it so intimately and can visualise it so vividly that you get really excited at the thought of it succeeding. Talk to as many people as you can, and learn what you have to say and how you have to say it to get people excited at the thought of how much better the world will be once your product exists.

Brilliant! Congratulations on your successful first step!

abstractwater• 17 years ago

An amazing story, congrats to both of you. I do think your long time friendship (and 6 years in business together) gave you and will continue to give you an advantage. That's even apparent from your writing and I'm sure it emerged through the interview (such as when your friend "rescued" you and viceversa). Good cofounders are rare. Good luck!

eterno2• 17 years ago

Is it just me, or do real entrepreneurs need to be less excited about this YC interview thingy.

If you care so much for third party approval from PG and folks (not that they are not nice/smart ppl) but then just go to a B-school dude and get that nice degree which will surrogate for your competencies in the real world.

BillG didnt need no YC, neither did Google guys and neither did the ipod god - infact even PG didnt need no YC, so please stop this gushing/blogging over your yc interviews as if they are like the biggest thing to happen to your entrepreneurial careers. Its beginning to sound almost like a b-school interview and I wudnt be surprised if YC starts attracting the entrepreneur wannabes for the 'stamp' that they missed from going to a b-school.

pg2• 17 years ago

Actually we did have a prototype of YC: we had an angel investor, Julian Weber, who gave us our first $10k, got all our paperwork done, taught us the rudiments of business, introduced us to one of our two next investors, and let us demo to them in his NYC loft.

We were very lucky to have Julian, and we would have been even better off with YC, which is a superset. In addition to all the above, you get other startups as colleagues, and startup-specific advice.

eterno2• 17 years ago

Exactly, and for those guys who do not get into YC, they still have the option of getting a 'prototype of YC' - which in your own words is almost the same as YC.

I am not saying YC is bad - far from it - I am myself a big fan.

The only thing I was pointing out was that the YC interview rejection/acceptance should ideally have only as much importance as being rejected/accepted from probably another angel investor - which happens more often than not in the startup world and consequently should not be given a lot of importance.

The entrepreneurs who are in the trenches shouldnt really care as much about a rejection or two - its no big deal and even an acceptance might not be a big deal - but if you build something that people want and have something to show for it then feel free to jump over the moon.

tomaitch5• 17 years ago

To some degree I'd agree with you more now having done YC than before.

If you live in the USA and have ways of working yourself into Silicon Valley or some other startup culture, or have some other kind of access to seed funding and mentorship, then you don't need YC to succeed.

For us here in Melbourne, it was much harder. There's a few successful tech entrepreneurs from the 80s and 90s but they don't really get the web. And the angel and VC communities are tiny and unsophisticated.

Sure we could have backed ourselves, left our Melbourne lives behind and headed for Silicon Valley in the hope of finding a way to make things work. And had there not been any other option, perhaps we might have tried that, although at our age, probably not.

YC allowed us to fast-track the whole process. In the space of 5 months we went from just another unknown little startup from Melbourne to demoing our product to some of the world's most astute tech investors and being acclaimed by fellow startup founders and high-profile Valley identities alike.

That's not to say we've succeeded... we have a huge task ahead of us. But YC has helped us do in a few short months what might have taken us years any other way.

tomaitch5• 17 years ago

I should add that what we gained from YC more than anything else was confidence.

With what we know now, we realise we possibly could have come to Silicon Valley and successfully launched our startup without YC-backing, although it still would have taken much longer.

But we didn't know anyone who could introduce us into the culture, and we had no way of knowing how much potential we had and how reasonable it was to believe we could succeed. We weren't even convinced that our idea was a good one until YC backed it.

So I guess, if you're already confident, you don't need YC.

puzzle-out• 17 years ago

I always understand YC as an iconoclastic force (being disruptive etc), but its own success means inevitably it will become something of an idol.

JabavuAdams2• 17 years ago

I'm occasionally irritated by this cliquishness, but it's all about access, access, access. Anyone can apply.

The fact that YC exists now, and the fact that it gets the attention it does make the YC brand a great one to be associated with if you are looking for investment.

The founders you mentioned didn't need YC, but if they were doing it again today, are you saying they wouldn't derive any benefit from applying to YC?

Also, blogging about a YC interview may be a way to get alternate funding back home. For instance, I got a job interview (in Toronto, Canada) in the mid nineties in part because I had interviewed at Microsoft, in Seattle. I didn't get the Microsoft job.

coffeemug• 17 years ago

Access helps. But one thing I've realized is that everyone (well, almost everyone) is knowable if you're willing to make the effort. A little confidence, and a little intelligently done networking will open most doors you're looking for. YC is a great opportunity, but this is a good thing to keep in mind regardless of whether you get in. They can only give you so many shortcuts. Eventually, you'll have to do the heavy lifting yourself.

yef• 17 years ago

That's like saying "Thomas Edison didn't go to college, so nobody should be excited about going to college".

YC is in the business of creating entrepreneurs, which I'd expect most people here would agree is a noble (and profitable) cause. You don't have to read the interview writeups if you don't want to. :)

brk• 17 years ago

Todays landscape is vastly different from when MS and Apple were founded. Even Google for that matter.

In reading through most of the YC-funding companies, it seems they cater not only to Web-type startups, but also very young (on average) founders.

If you've been doing startups for a while, you don't need YC. If you're new to the whole starting/operating a business and raising money, it would seem to be a very valuable relationship. I learned most of the lessons that YC-funded founders will learn along the way. But I did it on my own, and at a cost of about $500K of my personal money when I was in my 20's. I would have gladly given up a few % for the money, and most importantly the advice and experience.

whatusername• 17 years ago

Interesting? Do YC refund/pay for flights? I'm thinking return tickets to SF, plus say 2 nights in a hotel for 2 is probably coming close to $5K(AU$). That's a pretty significant chunk of the seed funding that YC gives you.

On that note though - congrats guys - always great to see some Melbournians doing great stuff on here.

tomaitch5• 17 years ago

We actually stayed for 11 days - we weren't going to fly all that way with the possibility of being unsuccessful, only to return immediately without having any fun.

But we did it on the cheap, and you're in the ballpark with the cost. YC reimbursed us USD $700 like everyone else.

Yep it was a big punt, but totally worth it.

vamsee• 17 years ago

Thanks so much. This helps us immensely.

axod3• 17 years ago

Link goes to a 404 Not Found :/

nl• 17 years ago

You guys are adiso or something, right? My wife just used you to find a flight

randallsquared• 17 years ago

"I was already so convinced of how much better our product was than our competitors I’d forgotten the specifics of exactly how it was better in a way that could easily be explained to someone else."

I have this experience all the time (not just in this sort of situation). Thanks for telling us about it!

Tales from the trenches: our Y Combinator Interview Experience

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