Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Paul Graham's Mixergy interview - How YC helped 172 startups take off

mixergy.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 55 posts

Re: Paul Graham's Mixergy interview - How YC helped 172 startups take off

#41

Post by bootload »

amohr wrote: post #9

Moral of the story: If you get an interview, be really nice to Jessica.

"... Moral of the story: If you get an interview, be really nice to Jessica ..."

Bad idea.

I can't tell for sure, but what Jessica is most likely interpreting is sub-conscious gestural leakage. A fancy term meaning you exhibit both facial and gestural signs that can be read. For example if you are be probed to check for flexibility, a necessity in "fog of war" situations in Startups, and you exhibit a "fearful" or "sad" facial micro-expression ~ http://face.paulekman.com/aboutmett2.aspx this could be how Jessica is determining a flake. You can tell a person maybe showing certain emotions but you cannot be sure if they are "conscious" (lying) or "unconscious". Judgment is required. Conscious lying can also be masked by certain types of pharmaceuticals which can mask these feelings.

YCombinator could improve themselves in the selection process by getting better at recognising the fundamentals of faces, emotion and deception ~ http://www.paulekman.com/micros/ Naturals such as Jessica interpret but not fully understand the science of it meaning you can get false positives.

Re: Paul Graham's Mixergy interview - How YC helped 172 startups take off

#42

Post by kn0thing »

kn0thing wrote: post #34
kn0thing wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wanted to read these comments before watching the interview... big mistake.

OK, I'm listening to the interview. And confirming that everyone now knows about "the muffins." Andrew, I love what you're doing at Mixergy, but you weren't giving enough credit to Steve. I hope I didn't say in our interview that there was something in me that made YC call us back or something in me that they saw. If I did (sorry, it's late here and I'm too lazy to relisten to our interview) I'm taking this comment f…

edit for clarity:

>[...] was either because of Steve and me OR because of Steve alone.

Re: Paul Graham's Mixergy interview - How YC helped 172 startups take off

#43

Post by alanthonyc »

patio11 wrote: post #13

Worth the hour of your time. One of many interesting tidbits was what personality traits predict success in YC founders (positive: determination, raw intelligence, and ability to sell $30,000 of Obama-branded cereal boxes, negative: meek body language).

Wimps need not apply.

Re: Paul Graham's Mixergy interview - How YC helped 172 startups take off

#44

Post by alanthonyc »

alabut wrote: post #23

I know I'm not the only poker player on here that loved that Matt Maroon was the first person PG thought of when singling out characteristics of founders. And even better - now it makes our biweekly YC poker game actually feel productive. I'm only half-joking. I definitely don't think it's a coincidence that I started playing the game over the same period of years that I grew the itch to join and launch startups. It…

Is it all hold-em all the time, round robin, dealer's choice, or what?

Re: Paul Graham's Mixergy interview - How YC helped 172 startups take off

#45

Post by mikeyur »

sushi wrote: post #21
antidaily wrote: post #19

"And, like, who gives a fuck about China? When did [google] make the decision to make their search engine work on a whole bunch of crappy cheap computers? That's important!" I loved that.

Damn Right. That for me was the high of the interview.

I have a hetero man-crush on PG because of this interview.

Re: Paul Graham's Mixergy interview - How YC helped 172 startups take off

#46

Post by gridspy »

Andrew: I love your "Home of the ambitious Upstart" along with a great deal of praise for your interviewing style. I look forward to being a success and doing an interview with you.

Paul: Thanks for taking the time to do this interview. I really enjoyed meeting you in video form and hope that we can chat sometime. I love HN and thanks for investing your time in this "time sink" (as you described it). I for one spend a lot of time thinking about YC, even though I am way too busy making Gridspy work to come out and do a YC round.

Re: Paul Graham's Mixergy interview - How YC helped 172 startups take off

#47

Post by gridspy »

dabent wrote: post #27

I loved the way Paul seems to concentrate on his strengths and works with other people who have strengths where he doesn't. He can concentrate on turning a startup into a winner, knowing he's got good legal advice and someone to judge people in 10 minutes flat.

I think that is an important strength in any successful entrepreneur, leader or manager.

I love the whole "hire experts and get out of the way" approach to team building.

Re: Paul Graham's Mixergy interview - How YC helped 172 startups take off

#48

Post by icey »

alabut wrote: post #23

I know I'm not the only poker player on here that loved that Matt Maroon was the first person PG thought of when singling out characteristics of founders. And even better - now it makes our biweekly YC poker game actually feel productive. I'm only half-joking. I definitely don't think it's a coincidence that I started playing the game over the same period of years that I grew the itch to join and launch startups. It…

I totally agree.

Poker players have to be able to do math in their heads while under stress. Or consider psychology with a bunch of money on the line.

Grace under pressure seems like a pretty decent quality for a founder to have.

Re: Paul Graham's Mixergy interview - How YC helped 172 startups take off

#49

Post by medianama »

sushi wrote: post #24
icey wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is something like YCombinator in India: http://iaccelerator.org/

Nobody has heard of this Indian version and more than that: 1)What are the credentials of the guy/organization who started it? Well IIM, the parent behind this clone produces managers and in Tech World, Managers are not good at anything. As Jason Fried said in that bigthink interview, the managers just interrupt and don't let the real doers do their job. 2)How many companies they have invested in? Well, not many. 3)L…

you don't have to be so harsh. At least they are trying. Better than nothing.

Re: Paul Graham's Mixergy interview - How YC helped 172 startups take off

#50

Post by derefr »

weaksauce wrote: post #11
amohr wrote: post #9

Moral of the story: If you get an interview, be really nice to Jessica.

As an aside, I cannot stand people being rude to people that they perceive as the receptionist or somehow lesser in stature to them. Take someone out to lunch and watch how they interact with the waiter and that will tell you a lot about their character.

A receptionist is in lesser stature to you, though—you're trying to deal with the receptionist's boss as an equal, so when you get the boss's subordinate, they are then logically your subordinate as well (assuming transitivity of classism.) To put it another way—no matter how old you are, your friend's little brother has less stature than you. I'm not saying this is right or proper—but this is how the math works, when, for example, figuring out how polite to cast your speech as in Japanese.

Separately, though, I do think that the very concept of being made to deal with someone's personal secretary instead of the person themselves is a rude gesture by that person, because usually a personal secretary has no authority to help you with your problems. It's the same sort of rudeness implied by redirecting you five times to different departments on a support call, but immediately and in person. (Note that a receptionist in, e.g. a company lobby is a totally separate and useful thing; it is only when the receptionist has a one-to-one relationship with the number of people they route information to that it becomes a snub.)

Post reply on HN