Goodhart's Law in action.
How to Hack the YC Application
11–18 of 18 posts
Re: How to Hack the YC Application
#12I 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.
Re: How to Hack the YC Application
#13I'd also like to add that "tricking" the YC partners into an interview is not a wise choice of words :)
Re: How to Hack the YC Application
#14I'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 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 exp…
-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.
Re: How to Hack the YC Application
#15This reminds me a lot of those "How to get into Oxbridge" type books. Not everything can be reduced to a process.
Re: How to Hack the YC Application
#16"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.
Re: How to Hack the YC Application
#17Goodhart's Law in action.
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.
Re: How to Hack the YC Application
#18"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 wor…
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.