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Show HN: iPG - YC Interview Simulator

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Re: Show HN: iPG - YC Interview Simulator

#71

Post by mindcrime »

Gring wrote: post #56
mceachen wrote: post #25

When talking to PG and the other YC partners, be substantive, and get straight to the point. DO NOT BEAT AROUND THE BUSH. Do not hem and haw. "Uhm"s and "uh"s don't lend an aura of intelligence. Use precise and concise language. You aren't pitching a VC that will ask you what your "secret sauce" is. He talks quickly, and so do the other YC partners. Try to match their tempo (as you should when talking to anyone).

> Try to match their tempo (as you should when talking to anyone). That's stupid advice. Why should I always match my tempo to somebody else? I'm not going to adapt to your talking speed for the same reason that you're probably not going to try to match mine. I'm not your monkey.

That's stupid advice. Why should I always match my tempo to somebody else?

Because it's an important element of building rapport. And rapport is important if you want to get someone on "your side" in a discussion.

for the same reason that you're probably not going to try to match mine

But people usually do just that. It's a fairly well established thing, that people in a conversation usually eventually match each other's talking pace. And it generally feels awkward when you're talking to someone and that doesn't happen.

Re: Show HN: iPG - YC Interview Simulator

#72

Post by mindcrime »

Given the nature of this conversation, I'll throw in a gratuitous plug for "pgbot" a half-baked "AIML implementation of pg" that I cooked up one night in response to something somebody said here (or on #startups).

https://github.com/mindcrime/pgbot

It might be fun to get some other people to fork that and start making it "smarter."

Re: Show HN: iPG - YC Interview Simulator

#73

Post by austingulati »

elliottcarlson wrote: post #38
baddox wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find your claim odd, since I've always found his public speaking very competent.

I won't disagree that he is competent, but at the YC talk in New York, his public speaking was filled with filler sounds where it seemed he was nervous to talk in front of a large group of people (even if that was not the case).

Not sure if you've already seen this, but he wrote about his thoughts on speaking and writing [1]. He does admit that he isn't the best public speaker but puts more value in content rather than presentation in these situations.

[1] http://paulgraham.com/speak.html

Re: Show HN: iPG - YC Interview Simulator

#75

Post by sp332 »

Gring wrote: post #56
mceachen wrote: post #25

When talking to PG and the other YC partners, be substantive, and get straight to the point. DO NOT BEAT AROUND THE BUSH. Do not hem and haw. "Uhm"s and "uh"s don't lend an aura of intelligence. Use precise and concise language. You aren't pitching a VC that will ask you what your "secret sauce" is. He talks quickly, and so do the other YC partners. Try to match their tempo (as you should when talking to anyone).

> Try to match their tempo (as you should when talking to anyone). That's stupid advice. Why should I always match my tempo to somebody else? I'm not going to adapt to your talking speed for the same reason that you're probably not going to try to match mine. I'm not your monkey.

The word "should" is ambiguous. Here it doesn't mean some kind of moral duty, but just that you'll generally have better results.

Re: Show HN: iPG - YC Interview Simulator

#77

Post by lusr »

sparknlaunch12 wrote: post #62
lusr wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh no don't get me wrong - the site is great and I expect it'd be very useful for any entrepreneur, whether seeking investment or not! I'm commenting on the GP's post, which implies some people aren't capable of answering questions this quickly because they have a different mental processing style. The reality is they need to realise they're approaching people with little free time who have to quickly sort the wheat…

Okay. Thanks for the clarity. So the actual rehearsal process would be beneficial? Maybe without a timer?

Yes, and keep the timer! It's a critical aspect of evaluating whether your answer is solid.

Re: Show HN: iPG - YC Interview Simulator

#79

Post by c1sc0 »

ColinHayhurst wrote: post #78

Take a look at this great list of questions too by Francis Dierick who created an iPhone app too. http://fr.anc.is/2012/01/21/top-100-startup-questions/

Thanks for sharing this Colin, I originally wanted to do something more fun & pg-like for the iPhone as well but I decided against doing fancy stuff in favor of actually prepping for the interview. I actually only published the app to the AppStore quite a bit after our interview.

Re: Show HN: iPG - YC Interview Simulator

#80

Post by mhartl »

michael_nielsen wrote: post #34

The person who is perhaps the brightest [1] person I've ever met would - if this is a fair simulation - be rejected by YC. When answering a question he often won't even have begun to reply after fifteen seconds. I wonder how often YC rejects people such as that. [1] I mean this in a particular way: capable of extraordinarily deep insight very, very rapidly. Just not 15 seconds rapid.

I don't think he would be rejected, at least not for slowness of thought. If he were applying to YC with an idea he had thought about deeply, the answers to the questions in this simulation would be mere cache lookups, requiring negligible CPU. Only in the case of a cache miss would he have to think very much, and even then one or two cache misses probably wouldn't be enough to sink his application, especially considering how good the YC partners are at detecting deep intelligence.
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