Tales from the trenches: our Y Combinator Interview Experience
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Re: Tales from the trenches: our Y Combinator Interview Experience
#2What happens if you're building an extremely complicated product (not web app)? Is a demo still required?
Re: Tales from the trenches: our Y Combinator Interview Experience
#3Congrats! Did you guys move back to Melbourne after Y Combinator?
Re: Tales from the trenches: our Y Combinator Interview Experience
#4Make 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!
Re: Tales from the trenches: our Y Combinator Interview Experience
#5An 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!
Re: Tales from the trenches: our Y Combinator Interview Experience
#6What happens if you're building an extremely complicated product (not web app)? Is a demo still required?
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?
Re: Tales from the trenches: our Y Combinator Interview Experience
#7[deleted]
Re: Tales from the trenches: our Y Combinator Interview Experience
#8Is 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.
Re: Tales from the trenches: our Y Combinator Interview Experience
#9Interesting? 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.
Re: Tales from the trenches: our Y Combinator Interview Experience
#10Thanks so much. This helps us immensely.