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My Y Combinator experience

marcobambini.com

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Re: My Y Combinator experience

#31

Post by dlubarov »

peteforde wrote: post #9

Sorry guys - if I was interviewing you as a YC partner, I'd pass on you too. You repeatedly express frustration that the interviewers were not intimately familiar with your application, but it doesn't seem if you put much into familiarizing yourself with YC and their flavour of logic. YC: Why are you spending so much time developing this application? Creo: It is not only an application, it is a compiler, a virtual ma…

But some products can't be validated in their early stages. It's hard enough to find early adopters willing to spend hours learning a new IDE and language that no one else uses. If the product is also buggy or missing important features, who would want to use it?

It's also not a brand new paradigm they're inventing. Look at Game Maker which is pretty commercially successful.

Re: My Y Combinator experience

#32

Post by aidos »

S4M wrote: post #19
peteforde wrote: post #9

Sorry guys - if I was interviewing you as a YC partner, I'd pass on you too. You repeatedly express frustration that the interviewers were not intimately familiar with your application, but it doesn't seem if you put much into familiarizing yourself with YC and their flavour of logic. YC: Why are you spending so much time developing this application? Creo: It is not only an application, it is a compiler, a virtual ma…

I think they missed the point of another question as well: > YC: How many apps has been developed with your software? > Creo: As I already said and as I clearly written in our apply, we are currently in pre-beta so we just developed apps for internal usage, nothing is on the market yet. So that means that after all those efforts, you haven't even tried yourself to create an app with the beta you have?

I just watched the video expecting it to show how to build an app. Instead it felt like 15 minutes of messing around with widgets.

If the Creo guys are reading (and I'm sure they are), take a look at how these guys (http://www.atomic.io) show off their product - https://vimeo.com/120035868

Re: My Y Combinator experience

#33

Post by david927 »

benbou09 wrote: post #25
peteforde wrote: post #9

Sorry guys - if I was interviewing you as a YC partner, I'd pass on you too. You repeatedly express frustration that the interviewers were not intimately familiar with your application, but it doesn't seem if you put much into familiarizing yourself with YC and their flavour of logic. YC: Why are you spending so much time developing this application? Creo: It is not only an application, it is a compiler, a virtual ma…

You seem to think that fast product iteration and testing with customers is the only way to go. It isn’t. The most ambitious projects sometimes need bold commitment. For instance if you want to create a space travel company, you will need funding way before you've finished your proof of concept. Now, maybe Y Combinator is simply not their market.

Exactly. Applying to YC was a mistake: it's an accelerator for making money, not an incubator for innovation.

Re: My Y Combinator experience

#34

Post by dia80 »

benbou09 wrote: post #25
peteforde wrote: post #9

Sorry guys - if I was interviewing you as a YC partner, I'd pass on you too. You repeatedly express frustration that the interviewers were not intimately familiar with your application, but it doesn't seem if you put much into familiarizing yourself with YC and their flavour of logic. YC: Why are you spending so much time developing this application? Creo: It is not only an application, it is a compiler, a virtual ma…

You seem to think that fast product iteration and testing with customers is the only way to go. It isn’t. The most ambitious projects sometimes need bold commitment. For instance if you want to create a space travel company, you will need funding way before you've finished your proof of concept. Now, maybe Y Combinator is simply not their market.

Space doesn't preclude customer development. E.g Virgin Galatic pre-selling rides

Re: My Y Combinator experience

#35

Post by josefresco »

Have you read our apply?

you really just said Eclipse?

This information was clearly written in our apply

As I already said

Fix these and you'll go a long way towards succeeding in meetings like this and impressing, "3 young boys" who, like it or not, are deciding your business fate at this stage.

Re: My Y Combinator experience

#36

Post by iSayHi »

archagon wrote: post #12
epikur wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a video walkthrough: https://vimeo.com/108812024 Not sure why it's hidden in the footer.

Hmm. To be honest, I think the best bet these guys have is to get bought out by Apple to work on the Xcode team. This tool is too complicated for normal users and too limited and risky for programmers. Also, the apps it produces look awfully basic. It doesn't seem like you could design an amazing, fluid, and responsive user experience with this software, which is pretty much the bare minimum to get any attention in t…

My thoughts exactly. Actually when I first saw the video I was really shocked by how ridiculously good the product was and how lacking was the market research/fit. I can only see it suitable for high-end professionals like the Adobe Suite as it is.

I think it should be possible to build very solid apps out of this. They just didn't bothered to develop a polished app as they reply to the YC guys suggests. But they should have, as well as providing video tutorials, documentation, etc...

Re: My Y Combinator experience

#37

Post by david927 »

gfosco wrote: post #10
jmckib wrote: post #5

I haven't interviewed with YC, but I felt like I was missing something while reading their account of the interview. I would assume that the YC interviewers DO read applications, and they only ask questions they already know the answer to to see how the founders will respond. I read somewhere that they do this to make sure the founders have already considered every possible objection to their idea. I wonder if these…

That's my reading of it too. When pitching your product, these types of seemingly ignorant questions should be exactly what you're prepared for. Responding with incredulity is a terrible way to win people over.

It seemed to me that the questions (Eclipse? really?) betrayed not just a lack of familiarity or ignorance, but a deep confusion as to technology in general. That question alone made me laugh, as if the person was raising their hand and saying, "I have no idea what I'm doing."

I might possibly await that kind of response if they were pitching people with little-to-no technical background, but from YC I would have expected questions which, if not insightful, were at least moderately appropriate.

From the few minutes I've spent looking at Creo, there were a lot of valid questions to be asked here, but from what I read, none of those were asked. They flew a long way to find out that YC wasn't what they thought it was.

Re: My Y Combinator experience

#38

Post by smoyer »

I think you should probably look at what you've written with a very discerning eye:

"the only thing that matters for them is the business model … I repeat here again: product has zero value."

The YC partners are pretty good at weeding out ideas that will never make money ... are you prepared for this project to be your hobby? There are a couple other red flags in your post such as the idea "you won't need programmers any more. This has been the holy grail of the business world for years because programmers tend to be (pick as many as needed):

- Expensive

- Odd

- Opinionated

Re: My Y Combinator experience

#39

Post by david927 »

akanet wrote: post #28
creolabs wrote: post #23

Guys, I just wanted to describe my experience, I really didn't want to criticize YC or the interview process. YC was our first pitch and we were surely not prepared enough. As I clearly wrote in my post I started with the wrong assumption that our product and our technology could make the difference. I was wrong. Website is more a landing page that a real site. Product is not yet released to the general public. We pl…

Your language is highly critical. There's some wiggle room for English not being your first language but you did not have kind words to say about pretty much anyone from YC, and you look really bad because of it.

It's strange you should say that, because I didn't get that at all. He was being honest. Why would that be a problem?

Re: My Y Combinator experience

#40

Post by Red_Tarsius »

creolabs wrote: post #23

Guys, I just wanted to describe my experience, I really didn't want to criticize YC or the interview process. YC was our first pitch and we were surely not prepared enough. As I clearly wrote in my post I started with the wrong assumption that our product and our technology could make the difference. I was wrong. Website is more a landing page that a real site. Product is not yet released to the general public. We pl…

Italy hasn't caught up with the "fail fast, fail often" culture, so the comments sound harsher then intended. Don't beat up yourself, You're getting high-quality feedback from users who most likely failed (and learned) many, many times. :)
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