While i do agree with some of the negative comments here regarding the lack of market research, i also gotta say: the questions (Eclipse, Xcode) seem rather... well, off.
My Y Combinator experience
41–50 of 152 posts
Re: My Y Combinator experience
#42As someone who applied and interviewed, I can say that their acting as if they have not read the application is really frustrating (even if they have). We are in a market that is fairly complex and so their questions would have been considered silly to anyone who is knowledgeable in the topic area.
I just expected to have a real conversation in the interview about what we do, but I suspect that that's not entirely what the interview is for.
In that context, it may be that they are more likely scoping out our personalities etc and not necessarily trying to get the details about the business.
Re: My Y Combinator experience
#43While i do agree with some of the negative comments here regarding the lack of market research, i also gotta say: the questions (Eclipse, Xcode) seem rather... well, off.
Not just off, kind of ridiculous. I would be embarrassed if I were the YC interviewers.
Re: My Y Combinator experience
#44Sorry 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…
"Most people don't understand what they are allowed to imagine."
Heh, I'm saving this as a quotable quote. Very true.
Re: My Y Combinator experience
#45Sorry 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 give business leaders honest feedback"
Just a side note, I'm ALWAYS noticing lately that there's a certain segment of people like to use the word "honest" as a justification for spreading their negative predictions and negative feelings.
Whether selecting these founders would have worked out well in the future for YC? That's purely a prediction. But somehow people like to throw in the word "honest" for predictions and then suddenly they can give cheap criticism without putting any real effort into making specific suggestions for how to do better.
Plenty of successful entrepreneurs have honestly thought that their success is undeserved and the whole thing is a bad idea that will collapse at any minute. Honest isn't a synonym for useful, in fact it's usually just harmful, for successful startups where 90% of the time everyone feels terrible and confused - because that's just the nature of the business.
Re: My Y Combinator experience
#46While i do agree with some of the negative comments here regarding the lack of market research, i also gotta say: the questions (Eclipse, Xcode) seem rather... well, off.
Off? Really? As an app developer looking at the demo video, the first question that pops into my head is "why would I use this over Xcode"? (And it's still not a question I have an answer to.)
Re: My Y Combinator experience
#47While i do agree with some of the negative comments here regarding the lack of market research, i also gotta say: the questions (Eclipse, Xcode) seem rather... well, off.
Not just off, kind of ridiculous. I would be embarrassed if I were the YC interviewers.
Is this not just provoking, probing?
i.e. translates as "so, why I am going to use this rather than an IDE? What's the demand here? What makes you different?"
as opposed to being a question to be taken literally.
Re: My Y Combinator experience
#48Sorry 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.
So if they don't validate their product, are the Creo folks building the product for the love of it?
Re: My Y Combinator experience
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Things like "(Eclipse Holy God, you really just said Eclipse??)" really come across as pretty negative to me and I'm no big fan of Eclipse.
All the questions asked seemed pretty reasonable to me - after all the person asking the questions is looking at it from a business rather than a technical perspective. If someone who is running a company can't adapt to the type of person asking the question then I would see that as a pretty major weakness in the team.
Re: My Y Combinator experience
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
So if they don't validate their product, are the Creo folks building the product for the love of it?
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