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My Y Combinator experience

marcobambini.com

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Re: My Y Combinator experience

#51

Post by pizu »

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…

To all you aspiring entrepreneurs, this is all you need to know: "Verify that there was an existing market opportunity in the form of real customers willing to pay you real money to solve a problem"

Now, go!

Re: My Y Combinator experience

#52

Post by mathrawka »

coffeemug wrote: post #15

Negative feedback incoming. Sorry. Your landing page ( http://creolabs.com/ ) doesn't care about me (the user) at all. There is a big difference between being proud of your product and being self-aggrandizing, and you're on the latter end of that scale. To quote Henry Ford, you can't build a reputation on what you're going to do. Apple can get away with saying "something big is going to happen" because they've alread…

Another thing about the landing page... there is to much "we" going on. It needs to focus on the customer, not the company. And that starts with writing copy that focuses on the user, not you.

Re: My Y Combinator experience

#54

Post by creolabs »

BTW the video you discovered on vimeo was just a quick demo we did for internal usage. It wasn't meant to be showed to public and it demonstrates a very old version.

There are a lot of critics here and I really appreciate the "brutal" honestly in your answers, we'll do our best to treasured your advices.

I really think that there are some misunderstanding about the real intent of the article and since the website is just a landing page, the best answer is just to release an impressive product as soon as possible.

As I already wrote, a public beta version is expected by mid April.

Re: My Y Combinator experience

#55

Post by abcd_f »

arethuza wrote: post #49
david927 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

These questions quite unambiguously pointed at YC never giving their application proper attention. Perhaps they skimmed it, but even then they should've picked up that the product was for non-developers. So to people who spent days writing the application and planning their life around the interview it would look like a half-ass effort on the YC part. It's only natural that they are pissed about the whole experience. One can hardly blame them.

Re: My Y Combinator experience

#56

Post by Udik »

Despite all the good points made by other commenters here, I see that nobody has yet quoted the other somehow related story that appeared on these pages not long ago:

How I Crashed and Burned in Y Combinator https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8867335

It seems interesting because the author of that post basically described how he came to YC without a developed product but only a vague and confused idea, and how his project was nonetheless accepted. He then moves on to describe how, having entered YC, he started frantically working on different projects that had nothing to do with the original idea, until he finally gave up.

Now, I wonder which could be the factors that make YC accept a non-existing project, so shaky to evaporate one hour after the interview, and reject people that at least produce and are entirely focused on a working prototype of a new product.

Re: My Y Combinator experience

#57

Post by emmelaich »

abcd_f wrote: post #55
arethuza wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

These questions quite unambiguously pointed at YC never giving their application proper attention. Perhaps they skimmed it, but even then they should've picked up that the product was for non-developers. So to people who spent days writing the application and planning their life around the interview it would look like a half-ass effort on the YC part. It's only natural that they are pissed about the whole experience.…

Asking you to compare your product to Eclipse is not saying its similar to Eclipse. It's a conversation catalyst.

Re: My Y Combinator experience

#58

Post by emmelaich »

abcd_f wrote: post #55
arethuza wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

These questions quite unambiguously pointed at YC never giving their application proper attention. Perhaps they skimmed it, but even then they should've picked up that the product was for non-developers. So to people who spent days writing the application and planning their life around the interview it would look like a half-ass effort on the YC part. It's only natural that they are pissed about the whole experience.…

Asking you to compare your product to Eclipse is not saying its similar to Eclipse. It's a conversation catalyst.

Re: My Y Combinator experience

#59

Post by emmelaich »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #27

This is a great story, but perhaps not for the reasons intended by the author. I applied once to YC. As I recall, my solo founder video included a puppet, so fair warning: I'm an idiot when it comes to startups. I only repeat what I've heard and read. When they asked you guys all those questions, the proper answer wasn't to reply technically, it was to reply with something akin to "social proof" So, for instance, whe…

> The takeaway that YC is only interested in money may be at the same time true and misleading.

Indeed. There are people who consider mentioning the money aspect to be indicative something lacking. Passion? Innovation?

Then there are those who know that buying your product is the true evidence of sincerity.

Re: My Y Combinator experience

#60

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

david927 wrote: post #37
gfosco wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

I don't see any reason to believe the YC side were playing n-dimensional startup chess here.

Occam's razor suggests they simply didn't read the info, and were asking dumb shoot-from-the-hip technical questions.

Having said that, the 'Do you have any users and have you actually built an app with this?' questions were entirely apt, and Team Creo should have had better answers.

Basically the product is nowhere close to being developed enough for a funding round. It has potential, maybe, but so far it's a programming exercise, not a potential business.

The experience highlights the continuing mismatch between developer expectations and funder expectations.

1. Write lots of code 2. I have no idea what happens here 3. PROFIT!

If you haven't thought seriously about step 2 you're going to have a hard time with funding - or even just turning your code into a viable business.

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