The “Interview” with Y Combinator That’s Not • Hacker News Board

Re: The “Interview” with Y Combinator That’s Not

#11

Post by madmotive » Thu, Nov 05, 2009, 2:06 PM UTC

hussong wrote: post #4

Heh, waiting for the post-interview phone call was a real nail-biter, we basically spent the entire evening waiting for the phone to ring. But it didn't. It didn't even occur to us that they might call our land line back home until we got the email the next morning. Remotely checking the answering machine was fun too, hadn't used that feature in ages and the code didn't work (turns out you can't send DTMF tones when…

You get an email when you don't get in with a nice couple of lines explaining why.

Our email came in the early hours of the morning. I'd encourage you not to respond to it, at least for a few days. I felt compelled at the time to send a few paragraphs the next morning responding to some of the criticisms. Retrospectively it probably wasn't that all that useful to anyone.

It must be an exhausting 3 days for the YC team. I don't think there are enough hours in the day for them to call all the unsuccessful interviewees. Especially when some of them (like us) will want to take more of their time responding to feedback.

The quantity and quality of the questions and feedback you get in the short 10 minute interview alone is brilliant. Even though we didn't get funded it's had a massive impact on the way I think about things. I'd fly out from the UK to do it again even if there wasn't any chance of funding.

Re: The “Interview” with Y Combinator That’s Not

#12

Post by ramidarigaz » Thu, Nov 05, 2009, 2:10 PM UTC

hussong wrote: post #7

ramidarigaz wrote: post #3

Slight sidenote. On an 800x480 screen, overflow:hidden is a royal pain.

Not sure why you got downvoted. Thanks for the note, I appreciate it and will look into this.

No problem! Thanks for looking out for us netbook users.

Re: The “Interview” with Y Combinator That’s Not

#13

Post by madmotive » Thu, Nov 05, 2009, 2:18 PM UTC

araneae wrote: post #9

madmotive wrote: post #2

This is exactly how our "interview" went. Despite being given the same advice by others that had been through the process we still foolishly wasted time preparing a short 1 minute pitch. We might have had a better result if we'd invested more time in getting the user experience in our demo right and answering the one critical question - "Why would people want this?" Don't make the same mistake we did. :)

It seems to me that the pitch is in the application anyway. I can't imagine why they'd want you to just repeat yourselves.

You shouldn't expect them to remember what was in the application. If they do remember something it will probably only be one line.

Re: The “Interview” with Y Combinator That’s Not

#14

Post by mahmud » Thu, Nov 05, 2009, 2:24 PM UTC

Anyone know if YC is doing traditional companies? i.e. advertising and real-estate.

Don't need the money but could really use the "blessing". They have some of the most enviable media contacts in the industry right now.

Re: The “Interview” with Y Combinator That’s Not

#15

Post by bastian » Thu, Nov 05, 2009, 2:29 PM UTC

Wheels, this is brilliant and it mostly matches what we learnt from other startups during StartupSchool and the Y-Combinator reception last month. Thanks for putting this in a post.

Re: The “Interview” with Y Combinator That’s Not

#16

Post by davidw » Thu, Nov 05, 2009, 2:33 PM UTC

wheels wrote: post #8

gord wrote: post #6

Interesting read and nice success story... On DirectedEdge home, can I enter any search term, or does this need to be a well formatted Wikipedia entry url ?

If you type the beginning of an article name it should autocomplete after a sec (it's a little slower than it should be...) There's also an easter-egg you can use: http://www.directededge.com/?Y%20Combinator

BTW, time to put up a nice looking 404 page or fix whatever's wrong:

http://www.directededge.com/dsfdsfds

Re: The “Interview” with Y Combinator That’s Not

#17

Post by JLaramie » Thu, Nov 05, 2009, 2:57 PM UTC

This is a great breakdown of your journey. Thanks for giving us the info.

Re: The “Interview” with Y Combinator That’s Not

#18

Post by wheels » Thu, Nov 05, 2009, 2:58 PM UTC

davidw wrote: post #16

wheels wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you type the beginning of an article name it should autocomplete after a sec (it's a little slower than it should be...) There's also an easter-egg you can use: http://www.directededge.com/?Y%20Combinator

BTW, time to put up a nice looking 404 page or fix whatever's wrong: http://www.directededge.com/dsfdsfds

If you were trying to hit the easter egg you have to put it in the query string, not just as a sub-url.

Re: The “Interview” with Y Combinator That’s Not

#19

Post by davidw » Thu, Nov 05, 2009, 2:59 PM UTC

wheels wrote: post #18

davidw wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BTW, time to put up a nice looking 404 page or fix whatever's wrong: http://www.directededge.com/dsfdsfds

If you were trying to hit the easter egg you have to put it in the query string, not just as a sub-url.

Yeah, I noticed that, but there's definitely an ugly page there that I thought you might want to fix.

Re: The “Interview” with Y Combinator That’s Not

#20

Post by wheels » Thu, Nov 05, 2009, 2:59 PM UTC

madmotive wrote: post #13

araneae wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that the pitch is in the application anyway. I can't imagine why they'd want you to just repeat yourselves.

You shouldn't expect them to remember what was in the application. If they do remember something it will probably only be one line.

That actually goes for investors in general, from what I can tell. Biggest mistake we made with the first investor that invited us in was assuming that he knew what we did. (One of his associates apparently had said that he should talk to us; he'd never looked at our website.)

In the case of YC interviews, that paragraph that says what your company does is buried in the thousands of pages of text that are going across their eyes during the screening process. Don't expect them to remember it verbatim. ;-)