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Paul Graham Shares Lessons Learned From 630+ YC Startups

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Re: Paul Graham Shares Lessons Learned From 630+ YC Startups

#11

Post by oskarth »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #6

Err, Sam Altman is the only beta tester of a YC-company trying to develop a better email client? Anyone got any more details on this? Is this just an inside joke that I don't get? (Yes I remember the build-better-email-client thing, but actually trying, and using one beta-tester?) To be honest I no longer think an email client is the problem. Its the lack of contact book, integration with all my devices and just gene…

What's so strange about that? Personally I think it's a brilliant strategy. It's the logical conclusion of having few users love you, and frankly I can't think of anyone better than Sam Altman to beta test a email app. Once they got him satisfied and hooked, they can easily go for the other big fish in the SF startup scene.

I'm sure they appreciate your two sentence dismissal of something you've never seen and haven't heard more than two sentences about.

Re: Paul Graham Shares Lessons Learned From 630+ YC Startups

#12

Post by awwstn »

lazyjones wrote: post #5

> Graham said that, after thousands of founder presentations and pitches, he and the YC partners are now able to tell “within minutes” whether a startup will pass muster or not. This I find slightly worrying. It's amazing if it still works (and I've been wondering how YC was still able to scale), but is the minimum amount of information that needs to be exchanged between startup and YC in order to get a good assessme…

PG points out regularly that there is no way of predicting whether a startup will succeed. So, I'd guess that much of what they do is try to filter out companies that are likely to not succeed.

If YC has nailed down the process, then only formidable teams would make it to the interview, and then the interview would serve to simply make sure the dynamic and attitude of the team is not such that they'd be likely to not succeed (sorry for the double negative, but I think the inverse would have a different meaning). It seems reasonable that after hundreds of these interviews, YC partners would be able to spot those dynamics in minutes.

Re: Paul Graham Shares Lessons Learned From 630+ YC Startups

#13

Post by nswanberg »

feifan wrote: post #9
lazyjones wrote: post #5

> Graham said that, after thousands of founder presentations and pitches, he and the YC partners are now able to tell “within minutes” whether a startup will pass muster or not. This I find slightly worrying. It's amazing if it still works (and I've been wondering how YC was still able to scale), but is the minimum amount of information that needs to be exchanged between startup and YC in order to get a good assessme…

As a founder of a prospective startup, I know that so much can change in a matter of days or weeks — not just about the people/market/concept, but also with the founders themselves as we "grow up". I wonder how many founders came into their pitches throwing red flags, but who would have outgrown them during, or even before, the YC program began.

Probably quite a few, especially those like Drew Houston who didn't get in on their first try. Presumably on that first application Drew had some of the same good credentials (MIT grad, perfect SAT score).

Re: Paul Graham Shares Lessons Learned From 630+ YC Startups

#14

Post by oskarth »

lazyjones wrote: post #5

> Graham said that, after thousands of founder presentations and pitches, he and the YC partners are now able to tell “within minutes” whether a startup will pass muster or not. This I find slightly worrying. It's amazing if it still works (and I've been wondering how YC was still able to scale), but is the minimum amount of information that needs to be exchanged between startup and YC in order to get a good assessme…

If you are the Richard Feynman of your field, don't you think you could pick up if someone is a good physicist or not in 10 minutes of talking about physics? Not just physics per say, but the mental models you have, the experiments you are going to perform, what kind of theories you have, what you've worked on before, etc. I certainly do, especially if you get to ask the questions.

Re: Paul Graham Shares Lessons Learned From 630+ YC Startups

#15

Post by feifan »

nswanberg wrote: post #13
feifan wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a founder of a prospective startup, I know that so much can change in a matter of days or weeks — not just about the people/market/concept, but also with the founders themselves as we "grow up". I wonder how many founders came into their pitches throwing red flags, but who would have outgrown them during, or even before, the YC program began.

Probably quite a few, especially those like Drew Houston who didn't get in on their first try. Presumably on that first application Drew had some of the same good credentials (MIT grad, perfect SAT score).

It's a shame YC doesn't provide feedback on applications…I'm sure they make notes as they go through the apps (at least for the ones they're not sure about) — would be great for them to have a system to include those notes with their decision notifications!

Re: Paul Graham Shares Lessons Learned From 630+ YC Startups

#16

Post by Ologn »

lazyjones wrote: post #5

> Graham said that, after thousands of founder presentations and pitches, he and the YC partners are now able to tell “within minutes” whether a startup will pass muster or not. This I find slightly worrying. It's amazing if it still works (and I've been wondering how YC was still able to scale), but is the minimum amount of information that needs to be exchanged between startup and YC in order to get a good assessme…

Having interviewed many people over the years (not for an accelerator though), you can easily tell within ten minutes if someone can not pass muster. I have never had anyone who stumbled over the first three questions I asked them, recover on subsequent questions. Nowadays, the only reason I keep interviewing people who stumble over the first three questions is out of politeness.

As I am usually interviewing people for one position, which they need to perform well in, it would take more than ten minutes to get to a yes. But since YC gives sixty or more yeses a batch, and they still win if only a few of them pan out to be a Dropbox or Reddit, than they can probably afford to give a yes in the first ten minutes as well. Because who is a superstar is obvious in the first ten minutes as well. The only question for a superstar beyond the first ten minutes is if they are a fit or not (for example, would the obviously motivated and skilled author of Temple OS, who is marked dead here on HN, be a fit).

Re: Paul Graham Shares Lessons Learned From 630+ YC Startups

#17

Post by waylandsmithers »

The article mentions that he was a lightning rod and whatnot as the face of YC. I can't help but wonder whether he took a step back to really evaluate what he was doing with his time after all those blogs ran with the "Paul Graham is a sexist piece of shit blah blah blah" backlash stories a couple months ago.

Re: Paul Graham Shares Lessons Learned From 630+ YC Startups

#18

Post by run4_too »

lazyjones wrote: post #5

> Graham said that, after thousands of founder presentations and pitches, he and the YC partners are now able to tell “within minutes” whether a startup will pass muster or not. This I find slightly worrying. It's amazing if it still works (and I've been wondering how YC was still able to scale), but is the minimum amount of information that needs to be exchanged between startup and YC in order to get a good assessme…

I would imagine that there is always the chance of 'false negatives' (people you call as failures that eventually succeed), but they are probably pretty bang on with identifying positives.

As an investment first that pretty much the only statistic that matters.

Re: Paul Graham Shares Lessons Learned From 630+ YC Startups

#19

Post by rjzzleep »

Ologn wrote: post #16
lazyjones wrote: post #5

> Graham said that, after thousands of founder presentations and pitches, he and the YC partners are now able to tell “within minutes” whether a startup will pass muster or not. This I find slightly worrying. It's amazing if it still works (and I've been wondering how YC was still able to scale), but is the minimum amount of information that needs to be exchanged between startup and YC in order to get a good assessme…

Having interviewed many people over the years (not for an accelerator though), you can easily tell within ten minutes if someone can not pass muster. I have never had anyone who stumbled over the first three questions I asked them, recover on subsequent questions. Nowadays, the only reason I keep interviewing people who stumble over the first three questions is out of politeness. As I am usually interviewing people f…

except you completely disregard cultural backgrounds, but meh. to each their own. interviewing just like any other skill can be practiced.

edit: not saying i disagree per se. I can tell really quickly if someone knows their shit by working with them for a day... or so i'd like to think. the truth is i've been completely misjudged based on interviews before. i've seen people on top of their fields do the same mistakes with other people because they "seemed to know" based on talk. in the end talk is just that, talk.

Re: Paul Graham Shares Lessons Learned From 630+ YC Startups

#20

Post by rk17 »

feifan wrote: post #9
lazyjones wrote: post #5

> Graham said that, after thousands of founder presentations and pitches, he and the YC partners are now able to tell “within minutes” whether a startup will pass muster or not. This I find slightly worrying. It's amazing if it still works (and I've been wondering how YC was still able to scale), but is the minimum amount of information that needs to be exchanged between startup and YC in order to get a good assessme…

As a founder of a prospective startup, I know that so much can change in a matter of days or weeks — not just about the people/market/concept, but also with the founders themselves as we "grow up". I wonder how many founders came into their pitches throwing red flags, but who would have outgrown them during, or even before, the YC program began.

In my honest opinion, they should just re-apply afterwards. It's impossible for investors to see if those red flags will or will not disappear during development. They are quite explicit that the pitch is paramount and why it so.
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