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My Y Combinator interview.

korokithakis.net

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Re: My Y Combinator interview.

#101

Post by algorias »

sudhirc wrote: post #88
StavrosK wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That mostly refers to startups that haven't yet launched and don't know if their idea will get any customers, as far as I understand. historious already has quite a few paying users, so I believe I'm right to be stubborn in thinking people want this enough to pay for it (because they have).

This makes you a non player in valuation game. By having a revenue you cannot over project and hence cannot get a valuation to provide a worthy exit to ycombinator.

That's an interesting thought, but it'd be sad if they actually think that way. Actual success counts less than imagined one, because you can't inflate the numbers as much?

Re: My Y Combinator interview.

#102

Post by endlessvoid94 »

phlux wrote: post #93
endlessvoid94 wrote: post #81

Djangy got an interview and then after several days, a rejection letter. We're too similar to Heroku. You know what? I'm not really that upset. They made a good decision from their point of view. But we have 200+ beta users, lots of positive feedback, and have a good product. We don't need YC to tell us that. So just keep on truckin. Get users, iterate, and make YC regret rejecting you :-)

I sent in an invite request to Djangy... Hopefully you'll give me an account ! :)

Email me: dave@djangy.com

Re: My Y Combinator interview.

#103

Post by chesser »

staunch wrote: post #52
chesser wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I got an email from Paul Graham saying basically that being a single founder put me at a disadvantage, because two founders can talk each other out of bad ideas, but I appeared too stubborn. This applies equally for being talked out of good ideas. And if your idea is good to start with, then there would be no point in changing it until you've pursued it long enough to see where it leads. The thing to remember about…

Two parts that seem incorrect: 1) YC has one company with very high potential of a billion dollar exit in Dropbox. An IPO in a few years isn't out of the question either. They also have at least a half dozen that are likely to be as big or bigger than Viaweb: 2) Google took seed funding early and then raised VC. That is the model YC uses.

2) I'm not criticizing the idea of funding, I'm saying the amount is small. Google got either $100k total or $100k each from David Cheriton and Andy Bechtolsheim, depending on which article you read. Presumably they had their living arrangements already covered, so it could all go to the company and not to rent.

Even though computing resources are cheaper now, the bar is much higher, so if your project needs a cluster or significant bandwidth it's still expensive in relative terms.

1) A lot of things have the "potential" to work out, but you can only count the ones that actually do.

Besides, even a billion-dollar exit isn't "The Next Google". By Paul's own binary metric, that's still a failure. Let's say they owned 6% but that got diluted to 1/4th from follow-on rounds; their cut would be 15 million before taxes. They (Y Combinator) took $2 million in 2009 and then $8.25 million in 2010 from investors including Sequoia, so it's either going to be divvied up a dozen ways or has to pay back the $10.25 million first or whatever the terms are. Or maybe that's only for 2009 and 2010 startups, so it only has to be split between the 4 partners they had at the time (of funding Dropbox).

It's a win for the founder, but there are other wins that this model can miss.

David Heinemeier Hansson at Startup School 08:

http://www.justin.tv/hackertv/b/259414909 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CDXJ6bMkMY

Re: My Y Combinator interview.

#104

Post by UXMovement »

The reason why I think they rejected you is because you are a single founder. That means if you get hit by a bus they're fucked. Whereas, if you had a team or a co-founder the company can still go on without you.

Re: My Y Combinator interview.

#105

Post by endlessvoid94 »

StavrosK wrote: post #16
endlessvoid94 wrote: post #5

I hope you continue your startup. YC is NOT the end of the line.

I will, but it's very disheartening, sadly...

Dude, fuck that.

You're no different now than you were before you were rejected. The things that made you want to succeed are still there. Your skills are still there and your drive is still there.

Re: My Y Combinator interview.

#106

Post by StavrosK »

UXMovement wrote: post #104

The reason why I think they rejected you is because you are a single founder. That means if you get hit by a bus they're fucked. Whereas, if you had a team or a co-founder the company can still go on without you.

Maybe so, but I wouldn't be averse to recruiting a cofounder...

Re: My Y Combinator interview.

#107

Post by StavrosK »

JofArnold wrote: post #86

I can't speak for your specific case, but I would guess that stubborness would indeed work against you. The rules for single cofounders work the same as for teams: call out YC when they incorrectly correct something you know to be valid (and back it up) but if the criticism/idea they inject is good then roll with it and riff on it with them. You'd do the same, presumably, if you were chatting with your entrepreneur f…

I wasn't aware of them suggesting anything that I dismissed. It's my policy to consider every suggestion, be it from users or not, and I don't recall them suggesting anything...

Re: My Y Combinator interview.

#108

Post by StavrosK »

drdo wrote: post #53

It's great that you are going forward with your idea. From a user point of view of your application, my main concern would be privacy, how do you address this?

Well, your bookmarks and data are never shared with anyone unless you make them public, so we take very good care of your private data remaining private...

Re: My Y Combinator interview.

#109

Post by dimitristi »

bobds wrote: post #60
mcxx wrote: post #48

Have you considered applying to The Openfund ( http://theopenfund.com/ ) or HackFWD ( http://hackfwd.com/ )?

If I recall correctly, the Open Fund doesn't take single founders.

It's true we don't fund single founder startups but we're still interested to see exceptional applications even if it's just one person behind them. You can still get past the first stages of our screening process provided you have an appropriate idea and adequate experience. However, to successfully complete the entire process you need to have found a co-founder by the time this period (~1.5 months) ends. This is not the best case scenario but for exceptional ideas we're willing to consider it.

Re: My Y Combinator interview.

#110

Post by StavrosK »

endlessvoid94 wrote: post #105
StavrosK wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will, but it's very disheartening, sadly...

Dude, fuck that. You're no different now than you were before you were rejected. The things that made you want to succeed are still there. Your skills are still there and your drive is still there.

Oh, sure, but it's as if someone told me "what you're doing now isn't going to work, so we don't want to work with you on it". It makes me think that maybe I need to be doing something else, but all the thousands of users who use and love the service count more than six people who talked to me about it for ten minutes.
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