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My Y Combinator Interview (W2011)
21–27 of 27 posts
Re: My Y Combinator Interview (W2011)
#22I was part of Auctomatic, and I still think inventory management is a space to be disrupted. I think that we were free from day one was a reason that people were reluctant to start paying.
The one trouble with eBay inventory management, or any space where there are existing competitors, is every user has their own pet feature they absolutely can't live without. It becomes a battle to implement them all and keep a clean interface.
Also make sure you can import everything from every competitor. It lets people try your software very easily and gives you all of their data. So even if they don't become a hardcore user you can see what one looks like.
Re: My Y Combinator Interview (W2011)
#23Very interesting read, although that's probably because my cofounder and I had nearly the same exact experience you did. We got an interview for this round of Y Combinator with an idea that could be summed up as, "it's pretty much an improvement of X." But ultimately what any pitch comes to like that, whether it's the innovative minds at YC or the cruftiest, oldest-school VC, is always the same: a) If X has competiti…
You forgot one: d) If X doesn't have competition, they will point out that there's clearly no market desire for the product or someone would have built it already.
There was an interesting blog post about this problem few weeks ago on HN. In general you can defend your b) or c) or d) situation with on word "Timing".The only problem is that you must convince people in the audience that Timing is right and why it was hard/impossible before and right now is easier/possible.
Re: My Y Combinator Interview (W2011)
#24Sounds a bit categorical with respect to inventory management. I know of one company, moysklad ('my warehouse' - in Russian), which has done quite well for itself in Russian-speaking countries. They are a couple years old and they've already taken venture capital from Ambient Sound Investments. I found a little snippet of info about them in English here: http://www.chubbybrain.com/companies/moysklad/investors-fund...
So I wouldn't get discouraged just yet.
Re: My Y Combinator Interview (W2011)
#25Personally I think the Four Loko made the pill a bit easier to swallow.
-Ray
Re: My Y Combinator Interview (W2011)
#26Are you continuing?
Yes. I haven't pushed anything public yet, which is why Inventory.io doesn't show anything. I really took Paul's email to heart, because it was great advice. I'm looking for other places to get Inventory.io installed.
i read "the rest is history" at the end of your post. i went to http://inventory.io. nothing loaded. i assumed you scrapped the project. there's lots of types of inventory management; a page calling for the "other places" you are interested in might help.
Re: My Y Combinator Interview (W2011)
#27it's great to read these stores. Especially from those who are able to describe the lessons they've learned despite being rejected.