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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

#21

Post by rk17 »

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…

One could make the argument that amount of information to be exchanged in order to get a good assessment really is that small. If they mostly look at how you behave under pressure and whether or not you can still tell a consistent story (pitch your start-up), then you only need a couple of minutes. From what I've read, they judge team dynamic and character for the most part, only checking if you're able to think of a good idea because it would most likely change anyway.

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

#22

Post by PakG1 »

rjzzleep wrote: post #19
Ologn wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You know, I know that PG has been beaten to death over the speaking English with an accent thing, which is unfortunate, because it got away from what he was trying to say. But this is an interesting point. Culture, language, and other similar factors that could lead to poor interview performance is something that I hope we can somehow figure a way around.

Now given that, let me say that I completely understand what PG was trying to say there, and I hope that I haven't hijacked the conversation.

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

#24

Post by soup10 »

smrtinsert wrote: post #4

> Principally, he said, just because someone is intelligent, doesn’t mean they can actually run a business and go out and execute. > “You can be surprisingly stupid if you’re sufficiently determined,” he concluded. Oh that's nice. Reminds me of the Simpsons episode when some kid accepts homecoming king with "Thank you for not choosing the popular jock and electing me, your intellectual superior, as homecoming king".

Smart engineer/entrepreneurs #1 mistake is thinking that because they are competent in their field(or got good grates at an elite school) that somehow magically translates to competence in business and entrepreneurship. I know and have met quite a few people that are grinding away at or have made products which have serious business challenges that they underestimate or are blind to and predictably fail to overcome. It's kind of sad when you see a product that has taken a high degree of workmanship/skill/and effort to make, but which has no market. Or the flip side, which is an insufficiently differentiated(aka not better enough than what people are already using) product in highly competitive market.

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

#25

Post by pg »

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 didn't say we can always tell within minutes, just that we sometimes can. Also, the interview is not the only information we get. We've also read the application.

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

#26

Post by pg »

waylandsmithers wrote: post #17

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.

No, Sam and I had already agreed by then that he'd take over. We just hadn't announced it yet. I do remember thinking though that this was going to be one of the things I missed least.

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

#27

Post by GuiA »

oskarth wrote: post #14
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.

There are Richard Feynmans in math, biology, physics, computer science, etc.

I'm not sure there are Richard Feynmans in startups or similarly "soft" fields.

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

#29

Post by martythemaniak »

I'm very much looking forward to pg's new essays. His pre-YC essays cover a pretty wide spectrum of topics and they were quite influential on me when I read them while still in school.

His essays from the last few years are almost exclusively about startups and I think they're a must-read resource. IMO, they contain pretty much all the ideas that make up YC and going through the program will mostly reinforce these ideas in a very effective way, rather than teach some new secret.

There's much to be said about technology and its impact on society, so I hope we'll see some great new material.

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

#30

Post by sridharvembu »

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…

I have to disagree with the "can easily tell within ten minutes if someone cannot pass muster" part. Interviewing is hard. We tend to make such snap judgments but those judgments reflect our own biases.

I have come to believe over the years that interviewing measures interviewing skills. Test scores measure test taking skills. Success on the job requires success-on-the-job (to coin a phrase) skills. All those things correlate, but the correlation coefficient is not super high. In fact, ignoring those correlations can be an effective strategy to find great people.

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