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The Muse's Successful Application to YC W12

themuse.com

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Re: The Muse's Successful Application to YC W12

#41

Post by uiboss »

KMinshew wrote: post #21
jl wrote: post #4

"We didn't think we were what YC was looking for..." I'm so glad you took the time to apply! Your idea was slightly different back then, but I remember how impressive you were during the YC interview. As you said in your application: Among the members of the founding team we have domain expertise in recruiting; in content creation and promotion; and in directly engaging with women ages 20-­35. What's more, we've been…

Thanks so much Jessica- we're so glad we did. YC was an unbelievably valuable experience. To the commenter below who asked how YC changed us & our company, there's not much that's more useful to an early, growing company than getting to spend time with people like Jessica & PG, and having their regular/honest feedback on what's working (and what's not). I'll try to write more about that here later.

Ms. Minshew, would you mind answering the question that how specifically targeting women for jobs is not sexist in itself? What if you could find perfect male candidate for a particular position than women applicants ? Do you think its fair to pass on such opportunity for male candidate because he is male ?

Re: The Muse's Successful Application to YC W12

#42

Post by ot »

KMinshew wrote: post #20
Asparagirl wrote: post #5

Huh, their careers page has several "jobs" available for people to write articles for them... unpaid . You know, the old "it's good exposure" bait for people who don't know any better.

Hi Asparagirl, there are 4-5x the number of people who ask to write for us compared to the number who ultimately get to, so clearly there's some value there :) The reality is that most of our writers are also mentors to other people, and they really enjoy it. Writing for The Muse is their way of scaling that mentorship to a broader audience.

I share the sentiment of the parent in that the illusion of value could be much larger than the actual value.

Ultimately the work these people do is more valuable for themuse than for themselves, and even if there are a lot of people willing to do it, it does not mean it is ethical to let them do it for free.

Re: The Muse's Successful Application to YC W12

#44

Post by zodiac »

brandnewlow wrote: post #28
mintplant wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean wealthy people. There are lots of smart people out there who can't afford to go to Ivy League schools.

Your thinking on this is factually incorrect. If you're middle class or worse, and have the smarts, you can basically go to any of the top Ivies for free these days.

I'm not sure about how true this is in the US, but it's definitely much less true for international students, a group that YC doesn't want to leave out.

Re: The Muse's Successful Application to YC W12

#45

Post by zodiac »

KMinshew wrote: post #20
Asparagirl wrote: post #5

Huh, their careers page has several "jobs" available for people to write articles for them... unpaid . You know, the old "it's good exposure" bait for people who don't know any better.

Hi Asparagirl, there are 4-5x the number of people who ask to write for us compared to the number who ultimately get to, so clearly there's some value there :) The reality is that most of our writers are also mentors to other people, and they really enjoy it. Writing for The Muse is their way of scaling that mentorship to a broader audience.

I think the argument against unpaid internships is not so much that they don't provide value, but that they're only open to people who can afford to do an unpaid internship.

Re: The Muse's Successful Application to YC W12

#46

Post by kirubakaran »

beambot wrote: post #9
canistr wrote: post #2

Don't want to sound like a downer, but I'd also love to see applications where the founders weren't your typical white MIT, Harvard, Yale graduates/PhDs who worked at McKinsey GoogleBookSoft.

We (Lollipuff) released our application. We were undergrads at Nebraska, Iowa State, and Idaho: https://www.lollipuff.com/blog/102/lollipuffs-ycombinator-ex... (Though I did a PhD at GT, and David worked at Google post-ITA acquisition. :-/ However, our CEO did neither.)

From the application: "Women think about fashion more than men think about sex". Wow! I had no idea!

I wonder if the study had a selection bias (eg. if it was a poll conducted on the parent website very.co.uk)

Re: The Muse's Successful Application to YC W12

#47

Post by KMinshew »

zodiac wrote: post #45
KMinshew wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Asparagirl, there are 4-5x the number of people who ask to write for us compared to the number who ultimately get to, so clearly there's some value there :) The reality is that most of our writers are also mentors to other people, and they really enjoy it. Writing for The Muse is their way of scaling that mentorship to a broader audience.

I think the argument against unpaid internships is not so much that they don't provide value, but that they're only open to people who can afford to do an unpaid internship.

I'm in agreement with you on that - we pay all of our interns at The Muse. The posting referred to above is a way of recruiting people who are interested in contributing 1-4 mentoring posts per month, so very low commitment nights-and-weekends type thing.
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