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How I got a YC interview as a single founder and blew it at the final hurdle

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Re: How I got a YC interview as a single founder and blew it at the final hurdle

#61

Post by objclxt »

stephengillie wrote: post #27
Murkin wrote: post #23

tl;dr; 1. Spent lots of time and money(thousands of pounds) trying to meet with CEO of hedge fund just to get one of the domains in their portfolio. 2. Failed. 3. Explained that he is co-founder of twillio europe. 4. Used above story as some kind of self proof of ability 5. Decided that he failed YC interview because of a silly mistake 6. Drew lots of lessons and conclusions. yawn

I'm kind-of amazed at how much this person was willing to spend at the drop of a hat. I see someone carelessly jumping on planes, spending thousands of dollars without blinking, and I start to wonder if the person may be bipolar and experiencing a manic episode.

>"I start to wonder if the person may be bipolar and experiencing a manic episode."

...I would think that depends on how many thousands of dollars you have in the bank. It would be nuts to do this if you had no money to your name and were struggling to make ends meet, sure. But if you're got a high disposable income, or you know you can make it up with work, why not?

I haven't had the pleasure of meeting Stevie, and I know nothing about his financial situation. I suspect neither do you. Regardless, you could easily cover the cost of a last-minute LHR-NYC flight with three, four days of contracting (I should know, I used to freelance iOS in London). Doesn't seem quite so crazy when you frame it like that.

What I probably wouldn't do is throw around the idea that simply because somebody buys a ticket on a whim that makes them a manic depressive.

Re: How I got a YC interview as a single founder and blew it at the final hurdle

#62

Post by tetomb »

sjtgraham wrote: post #54
tetomb wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the post can be seen as a cautionary tale about the dangers of spending too much time on your domain name and not enough on your product.

Not at all. As I state in the post, I think I spent too much time on preparing the product and not enough time on interview prep.

But prior to that you say:

Inspired, I hacked out the feature that was the answer to the flunked question and used it on the partners.

If it was such an easy feature to add and so important that you had several strong answers to the issue that required the feature, why wasn't it already part of your product?

edit: If the feature was already present in your product, it would have been almost impossible to have gone blank.

Re: How I got a YC interview as a single founder and blew it at the final hurdle

#63

Post by CaveTech »

paulsutter wrote: post #50
CaveTech wrote: post #9

Honestly I don't get it. While the story is cool, it really just seems like you're comfortable blowing several thousand dollars on what, lets be honest, is a very, very unlikely chance at securing a domain name. I know this story speaks of SV culture in some way; huge risk, huge rewards and the idea that no one can stop you. If the venture pays off, it makes you a hero. If it doesn't, well you get a cool story. But y…

Good domains are valuable, so a few thousand pounds is a small amount to risk. Zap.com is a really good domain. His approach was smart. A billionaire is too busy to discuss the sale of a domain, but if you do manage to catch his interest, he may well give it to you free/cheap because it isn't an asset he spends time worrying about. I love the conservative objections here. Stunts like this only work if most people are…

As someone pointed out earlier, Zap.com is a publicly traded company, with a 5.5m market cap. The odds of this being given away for anything less than 5.5m is about as close to 0% as you can get.

Re: How I got a YC interview as a single founder and blew it at the final hurdle

#64

Post by ed209 »

paulsutter wrote: post #50
CaveTech wrote: post #9

Honestly I don't get it. While the story is cool, it really just seems like you're comfortable blowing several thousand dollars on what, lets be honest, is a very, very unlikely chance at securing a domain name. I know this story speaks of SV culture in some way; huge risk, huge rewards and the idea that no one can stop you. If the venture pays off, it makes you a hero. If it doesn't, well you get a cool story. But y…

Good domains are valuable, so a few thousand pounds is a small amount to risk. Zap.com is a really good domain. His approach was smart. A billionaire is too busy to discuss the sale of a domain, but if you do manage to catch his interest, he may well give it to you free/cheap because it isn't an asset he spends time worrying about. I love the conservative objections here. Stunts like this only work if most people are…

It's not so much the quest for the domain name, it's the energy spent at this stage on it.

A domain name won't make or break your business. But all that time and energy spent on this problem could probably have been spent better on something else.

Re: How I got a YC interview as a single founder and blew it at the final hurdle

#65

Post by nekopa »

snowwrestler wrote: post #59
wilfra wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because he was not successful (yet) does not mean it was a foolish effort. It's attitudes like yours that make hustling work, simply because so few people are willing to even send an email to somebody because they think it's unlikely they'll get an affirmative response. Getting rejected is like ketchup on french fries.

I would think a more impressive effort at hustling would be to find a (more readily) available domain name, then focus on building such a great product that it works anyway. IMO the story shows great hustle but poor prioritization. Domains don't matter that much. One of YC's most successful graduates is airbnb after all. That domain is basically nonsense, but the product is so good, now it's their own special nonsens…

I thought airbnb meant "air bed 'n breakfast" which makes complete sense for their product.

Re: How I got a YC interview as a single founder and blew it at the final hurdle

#66

Post by sjtgraham »

Further to the money fixation. Has no one considered that I might have actually tried to raise money from Falcone? When I get him in a room, you can bet that I'll be trying to get the domain and some capital from him before I'll try to buy it off of him with my own cash. What do you think is more likely to be successful, a billionaire throwing down a relatively small amount of coin to invest or him hearing out an offer to acquire the domain for 5-6 figures without laughing me out of the room. We might have different values but to me 2-3 grand for a holiday and a roll of that dice is chump change.

Re: How I got a YC interview as a single founder and blew it at the final hurdle

#68

Post by paulsutter »

CaveTech wrote: post #63
paulsutter wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good domains are valuable, so a few thousand pounds is a small amount to risk. Zap.com is a really good domain. His approach was smart. A billionaire is too busy to discuss the sale of a domain, but if you do manage to catch his interest, he may well give it to you free/cheap because it isn't an asset he spends time worrying about. I love the conservative objections here. Stunts like this only work if most people are…

As someone pointed out earlier, Zap.com is a publicly traded company, with a 5.5m market cap. The odds of this being given away for anything less than 5.5m is about as close to 0% as you can get.

The real history is a lot more colorful than that. In the first dot-com boom, Zapata was a natural gas and fish meal company that tried to take over Excite (a major portal at that time) by rebranding itself with the name Zap.com [1].

They got widespread mockery and bad press coverage for that, and no longer use the domain.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zapata_Corporation

Re: How I got a YC interview as a single founder and blew it at the final hurdle

#69

Post by tchock23 »

I also went through the single founder interview experience and blew it, but for different reasons.

I had the domain knowledge and experience, but PG said my demo was too simple (which it admittedly was - it was a MVP to test some assumptions I had about the market).

It was an intense, yet very fun 10 minutes of my life...

Re: How I got a YC interview as a single founder and blew it at the final hurdle

#70

Post by jackgavigan »

sjtgraham wrote: post #66

Further to the money fixation. Has no one considered that I might have actually tried to raise money from Falcone? When I get him in a room, you can bet that I'll be trying to get the domain and some capital from him before I'll try to buy it off of him with my own cash. What do you think is more likely to be successful, a billionaire throwing down a relatively small amount of coin to invest or him hearing out an off…

Wait. Isn't Falcone one of the bad guys in 'Batman Begins'?
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