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Applications Open for Winter 2008 YC Funding

ycombinator.com

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Re: Applications Open for Winter 2008 YC Funding

#81

Post by jey »

sabhishek wrote: post #57
pg wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're made to look bad by how easy it is to apply. If you make a website offering people money if they fill out a form, a lot of people will fill it out. But the odds for a good team are not as bad as they might seem. At least a third of the applications are egregiously broken: 13 year old founders, people who want to "telecommute" from India, people who want us to fund their plumbing supply store, etc...

People might ask you first if its ok to "telecommute" from India, before applying. I was not aware "asking" that may put them into "egregiously broken" category :)

Asking to telecommute is not the problem. Applying to YC and stating that you will not move to the YC location and just telecommute from India would be the problem. You can ask if you can telecommute, but the answer will be "no" if it's the whole team that will be telecommuting.

Re: Applications Open for Winter 2008 YC Funding

#82

Post by jey »

juwo wrote: post #75
menloparkbum wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone should have told juwo he's nuts. He could have saved a lot of time and money.

can you tell me why you think juwo is nuts? I am willing to listen, if it isnt malicious.

1. No clear use for the product. (Please don't just tell me it's revolutionary and therefore unexplainable)

2. The interface is clumsy and I don't know what I'm supposed to do with it. (See Also: #1)

3. I don't understand what the deal is with the examples. Why do I want to watch a BBC broadcast with a tree-like timeline? Is the purpose of Juwo to annotate videos? (See Also: #1)

4. Why/when do people want to create a tree structure and attach text/videos/sounds to the tree nodes? This is all that Juwo seems to do. The use cases you list on your website are not compelling. While the use cases listed may be actual problems to be solved, a swiss army knife tree structure isn't the solution. (See Also: #1)

I'm sorry if the above list is harsh, but my personal opinion is that Juwo does not have any clear vision behind it, or is of very limited utility (e.g. only useful for you). I don't think it's worth working on further. Try something else.

It's easy at this point to appeal to the few exceptions that made it big even though it seemed like nobody wanted them at first. But note that these guys are the exceptions, most of the time the advice that the product sucks is probably accurate. Even if you were going to say "I don't care, I want to try it and see where it goes" -- well, it looks like you already have tried it for a few years, and it isn't going anywhere.

Again, no offense, but it's in your best interest to save the time/money/effort and move on to a new project. There's a reason you aren't getting users nor investors.

Re: Applications Open for Winter 2008 YC Funding

#83

Post by sabhishek »

jey wrote: post #81
sabhishek wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People might ask you first if its ok to "telecommute" from India, before applying. I was not aware "asking" that may put them into "egregiously broken" category :)

Asking to telecommute is not the problem. Applying to YC and stating that you will not move to the YC location and just telecommute from India would be the problem. You can ask if you can telecommute, but the answer will be "no" if it's the whole team that will be telecommuting.

Absolutely rite.

Re: Applications Open for Winter 2008 YC Funding

#84

Post by dbosson »

jey wrote: post #82
juwo wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can you tell me why you think juwo is nuts? I am willing to listen, if it isnt malicious.

1. No clear use for the product. (Please don't just tell me it's revolutionary and therefore unexplainable) 2. The interface is clumsy and I don't know what I'm supposed to do with it. (See Also: #1) 3. I don't understand what the deal is with the examples. Why do I want to watch a BBC broadcast with a tree-like timeline? Is the purpose of Juwo to annotate videos? (See Also: #1) 4. Why/when do people want to create a…

I agree with Jey. I had no motivation to explore past the learn more page.

Re: Applications Open for Winter 2008 YC Funding

#86

Post by [deleted] »

pg wrote: post #68
npk wrote: post #67

I assume, that YC prints out a stack of these applications and grades them on paper. Have the printouts ever looked like crap because of some weird browser thing? If so, is there any chance we could see how the application looks when it's printed?

We rate them online. The application looks the same to us when we're reading it as it does to you while you're editing it.

[deleted]

Re: Applications Open for Winter 2008 YC Funding

#87

Post by tx »

I hope my question gets answered here. In our case we're already incorporated and the product (not a prototype) is going through the final stages of beta testing. We are not very interested in money at this point (certainly not in $20k) but we are interested in good business contacts and very open to suggestions and advice from more experienced folks.

I wonder if this makes any sense for us to submit an application, since there are not 20, we're incorporated, we're not living in a dorm, we don't need $20k and we already have the product. The only thing we'd be interested in is well... good contacts (we're not in Bay Area) and business dev. consulting.

Re: Applications Open for Winter 2008 YC Funding

#89

Post by steve »

sethjohn wrote: post #44
blader wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just our experience interviewing last season. We applied with two ideas, both with prototypes. The discussion was pretty much exclusively about the idea - how new it is, how easy it is, how interesting it is, whether or not it's porn/music related (either category is probably not a good idea btw). We had a good response to both our prototypes, but ultimately we were told our idea didn't seem different enough.…

Just because they spent the whole time asking you about your idea doesn't neccessarily mean they were mostly interested in your idea...getting someone to talk about their prototype is probably a much better way to guage who they are and how they think than asking "Who are you?, and how do you think?" Of course I wasn't there, so I don't really know what happened.

"talk about their prototype"

you do realize that this really just means talking about the idea, right?

Re: Applications Open for Winter 2008 YC Funding

#90

Post by npk »

pg wrote: post #56
jsjenkins168 wrote: post #43

Did Winter applications start this early last year? PG: Given the deadline is still a long ways off, is there a preference for groups to apply early and update the application and demo along the way, or to wait until the end to apply when things are solid? Just curious..

Lately we've had a lot of people emailing us asking how to apply, so we got the w2008 application form up. Really there's no reason not to switch to the next cycle as soon as we pick the startups for the previous one. One the whole it's probably better to update the application incrementally. You'll get more attention that way; we may even suggest ideas; and we're not likely to have time to do that if you apply the d…

One the whole it's probably better to update the application incrementally. You'll get more attention that way; we may even suggest ideas...

This statement sounds like the YC team reads unsubmitted applications. Have I misread? Anyone have hints on how to maximize the chance of getting comments back? :)

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