I wrote a blog post about 'Startup Istanbul 2014'. I have a section with quick advises from Michael Siebel to overseas entrepreneurs. It's pretty small list but I think it's a good quick-list of some general guidelines. The post is here[1] in case you wanna take a look.
Whenever someone makes a system to select for the best, someone else will figure out how to game it. Preparation past a certain point might actually do more harm than good.
It's a very comprehensive list, and I don't want to imply it's bad to organize such a list. I was just surprised at how much stuff has been written about "how to impress YC." The goal is to make something people want, not to impress YC.
Thank you for the list though. It's an awesome collection. I just realized how negative I probably sounded, so I wanted to clarify that your time is very much appreciated in organizing this. I was just wondering how much time YC actually spends defending against people who are primarily trying to game YC rather than trying to make a valuable startup. Maybe it's not even an issue.
YC exists largely to con VCs into being attracted to their golden child chosen companies[2], right? YC batches spend most of their time a.) making their product and b.) refining their pitches to trigger VC fad likability signals of "yah this be hyper megagrowth companay!" [Reminder: early funding is based mostly around personality and psychology first ("gut feelings")[1] largely triggered by the people factor, and then only company details second since early companies change so much in the long run. You can train people to give better first impression gut feelings to increase their funding chances easier than giving them billion dollar execution capability.]
The focus around "we can teach you to manipulate the VCs by telling them what they want" also has an amusing effect: VCs are pandered to so tightly now with such high quality pitches, they get annoyed if you haven't been perfecting a 90 second pitch for 3 months straight. [Bitterness disclosure: I've been rejected by the people who funded Clinkle. Stab me in the eye with a rusty spoon already.]
So, it only makes sense the base of manipulation also has a phase of pre-alignment too.
But—all is not lost! When any process becomes too manipulation-focused, you can out maneuver the manipulators by being good+sincere instead of weak+manipulative.
[2]: with the side effect of creating an extensive "network of friends"/mafia/collusion-sphere/[union?] so they can collectively kick the asses of People With Money And Power who treat any of them poorly. (but, this also creates a great "Let our powers combine!" capability of getting new things done quickly or helping others in need who are part of the family.)
[1]: Are you under 24 with a Stanford background and were born a white male human person? Step right up for your free money!
This is so cynical. If you ask any alumni, you'd know that we spend most of the time during the program to tell startups NOT to even think about fundraising. 11 weeks of the program is focused on them talking to users and building stuff. Only the week before Demo Day do we start working with them on their presentations to investors and fundraising strategies. This is because the best way to fundraise is to actually build something that people want and then just show the evidence to investors. I have no interest in helping people manipulate or trick others into giving a startup money. Also, it almost never works. The most persuasive startups are usually the ones pitching the truth. It's also so much easier that way.
I haven't looked at all of it but I noticed that some of the content is from YC itself, or Partners and alums. As such, I imagine it's the kind of advice that YC might want to have widely disseminated. It's not really gaming the system if you're doing what they suggest (build product, talk to users, etc).
> Whenever someone makes a system to select for the best
For the "best", let's be a little clear: We're not looking for just the best looking application to YC, how to get into YC, or even how to get funding on Demo Day at YC.
Instead we're looking for how to make a big splash, say, a company worth at least $1 billion, in the real world of real business. And this company is intended to be quite
new in some important respects. The company is necessarily intended to be significantly exceptional.
Then,
there's a nagging issue here: The best that we
want and are looking for may not be much like the rest in either results or qualifications and approach. So, looking at the rest, or even the ones accepted to YC, or even the best of the YC alumni, may
not be a very good way to look for the best for the future results desired.
E.g., starting in 1942 or so, can't expect to get an A-bomb by drawing heavily on the lessons from the history of bomb making. "Q. So, let me get this straight: You intend
to build a bomb with the explosive energy of 20,000
tons of TNT. And for your second time at bat, you
want a bomb of 1 million tons of TNT? Just one
little question: What size airplane did you have
in mind to lift such a bomb off the ground? A. Sir,
we were thinking of a B-29, and for the first bomb,
taking off from the Marianas. Q. But a B-29,
the whole thing, doesn't weight anywhere near
20,000 tons. A. Yes, Sir, we do realize that.
Still, we believe that we know what we are
doing and will be successful."
Can't expect to get the first good microprocessor by drawing heavily on
the history of electronics back to discrete
transistors and vacuum tubes. Can't expect to
get an iPhone 6 by looking at telephones back to
black plastic with a dial and a four foot long
cotton covered cord.
Instead, for such examples
of exceptional success, need work that is powerful and
significantly new, i.e., necessarily not visible in the
rear view mirror. Sorry 'bout that! :-)!
" The goal is to make something people want, not to impress YC."
As they say "agree in part deny in part".
One of the advantages perhaps is not so much impressing YC. It's not tripping any alarms that say "this team is clueless because look what they did or said ha ha ha".
Besides you expect anyone applying for something important to put in effort. And part of that effort is digging up information (this is part of sales actually) on who you are selling to and what in general appeals to them. And being generally aware and up to speed on "the game".
Any individual error probably doesn't mean much. But a group of them do mean something.
I remember the time in the early 90's when I worked for a company out in SV. It sold a Mac peripheral product. The VP of sales (who I worked for) needed to know what things I needed to do demos of the product. One of the things that I mentioned was "a syquest drive".
He said "what's a syquest drive"?
I thought "how can you read publications about the Mac and not run into ads for syquest drives and know what they are just by osmosis". At that point I knew who I was dealing with. Years later (ntim of course) he isn't working "in the industry".
I have no data to back it up but if YC interview setup is even slightly inspired by the YC video guidelines [1] then being genuine is better than having scripted answers for everything.
Of course there is a point for balance and being unprepared is not the way to go.
Yea, I and a couple friends interviewed for S13 (maybe it was S12), and while preparing is definitely helpful there is no way you can have scripted answers to everything. That assumes you know what they are going to ask (and chances are if you know what they are going to ask, you didn't make something clear). We did a couple practice interviews with YC alums and the questions they asked ended up being quite different from what was actually asked in the room. To me at least, the interview seemed much more like a discussion about our idea and its merits and issues than what people may normally think an interview to be (of a VC asking you intense questions and pulling apart every single hole in your financial model).
On the other hand, maybe they saw three college freshman and decided to go easy on us.
Is there a way to print-preview my application to see how it'll look after submission? I'm mainly concerned about some of my answers which look lengthy. And does YC have bias against explanatory lengthy answers if they add substance to the meat?
I've read somewhere that each partner gets only 2-mins to spend on an appln. With a 1.5 minute video and two founder profiles (which they seemed to have made out separately this time) how do they even skim through these apps?
Or is it the alumni who reads deep and based on their comments (say if we are already pizza profitable, yes we are!) our app gets bumped up in priority queue of partners?
19 comments
[ 1.7 ms ] story [ 57.2 ms ] threadI wrote a blog post about 'Startup Istanbul 2014'. I have a section with quick advises from Michael Siebel to overseas entrepreneurs. It's pretty small list but I think it's a good quick-list of some general guidelines. The post is here[1] in case you wanna take a look.
[1] http://www.convalesco.org/blog/2014/10/05/startup-istanbul-r...
edit: Also, this site has a list of interview experiences of people who got accepted and rejected: http://ycuniverse.com/yc-applying-interviewees
In some ways reading about those who got rejected is a little more informative.
It's a very comprehensive list, and I don't want to imply it's bad to organize such a list. I was just surprised at how much stuff has been written about "how to impress YC." The goal is to make something people want, not to impress YC.
Thank you for the list though. It's an awesome collection. I just realized how negative I probably sounded, so I wanted to clarify that your time is very much appreciated in organizing this. I was just wondering how much time YC actually spends defending against people who are primarily trying to game YC rather than trying to make a valuable startup. Maybe it's not even an issue.
YC exists largely to con VCs into being attracted to their golden child chosen companies[2], right? YC batches spend most of their time a.) making their product and b.) refining their pitches to trigger VC fad likability signals of "yah this be hyper megagrowth companay!" [Reminder: early funding is based mostly around personality and psychology first ("gut feelings")[1] largely triggered by the people factor, and then only company details second since early companies change so much in the long run. You can train people to give better first impression gut feelings to increase their funding chances easier than giving them billion dollar execution capability.]
The focus around "we can teach you to manipulate the VCs by telling them what they want" also has an amusing effect: VCs are pandered to so tightly now with such high quality pitches, they get annoyed if you haven't been perfecting a 90 second pitch for 3 months straight. [Bitterness disclosure: I've been rejected by the people who funded Clinkle. Stab me in the eye with a rusty spoon already.]
So, it only makes sense the base of manipulation also has a phase of pre-alignment too.
But—all is not lost! When any process becomes too manipulation-focused, you can out maneuver the manipulators by being good+sincere instead of weak+manipulative.
[2]: with the side effect of creating an extensive "network of friends"/mafia/collusion-sphere/[union?] so they can collectively kick the asses of People With Money And Power who treat any of them poorly. (but, this also creates a great "Let our powers combine!" capability of getting new things done quickly or helping others in need who are part of the family.)
[1]: Are you under 24 with a Stanford background and were born a white male human person? Step right up for your free money!
For the "best", let's be a little clear: We're not looking for just the best looking application to YC, how to get into YC, or even how to get funding on Demo Day at YC.
Instead we're looking for how to make a big splash, say, a company worth at least $1 billion, in the real world of real business. And this company is intended to be quite new in some important respects. The company is necessarily intended to be significantly exceptional.
Then, there's a nagging issue here: The best that we want and are looking for may not be much like the rest in either results or qualifications and approach. So, looking at the rest, or even the ones accepted to YC, or even the best of the YC alumni, may not be a very good way to look for the best for the future results desired.
E.g., starting in 1942 or so, can't expect to get an A-bomb by drawing heavily on the lessons from the history of bomb making. "Q. So, let me get this straight: You intend to build a bomb with the explosive energy of 20,000 tons of TNT. And for your second time at bat, you want a bomb of 1 million tons of TNT? Just one little question: What size airplane did you have in mind to lift such a bomb off the ground? A. Sir, we were thinking of a B-29, and for the first bomb, taking off from the Marianas. Q. But a B-29, the whole thing, doesn't weight anywhere near 20,000 tons. A. Yes, Sir, we do realize that. Still, we believe that we know what we are doing and will be successful."
Can't expect to get the first good microprocessor by drawing heavily on the history of electronics back to discrete transistors and vacuum tubes. Can't expect to get an iPhone 6 by looking at telephones back to black plastic with a dial and a four foot long cotton covered cord.
Instead, for such examples of exceptional success, need work that is powerful and significantly new, i.e., necessarily not visible in the rear view mirror. Sorry 'bout that! :-)!
As they say "agree in part deny in part".
One of the advantages perhaps is not so much impressing YC. It's not tripping any alarms that say "this team is clueless because look what they did or said ha ha ha".
Besides you expect anyone applying for something important to put in effort. And part of that effort is digging up information (this is part of sales actually) on who you are selling to and what in general appeals to them. And being generally aware and up to speed on "the game".
Any individual error probably doesn't mean much. But a group of them do mean something.
I remember the time in the early 90's when I worked for a company out in SV. It sold a Mac peripheral product. The VP of sales (who I worked for) needed to know what things I needed to do demos of the product. One of the things that I mentioned was "a syquest drive".
He said "what's a syquest drive"?
I thought "how can you read publications about the Mac and not run into ads for syquest drives and know what they are just by osmosis". At that point I knew who I was dealing with. Years later (ntim of course) he isn't working "in the industry".
Of course there is a point for balance and being unprepared is not the way to go.
[1] http://ycombinator.com/video.html
On the other hand, maybe they saw three college freshman and decided to go easy on us.
Is there a way to print-preview my application to see how it'll look after submission? I'm mainly concerned about some of my answers which look lengthy. And does YC have bias against explanatory lengthy answers if they add substance to the meat?
I've read somewhere that each partner gets only 2-mins to spend on an appln. With a 1.5 minute video and two founder profiles (which they seemed to have made out separately this time) how do they even skim through these apps?
Or is it the alumni who reads deep and based on their comments (say if we are already pizza profitable, yes we are!) our app gets bumped up in priority queue of partners?