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I find the 10 minute limit quite odd. I assume you've thought it through, but it seems to me that the cost of spending a little more time interviewing would lik

by dood 17y ago

I find the 10 minute limit quite odd. I assume you've thought it through, but it seems to me that the cost of spending a little more time interviewing would likely pay for itself many times over in better decision making. Especially after watching your Mixergy interview, where you emphasize how poor you consider yourselves at choosing who to invest in.

DTrejo 17y ago
Thin slicing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_%28book%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_%28book%29
- daeken 17y ago
  I'm reading Blink right now (highly recommend it -- very interesting so far), so perhaps there's more said on this later, but I'm not sure thin slicing will help here. pg says they're not very good at choosing people yet, so it's possible that they're thin slicing successfully without knowing about it (as is talked about in Blink), or that the format just isn't successful. Without a whole lot more information (which is tough to get in such a situation), I don't think you can really make a call one way or another. Regardless, it's an interesting idea.
- Robin_Message 17y ago
  Ah, bless Gladwell. You say thin slicing, I say gut instinct or intuition. I'd say Gladwell is not worth reading. He takes an obvious, folksy thing, adds a bit of a twist to it, presents several anecdotes as dramatic stories illustrating his point, then slaps on some "science" to make it seem like its true. It's not. He's just making stuff up that sounds plausible but surprising. As an example, in Blink he refers to the mostly excellent work of John Gottman [1]. Gladwell's thesis is in Blink is that by "thinking without thinking", i.e. intuition, experts make better decisions. Now Gottman has developed a technique that can predict if a couple will stay together with frightening accuracy, simply by watching them argue. However, the longer he watches, the more accurate his prediction are. And it's not an instinctive thing; it's measuring expressions using a system [2]. Gladwell writes well, and seems believable. That doesn't make him right. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gottman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gottman [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_Action_Coding_System http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_Action_Coding_System
wheels 17y ago
YC did long interviews at first and they've evolved to the shorter form. Presumably this is because they're interviewing so many teams and don't want to change the interview-weekend format drastically to, say, span several weekends. Plus, honestly, there are only so many hours of pitches the brain can endure before shutting down and wanting them to be over more than for them to be exciting.
pg 17y ago
If we spent more time on each interview, we couldn't interview as many startups in the same period. 10 minutes seems the optimal tradeoff in that respect. We are trying to engage more with people in the application phase now. That should improve things.
AndrewWarner 17y ago
That sounds shockingly low to me too, but I keep hearing in my interviews with YC-backed entrepreneurs that they got some of their most productive insights from these meetings. I used to think they were making it up because pg is such a hero in this community and they wanted to make YC look good. But after wasting time disbelieving the process, I now accept that it works, and I spend more time in my interviews trying to understand out WHY it works.

by dood 17y ago

DTrejo 17y ago

Thin slicing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_%28book%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_%28book%29

daeken 17y ago
I'm reading Blink right now (highly recommend it -- very interesting so far), so perhaps there's more said on this later, but I'm not sure thin slicing will help here. pg says they're not very good at choosing people yet, so it's possible that they're thin slicing successfully without knowing about it (as is talked about in Blink), or that the format just isn't successful. Without a whole lot more information (which is tough to get in such a situation), I don't think you can really make a call one way or another. Regardless, it's an interesting idea.
Robin_Message 17y ago
Ah, bless Gladwell. You say thin slicing, I say gut instinct or intuition. I'd say Gladwell is not worth reading. He takes an obvious, folksy thing, adds a bit of a twist to it, presents several anecdotes as dramatic stories illustrating his point, then slaps on some "science" to make it seem like its true. It's not. He's just making stuff up that sounds plausible but surprising. As an example, in Blink he refers to the mostly excellent work of John Gottman [1]. Gladwell's thesis is in Blink is that by "thinking without thinking", i.e. intuition, experts make better decisions. Now Gottman has developed a technique that can predict if a couple will stay together with frightening accuracy, simply by watching them argue. However, the longer he watches, the more accurate his prediction are. And it's not an instinctive thing; it's measuring expressions using a system [2]. Gladwell writes well, and seems believable. That doesn't make him right. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gottman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gottman [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_Action_Coding_System http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_Action_Coding_System

wheels 17y ago

YC did long interviews at first and they've evolved to the shorter form. Presumably this is because they're interviewing so many teams and don't want to change the interview-weekend format drastically to, say, span several weekends. Plus, honestly, there are only so many hours of pitches the brain can endure before shutting down and wanting them to be over more than for them to be exciting.

pg 17y ago

If we spent more time on each interview, we couldn't interview as many startups in the same period. 10 minutes seems the optimal tradeoff in that respect. We are trying to engage more with people in the application phase now. That should improve things.

AndrewWarner 17y ago

That sounds shockingly low to me too, but I keep hearing in my interviews with YC-backed entrepreneurs that they got some of their most productive insights from these meetings. I used to think they were making it up because pg is such a hero in this community and they wanted to make YC look good. But after wasting time disbelieving the process, I now accept that it works, and I spend more time in my interviews trying to understand out WHY it works.