6 ms·

Valley of Broken Dreams: A YC Postmortem

59 points by revolvingcur 18y ago

jgrahamc 18y ago
I'd be happy to hear about the online dating ideas. I think that is an are that's ripe for new thinking.
- utx00 18y ago
  why do you think the time is ripe?
  - jgrahamc 18y ago
    I think the time is ripe whenever there's a good idea.
    - deleted 18y ago
      [deleted]
- rantfoil 18y ago
  Yeah dating is interesting -- if you can solve two problems and get people to know you've solved it (or at least made the situation better) -- you probably have something viable. First is supply -- just having lots of available people on there. It's a classic network that derives its value from the connections. So you could break down barriers like cost (plenty of fish) or complexity in getting a profile up. Second is quality. This is where barriers are important -- Christian dating becomes a prefilter that reduces the population but increases quality. eharmony.com actually actively tries to increase quality by returning NO matches for people who 'fail' their personality tests. As controversial as that is (e.g. if a user is a depressed Atheist, then they probably will get 0 matches) -- it serves the community by making the dating pool better for their targeted audience. The two existing ways in which sites attack these problems is that they specialize for a specific niche and make it awesome for a particular type of person, or just go for pure quantity (which makes sense for an adwords play). Are there others?
- iloveyouocean 18y ago
  I have been following Paul Graham for some time and attended Startup School a couple years ago. At that time pg was somewhat adamant that they were not be interested in funding companies innovating in the 'online dating' space. Of course they ended up funding iminlikewithyou. But the initial negativity led me to decide against applying to YC. But it hasnt stopped our team from following our dream. We have been working very hard on modernizing (in fact revolutionizing) 'online dating'. When I tell people this they are generally unbelieving and point out all the terrible shortcomings of current sites. To me, that signals opportunity. We are really going to change things for the better. Although our site is still under wraps, if you are interested in finding out more then visit http://www.jumbledate.com http://www.jumbledate.com and put your name on the list.
  - pg 18y ago
    At that time pg was somewhat adamant that they were not be interested in funding companies innovating in the 'online dating' space. I doubt I said that. In fact I used the wretchedness of existing dating sites as an example of an opportunity for startups in a couple early essays on startups.
    - iloveyouocean 18y ago
      Yes, it was exactly those articles ('Ideas for Startups' and 'How to Start a Startup') that solidified my intentions to leave the (poorly managed) startup I was currently working on and do my own thing. I have never looked back. The comment I was referring to didn't appear in an article, but rather in a conversation when pg said something like (paraphrasing) "We have seen enough applications with ideas for online dating sites." If I am mistaken about this, then I apologize, perhaps I simply didn't limn the context or feeling of the statement. In any case, my original intent in commenting was to say, 'Follow your heart and your dreams, regardless of what the world says.' You will almost certainly learn something valuable from this experience.
rms 18y ago
I should have reposted my old YC interview advice comment... I'll write a new set for the next round. One of the main tips and a reason we didn't get in is that if PG and co suggest some kind of change to you, you should agree with whatever they say. One thing they're testing for is flexibility. Don't waste time defending yourself against them because you can't win. Whatever they told you, think about it, run with it, and reapply in 5 months. If you can actually make progress towards solving online dating they'll accept you in a heartbeat. If YC was a VC that had a model for the types of companies they were going to invest in, online dating would be at the very top of the list.
- Prrometheus 18y ago
  That's not just YC interview advice, that's advice for life. The ability to recognize good ideas in others is a far rarer skill than being able to come up with good ideas yourself. And, since there are far more others than selfs in the world, it tends to be a more useful skill as well. Even if you disagree with advice being offered, showing respect for the ideas of the person offering the advice by at least pondering it will make the advice-giver feel good about themselves and therefore like you.
- pg 18y ago
  if PG and co suggest some kind of change to you, you should agree with whatever they say A lot of people disagree with things we suggest and we fund them anyway. What we care about in this situation is how they respond. Plain yes is as bad a sign as plain no.
  - rms 18y ago
    OK, I phrased to the extreme, I will try and leave it at "be flexible."
- jsjenkins168 18y ago
  As someone who was also turned down, my advice is actually the opposite: Do not reapply in 5 months. It's a mental thing. If you always keep the dream of YC on a golden pedestal in your mind (one that must be reached in order to be successful), you could be setting yourself up for further disappointment and wasting valuable time. I'm not saying that YC is not worth aspiring for (I still think its a tremendous opportunity), just that dwelling on it rather than your product will kill you. 5 months is a long time in startup world. You need to put your defeat behind you as quickly as possible and focus on building your product. Remember, that is what is really the most important. Hopefully you learned some useful things about your idea and team from your interview. We certainly did, and for that I'm thankful. Its a little disappointing to hear that they no longer talk things over with you on the phone, but at least you got to meet some smart people and got some critical advice during the interview.
signa11 18y ago
“What has greater social impact than online dating?!” getting laid with online dating ?
- mrtron 18y ago
  If you are downmodding this, quickly read some craigslist person seeking person posts. I would guess the majority are just looking for random sexual hookups. Some sort of eHarmony matching for sexual partners would probably be an overwhelming success.
  - schtog 18y ago
    id make a wild guess and say those already exist in community form on the internets. for sex the problem is the same as in "real" life, women can choose so i doubt its just hooking up over the internets to get laid... if guess its 10 to 1 or worse men to women wanting to get laid... and that 1/10 is not jessica alba.
    - mrtron 18y ago
      I really doubt that the ratio is 10:1, and if it is on most sites like that then there lies the problem to be solved. Given any sort of relationship definition, I would guess that is never far off 1:1 for women and men interested. And not all men are interested in finding Jessica Alba...she is obviously attractive but that is only a piece of the puzzle :)
      - menloparkbum 18y ago
        Strangely enough, I know someone who got a PhD studying behavior on dating sites. She worked with a few dating sites and had access to their data. She also came up with clever ways to mine data from sites that didn't give her explicit permission. You're right in doubting the 10:1 ratio - it is more like 20:1 to 100:1 depending on what site you're on.
        mrtron 18y ago
Harj 18y ago
just going through the process of failing already puts you ahead. after school, most people don't put themselves in positions where they can fail at something. it's not human nature. so congrats.
utx00 18y ago
you're putting waaaay too much weight on this silly idea of startup success. seriously man, put things in perspective. what exactly were you expecting to get? life comes with its own sets of problems regardless of where you are. if you have any savings go and travel the world. if you don't, work for a year, and then do it. my guess would be that 3 months from now you'll be laughing at yourself. good luck.
suboptimal 18y ago
Secret to life: it's about the stories. Fifty years from now will you remember that day spent coding, or will you remember your adventure in California?
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
andr 18y ago
Just like OP, one thing I didn't like about the interviews was the instant and final yes-or-no answer. In our case, YC said they were worried about a problem we did not think would be a serious issue. We did come up with a solution, but only a few hours later, which, apparently, was too late.
- pg 18y ago
  one thing I didn't like about the interviews was the instant and final yes-or-no answer Yes, that is a problem for us too. We'd like to be able to spend longer with each group. But we want to give the maximum number of groups a chance to interview. If we spent more time on each interview, we'd have to interview fewer groups.
  - brlewis 18y ago
    YC has a problem. YC has money. Sounds like a business opportunity. Somebody needs to implement a Questions Requiring Thought (QRT) system. There should be a way to note questions during the interview that would require a lot of thought before a smart answer could be given concisely. Interviewees would leave the interview, put their thoughts together, and make a concise video of their answer. YC could review these answers anytime. I bet for 1.2x the time they're spending now, YC could get 2x the information.
  - cperciva 18y ago
    Have you considered drafting some YC alumni into helping you do interviews? I'm imagining a system where applicants would have several interviews with YC alumni and then you'd interview the groups which get the most "yes" votes from your alumni screeners -- I'm guessing that after going through the YC program people get reasonably good at identifying what it takes to be a successful YC participant. Of course, this would depend on the availability of YC alumni. I know I'd sign up to do it -- if I were a YC alumnus, that is -- but the fact that I spend several hours per week acting as an alumni representative on my alma mater's university senate (and committees thereof) marks me as being unusually prone to volunteer for such things.
    - 18y ago
dhimes 18y ago
Sounds like you have some good takeaways from the experience. Next time, it won't be pg making comments but customers. You'll have to work harder to read between the lines, but you'll do fine if you give their suggestions, hints, and concerns the same weight you should have given pg's.
martythemaniak 18y ago
Sadly, we did not make it either. Since I don't have a blog, I'll just say a few things here... Basically, we did everything we could on our end: -Had a pretty good demo. We spent a few months working on it part-time and we had the entire thing up and running with enough features for it to be roughly usable and we had some nice mock-ups of the future stuff we wanted to put in. I even showed them that TechCrunch featured one of the UI components (that was released as a standalone widget) done by our UI guy. -we prepared very well. We met with a few people from the local startup community (organizers of DemoCamp, a CEO and CTO of a local startup, etc) and had them pick apart our pitch. They did a very good job and brought up a lot of concerns which we worked out. People I emailed beforehand said to expect a lot of questions at the interview and to think on your feet, but because we had already gone through this 3 times with the local people, none of the questions during the interview were new to us and we had decent answers. So why didn't we get accepted? Well, there were simply better teams around that day. The email from pg did give two reasons, but to be honest, they were pretty flaky. The first was the community aspect (ie, it depended on user generated content) and the second our planned revenue stream. We had good answers to these ready since we expected they'd be raised during the interview and plenty of previous YC startups had overcome the same problems. The way I see it, if pg's philosophy is "build something nice people want to use, then worry about the money" and he rejects you because of revenue concerns, then it's basically a nice way of saying "Sorry, I just liked the other teams better" Of course this illustrates a one of the downsides of the whole startup thing. A lot of the things you do in life are pretty deterministic: if you spend 1hr/day learning Spanish, you'll know it well sooner or later, if you spend 1hr/day working out, you'll increase your stamina or muscles or whatever you're working on. If you work 1hr/day on a startup up.. well, its probabilistic, so all you're doing is tilting the odds in your favour, but you're never guaranteed anything - be it progress or success or whatever. So all the work on the app and all of the preparation for the demo/interview was for naught. Anyway... it'd be a shame to throw so much work away, so we'll probably work on it a bit more, then release it as a side project or something. At least have a decent project to put on future resumes or whatever.
- fallentimes 18y ago
  Marty, hopefully you guys are doing the startup regardless.
fleaflicker 18y ago
It sounds like the founder didn't really believe in the idea. I would not invest in founders that aren't passionate about what they are doing. Find something that makes you excited.
- JayNeely 18y ago
  Speaking of investing, now that your startup's been acquired have you thought about becoming an angel investor? Everyone's always saying there's a need for more startup investors who were formerly startup founders themselves. Checking your profile on Fleaflicker, I see you're in NYC; there are bound to be angel investor groups that you could join if you didn't want to do it alone.
  - fleaflicker 18y ago
    I'm not done with Fleaflicker yet. It's still my top priority. But yes, the thought has crossed my mind. Nothing more than that though.
LostInTheWoods 18y ago
Bah. Getting rejected by YC is not the end of the world; and getting accepted by YC is no guarantee of success. At the end of the day, if you don't truly believe in your startup, then why are you doing it?
alex_c 18y ago
Congrats! Hopefully the first of many rejections. (and eventual success)
wumi 18y ago
go out and build your product and let the users prove whether or not your startup is valuable.
chrysb 18y ago
If you have an idea you really believe in and you quit because YC didn't buy into it then you're fooling yourself. You really need to follow through with your ideas whether or not other people believe after they heard your pitch for 10 minutes. YC is indeed a great opportunity, but it's definitely not the only one. Keep working at your idea, go out to conferences and meet-ups -- you can network on your own. Be yourself and be your product. I believe something that is important to YC is that you are not banking on their funding to fulfill your idea. You need to have the mentality that you are going to finish your product with or without them. You need to make them want to get on your boat rather than you praying to be on theirs. We came across the application and decided to fill out as an exercise for solidifying our idea. Whether or not YC was going to fund us, we still had a plan of action, which is essentially still the same. I feel that our mentality is what gave us the confidence to interview the way we did. Try again next time, don't be so bitter. Give value before you get value. If you make your product and it is good, word will spread, and you will succeed, just keep at it. Please.
babul 18y ago
YC is not the be all and end all. We all have rough rides at time and fall down. Pick yourself up, learn from the experience and keep moving forward, don't stop.

59 points by revolvingcur 18y ago

jgrahamc 18y ago

I'd be happy to hear about the online dating ideas. I think that is an are that's ripe for new thinking.

utx00 18y ago
why do you think the time is ripe?
- jgrahamc 18y ago
  I think the time is ripe whenever there's a good idea.
  - deleted 18y ago
    [deleted]
rantfoil 18y ago
Yeah dating is interesting -- if you can solve two problems and get people to know you've solved it (or at least made the situation better) -- you probably have something viable. First is supply -- just having lots of available people on there. It's a classic network that derives its value from the connections. So you could break down barriers like cost (plenty of fish) or complexity in getting a profile up. Second is quality. This is where barriers are important -- Christian dating becomes a prefilter that reduces the population but increases quality. eharmony.com actually actively tries to increase quality by returning NO matches for people who 'fail' their personality tests. As controversial as that is (e.g. if a user is a depressed Atheist, then they probably will get 0 matches) -- it serves the community by making the dating pool better for their targeted audience. The two existing ways in which sites attack these problems is that they specialize for a specific niche and make it awesome for a particular type of person, or just go for pure quantity (which makes sense for an adwords play). Are there others?
iloveyouocean 18y ago
I have been following Paul Graham for some time and attended Startup School a couple years ago. At that time pg was somewhat adamant that they were not be interested in funding companies innovating in the 'online dating' space. Of course they ended up funding iminlikewithyou. But the initial negativity led me to decide against applying to YC. But it hasnt stopped our team from following our dream. We have been working very hard on modernizing (in fact revolutionizing) 'online dating'. When I tell people this they are generally unbelieving and point out all the terrible shortcomings of current sites. To me, that signals opportunity. We are really going to change things for the better. Although our site is still under wraps, if you are interested in finding out more then visit http://www.jumbledate.com http://www.jumbledate.com and put your name on the list.
- pg 18y ago
  At that time pg was somewhat adamant that they were not be interested in funding companies innovating in the 'online dating' space. I doubt I said that. In fact I used the wretchedness of existing dating sites as an example of an opportunity for startups in a couple early essays on startups.
  - iloveyouocean 18y ago
    Yes, it was exactly those articles ('Ideas for Startups' and 'How to Start a Startup') that solidified my intentions to leave the (poorly managed) startup I was currently working on and do my own thing. I have never looked back. The comment I was referring to didn't appear in an article, but rather in a conversation when pg said something like (paraphrasing) "We have seen enough applications with ideas for online dating sites." If I am mistaken about this, then I apologize, perhaps I simply didn't limn the context or feeling of the statement. In any case, my original intent in commenting was to say, 'Follow your heart and your dreams, regardless of what the world says.' You will almost certainly learn something valuable from this experience.

rms 18y ago

I should have reposted my old YC interview advice comment... I'll write a new set for the next round. One of the main tips and a reason we didn't get in is that if PG and co suggest some kind of change to you, you should agree with whatever they say. One thing they're testing for is flexibility. Don't waste time defending yourself against them because you can't win. Whatever they told you, think about it, run with it, and reapply in 5 months. If you can actually make progress towards solving online dating they'll accept you in a heartbeat. If YC was a VC that had a model for the types of companies they were going to invest in, online dating would be at the very top of the list.

Prrometheus 18y ago
That's not just YC interview advice, that's advice for life. The ability to recognize good ideas in others is a far rarer skill than being able to come up with good ideas yourself. And, since there are far more others than selfs in the world, it tends to be a more useful skill as well. Even if you disagree with advice being offered, showing respect for the ideas of the person offering the advice by at least pondering it will make the advice-giver feel good about themselves and therefore like you.
pg 18y ago
if PG and co suggest some kind of change to you, you should agree with whatever they say A lot of people disagree with things we suggest and we fund them anyway. What we care about in this situation is how they respond. Plain yes is as bad a sign as plain no.
- rms 18y ago
  OK, I phrased to the extreme, I will try and leave it at "be flexible."
jsjenkins168 18y ago
As someone who was also turned down, my advice is actually the opposite: Do not reapply in 5 months. It's a mental thing. If you always keep the dream of YC on a golden pedestal in your mind (one that must be reached in order to be successful), you could be setting yourself up for further disappointment and wasting valuable time. I'm not saying that YC is not worth aspiring for (I still think its a tremendous opportunity), just that dwelling on it rather than your product will kill you. 5 months is a long time in startup world. You need to put your defeat behind you as quickly as possible and focus on building your product. Remember, that is what is really the most important. Hopefully you learned some useful things about your idea and team from your interview. We certainly did, and for that I'm thankful. Its a little disappointing to hear that they no longer talk things over with you on the phone, but at least you got to meet some smart people and got some critical advice during the interview.

signa11 18y ago

“What has greater social impact than online dating?!” getting laid with online dating ?

mrtron 18y ago
If you are downmodding this, quickly read some craigslist person seeking person posts. I would guess the majority are just looking for random sexual hookups. Some sort of eHarmony matching for sexual partners would probably be an overwhelming success.
- schtog 18y ago
  id make a wild guess and say those already exist in community form on the internets. for sex the problem is the same as in "real" life, women can choose so i doubt its just hooking up over the internets to get laid... if guess its 10 to 1 or worse men to women wanting to get laid... and that 1/10 is not jessica alba.
  - mrtron 18y ago
    I really doubt that the ratio is 10:1, and if it is on most sites like that then there lies the problem to be solved. Given any sort of relationship definition, I would guess that is never far off 1:1 for women and men interested. And not all men are interested in finding Jessica Alba...she is obviously attractive but that is only a piece of the puzzle :)
    - menloparkbum 18y ago
      Strangely enough, I know someone who got a PhD studying behavior on dating sites. She worked with a few dating sites and had access to their data. She also came up with clever ways to mine data from sites that didn't give her explicit permission. You're right in doubting the 10:1 ratio - it is more like 20:1 to 100:1 depending on what site you're on.
      - mrtron 18y ago

Harj 18y ago

just going through the process of failing already puts you ahead. after school, most people don't put themselves in positions where they can fail at something. it's not human nature. so congrats.

utx00 18y ago

you're putting waaaay too much weight on this silly idea of startup success. seriously man, put things in perspective. what exactly were you expecting to get? life comes with its own sets of problems regardless of where you are. if you have any savings go and travel the world. if you don't, work for a year, and then do it. my guess would be that 3 months from now you'll be laughing at yourself. good luck.

suboptimal 18y ago

Secret to life: it's about the stories. Fifty years from now will you remember that day spent coding, or will you remember your adventure in California?

deleted 18y ago
[deleted]

andr 18y ago

Just like OP, one thing I didn't like about the interviews was the instant and final yes-or-no answer. In our case, YC said they were worried about a problem we did not think would be a serious issue. We did come up with a solution, but only a few hours later, which, apparently, was too late.

pg 18y ago
one thing I didn't like about the interviews was the instant and final yes-or-no answer Yes, that is a problem for us too. We'd like to be able to spend longer with each group. But we want to give the maximum number of groups a chance to interview. If we spent more time on each interview, we'd have to interview fewer groups.
- brlewis 18y ago
  YC has a problem. YC has money. Sounds like a business opportunity. Somebody needs to implement a Questions Requiring Thought (QRT) system. There should be a way to note questions during the interview that would require a lot of thought before a smart answer could be given concisely. Interviewees would leave the interview, put their thoughts together, and make a concise video of their answer. YC could review these answers anytime. I bet for 1.2x the time they're spending now, YC could get 2x the information.
- cperciva 18y ago
  Have you considered drafting some YC alumni into helping you do interviews? I'm imagining a system where applicants would have several interviews with YC alumni and then you'd interview the groups which get the most "yes" votes from your alumni screeners -- I'm guessing that after going through the YC program people get reasonably good at identifying what it takes to be a successful YC participant. Of course, this would depend on the availability of YC alumni. I know I'd sign up to do it -- if I were a YC alumnus, that is -- but the fact that I spend several hours per week acting as an alumni representative on my alma mater's university senate (and committees thereof) marks me as being unusually prone to volunteer for such things.
  - 18y ago

dhimes 18y ago

Sounds like you have some good takeaways from the experience. Next time, it won't be pg making comments but customers. You'll have to work harder to read between the lines, but you'll do fine if you give their suggestions, hints, and concerns the same weight you should have given pg's.

martythemaniak 18y ago

Sadly, we did not make it either. Since I don't have a blog, I'll just say a few things here... Basically, we did everything we could on our end: -Had a pretty good demo. We spent a few months working on it part-time and we had the entire thing up and running with enough features for it to be roughly usable and we had some nice mock-ups of the future stuff we wanted to put in. I even showed them that TechCrunch featured one of the UI components (that was released as a standalone widget) done by our UI guy. -we prepared very well. We met with a few people from the local startup community (organizers of DemoCamp, a CEO and CTO of a local startup, etc) and had them pick apart our pitch. They did a very good job and brought up a lot of concerns which we worked out. People I emailed beforehand said to expect a lot of questions at the interview and to think on your feet, but because we had already gone through this 3 times with the local people, none of the questions during the interview were new to us and we had decent answers. So why didn't we get accepted? Well, there were simply better teams around that day. The email from pg did give two reasons, but to be honest, they were pretty flaky. The first was the community aspect (ie, it depended on user generated content) and the second our planned revenue stream. We had good answers to these ready since we expected they'd be raised during the interview and plenty of previous YC startups had overcome the same problems. The way I see it, if pg's philosophy is "build something nice people want to use, then worry about the money" and he rejects you because of revenue concerns, then it's basically a nice way of saying "Sorry, I just liked the other teams better" Of course this illustrates a one of the downsides of the whole startup thing. A lot of the things you do in life are pretty deterministic: if you spend 1hr/day learning Spanish, you'll know it well sooner or later, if you spend 1hr/day working out, you'll increase your stamina or muscles or whatever you're working on. If you work 1hr/day on a startup up.. well, its probabilistic, so all you're doing is tilting the odds in your favour, but you're never guaranteed anything - be it progress or success or whatever. So all the work on the app and all of the preparation for the demo/interview was for naught. Anyway... it'd be a shame to throw so much work away, so we'll probably work on it a bit more, then release it as a side project or something. At least have a decent project to put on future resumes or whatever.

fallentimes 18y ago
Marty, hopefully you guys are doing the startup regardless.

fleaflicker 18y ago

It sounds like the founder didn't really believe in the idea. I would not invest in founders that aren't passionate about what they are doing. Find something that makes you excited.

JayNeely 18y ago
Speaking of investing, now that your startup's been acquired have you thought about becoming an angel investor? Everyone's always saying there's a need for more startup investors who were formerly startup founders themselves. Checking your profile on Fleaflicker, I see you're in NYC; there are bound to be angel investor groups that you could join if you didn't want to do it alone.
- fleaflicker 18y ago
  I'm not done with Fleaflicker yet. It's still my top priority. But yes, the thought has crossed my mind. Nothing more than that though.

LostInTheWoods 18y ago

Bah. Getting rejected by YC is not the end of the world; and getting accepted by YC is no guarantee of success. At the end of the day, if you don't truly believe in your startup, then why are you doing it?

alex_c 18y ago

Congrats! Hopefully the first of many rejections. (and eventual success)

wumi 18y ago

go out and build your product and let the users prove whether or not your startup is valuable.

chrysb 18y ago

If you have an idea you really believe in and you quit because YC didn't buy into it then you're fooling yourself. You really need to follow through with your ideas whether or not other people believe after they heard your pitch for 10 minutes. YC is indeed a great opportunity, but it's definitely not the only one. Keep working at your idea, go out to conferences and meet-ups -- you can network on your own. Be yourself and be your product. I believe something that is important to YC is that you are not banking on their funding to fulfill your idea. You need to have the mentality that you are going to finish your product with or without them. You need to make them want to get on your boat rather than you praying to be on theirs. We came across the application and decided to fill out as an exercise for solidifying our idea. Whether or not YC was going to fund us, we still had a plan of action, which is essentially still the same. I feel that our mentality is what gave us the confidence to interview the way we did. Try again next time, don't be so bitter. Give value before you get value. If you make your product and it is good, word will spread, and you will succeed, just keep at it. Please.

babul 18y ago

YC is not the be all and end all. We all have rough rides at time and fall down. Pick yourself up, learn from the experience and keep moving forward, don't stop.