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Inside the Y Combinator office
- acangiano 16y agoI think part of PG's success in working with entrepreneurs is due to the fact that he comes across as extremely approachable.
- zachcb 16y agoI always remember a tweet that he sent out: http://twitter.com/#!/paulg/status/29256073985 http://twitter.com/#!/paulg/status/29256073985 So true.
- reason 16y agoYou've got a few grammatical mistakes in there. Anyway, very cool video!
- justin 16y agoThanks, I fixed them. We've been working late :)
- oldstrangers 16y agoThis would make for some good mental preparation and visualization. Sit back and stare at PG asking you questions over and over again and perhaps it'll help reduce your nervousness come time to interview.
- rhizome 16y agoHis face I can handle, it's making sure I've covered my bases that worries me.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- rokhayakebe 16y agoGet the invitation first, then worry about the rest.
- oldstrangers 16y agoI assumed my advice would be heeded by those with invitations. Didn't think I needed to spell that part out.
- forensic 16y agopremature optimization alert
- jayzee 16y agoIt is a very good question that pg asked while just joking around something that I guess all entrepreneurs should have an immediate answer to, 'Why doesn't this already exist?'
- ffumarola 16y agoDefinitely. And it will make you think about possible barriers to entry if you were to create the idea.
- prpon 16y agoIt is a great question. However, I look at some of the YC funded companies(including justin.tv) and I wonder what the answer would be? Off the top of my mind, I can think of hipmunk,1000memories etc and would like to know how the founders would answer. It is a much more piercing question than What are users forced to do today when your product does not exist.
- justin 16y agoJustin.tv (neither an online streaming live show of some guy's life, nor a streaming platform for live video) didn't exist before we were funded, fyibtw.
- prpon 16y agoJustin, I totally agree that what you did with Justin.tv was novel and didn't exist before. However, how would you have answered Why doesn't it already exist?
- justin 16y agoAh, sorry, reading comprehension fail. Why didn't the platform exist pre-Justin.tv? 1) Bandwidth prices were much higher in 2007, and have plummeted in the past few years, making the economics more attractive. 2) There were no good, stable streaming servers commercially available. Flash streaming in FMS 2 was a joke (it would fail constantly) in 2007. Fast forward a little while and you had Red5, FMS 3, and Wowza all with video streaming to a Flash client. 3) Video advertising market grew significantly starting around 2007, providing a monetization model. Hope that explains it!
- jmtame 16y agosocialcam holds the record for fastest interview ;)
- DanielN 16y agoThis is pretty off topic but it interested me so I thought I would share: This video more than anything got me interested in socialcam (of which I had never heard of before), so I did a little reading and decided to sign up for updates to the product. After I signed up the page refreshed and informed me I was ranked last (4000 and something) on their list because I hadn't gotten anyone else to sign up yet. Instantly my competitive juices started flowing and I wanted to get higher up on the list. It just struck me as a really original interesting way to encourage sign ups (presumably for eventual beta testers). (also you can help my ranking if you click here: http://socialcam.com/?referred_by=BEA3CDhw http://socialcam.com/?referred_by=BEA3CDhw )
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- tomjen3 16y agoI don't know why you can't see it, but frankly they are playing you for a fool. What they do is a classic pyramid scam, albeit with signups instead of money.
- emmett 16y agoExcept instead of fooling people into thinking they're going to get rich and stealing from them, it's a free game where everyone involved wins an invite!
- DanielN 16y agoI think you may be confusing viral marketing for a pyramid scheme. Given, pyramid schemes are a form of viral marketing, but exponential growth through sharing is necessary without being sufficient. In this case it works out fine for both parties. I signed up because I was interested in beta testing and socialcam gets to choose their potential beta testers by how social they are. For what it's worth the system may not be very effective yet. I have one referral and I've moved from #4000 to #600
- huhtenberg 16y agoAnd it's not exactly original. Streakly used it few months ago and I remember its author saying that he in turn borrowed it from some other webapp.
- jl 16y agoBoy, it surprised me how much like a real interview that seemed!
- lfx 16y agoMaybe some guys who already had interviews with PG, could tell more questions?
- Johngibb 16y agoReally, I'd say this is really accurate. Any further questions grew organically from answers to the questions in this video. For us, they made a big point of knowing that our market really existed, even though no company was targeting it yet. In fact, our lack of solid evidence of the market is the main reason for our rejection (W11). However, maybe this was only such a large focus because it was our biggest weakness, and other interviews focus on other things. Keep in mind that the interview is only 15 minutes, so there don't need to be many questions...
- endlessvoid94 16y agoI can't remember if it was asked or not, but I've had several investors ask the question 'What keeps others from copying you quickly?'
- tjmc 16y agoJust a heads up - the Blue Coat web filtering service has classified socialcam.com as "pornography"
- stevefarnworth 16y agoI know it's a short, light-hearted video, but that's what I imagine the YC interview to be like for some reason. Probing questions, asked politely and framed in a way to see what your response is, not just ticking questions and answers off of your mental tick sheet. I'm based in the UK and am a single-founder, but this sort of thing just makes YC look like an even more compelling experience - all for an under 2 minute, friendly video. Good job!