4 ms·

I have a question. You say that PG was right in rejecting you because your team quarelled and broke up. Do you think the interviewers may have picked up on the

by hristov 16y ago

I have a question. You say that PG was right in rejecting you because your team quarelled and broke up. Do you think the interviewers may have picked up on the tension within the team? Is there anything that may have made PG suspect you are not a good team? It is possible that you are wrong about all the things you say were a problem with your presentation. It is possible that your presentation was fine, it just that your team was not fine and YC somehow picked up on that.

TrevorBurnham 16y ago
Good question. Although I was worried about the team, I think we did a good job of pulling together for the interview. One of the concerns in our practice interviews (with YC alums) was that I was doing too much of the talking. In the YC interview, I did about half the talking, each of my cofounders about a quarter, which I think is about right for a team of three; you want there to be a leader, but you also want the other guys to have their own opinions and areas of expertise. We noted who did what on the demo, and one of my cofounders did the actual presentation on his laptop. So I think the tension—or at least the lack of experience working together under pressure—came across in the application, but not the interview. If the application had said "We used to work on X, Y, and Z, and here are our complementary skill sets, and we worked together before on this other project," my hunch is that we would've been funded. Instead it boiled down to: "We're three students with little experience outside of academia. We're passionate about design, but we can't actually show you anything we've designed. We came together because Trevor sent out an email asking for cofounders." We would've had to absolutely knock the interview out of the park to overcome those things.

4 ms·

I have a question. You say that PG was right in rejecting you because your team quarelled and broke up. Do you think the interviewers may have picked up on the

by hristov 16y ago

TrevorBurnham 16y ago
Good question. Although I was worried about the team, I think we did a good job of pulling together for the interview. One of the concerns in our practice interviews (with YC alums) was that I was doing too much of the talking. In the YC interview, I did about half the talking, each of my cofounders about a quarter, which I think is about right for a team of three; you want there to be a leader, but you also want the other guys to have their own opinions and areas of expertise. We noted who did what on the demo, and one of my cofounders did the actual presentation on his laptop. So I think the tension—or at least the lack of experience working together under pressure—came across in the application, but not the interview. If the application had said "We used to work on X, Y, and Z, and here are our complementary skill sets, and we worked together before on this other project," my hunch is that we would've been funded. Instead it boiled down to: "We're three students with little experience outside of academia. We're passionate about design, but we can't actually show you anything we've designed. We came together because Trevor sent out an email asking for cofounders." We would've had to absolutely knock the interview out of the park to overcome those things.