5 ms·

Matt Maroon: Advice for Would-Be Y Combinator Founders

54 points by toffer 19y ago

jsjenkins168 19y ago
I'll add one more... Don't get stressed in the interview if they criticize your idea! They may seem a bit negative towards you but its their job to take a critical angle. In other words, be cool and dont take stabs at your idea personal. Chances are, the comments they're making turn out true anyway so heed the advice.
- mattmaroon 19y ago
  Agreed. I was planning on putting that in tips for interviewees since you don't get any feedback until then.
  - rms 19y ago
    It wasn't feedback on the idea, but I got a call from Jessica and an email from Paul trying to estimate if we were truly prepared to do this as undergraduates.
    - drusenko 19y ago
      i think we were asked 3 or 4 times in a row if we were really going to go with it, as undergrads...
      - jl 19y ago
        I must have asked 3 out of 4 times - I didn't want you to miss getting your degree when you were so close!
        drusenko 19y ago
        completely understandable, of course!
    - mattmaroon 19y ago
      Interesting. My philosophy is that you can always go back to college, but then maybe that's why I'm 26 and still haven't graduated.
- ivankirigin 19y ago
  This makes a lot of sense. I see around 1/3 the reason to pursue a startup with YCombinator is to receive harsh criticism. The other reasons for me include the luxury of focus and the opportunity to meet a gaggle of smart people.
drusenko 19y ago
congrats on the wedding!
- mattmaroon 19y ago
  Thanks!
aquateen 19y ago
Regarding the number of founders, YouOS springs to mind as a 4-person team. I thought I read PG say he funded a few individual founders this last round?
- drusenko 19y ago
  heysan! has 4 founders and a couple other people working on it, as far as i last remember
- pg 19y ago
  We've funded a few startups with 4 founders. I think there's one in the current batch (though only 3 came to Cambridge). Heysan was not one though; they only had 3 people when we funded them. There's one single-founder startup in the current batch. He just posted an ad for another person: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33472 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33472
martin 19y ago
"For instance Zenter, which is obviously much more suited for integration with an online office suite like Google's than as a standalone business" If there's no potential for a business based around presentations, somebody'd better get on the horn with WebEx and let them know. (Then again, they're probably still too busy counting the $3.2bn from their Cisco acquisition to notice.) PowerPoint is huge in medium/large companies, and the tools available for delivering PPT presentations remotely still suck. And aside from providing awesome presentation design functionality, Zenter would've absolutely given WebEx a run for its money on the presentation delivery side.
- immad 19y ago
  I think Matt was just making a point using Zenter as an example. For zenter to go the webex route they would have had to add a lot more functionality, but it was obviously possible.
  - martin 19y ago
    Of course, but just taking PPT and porting it to the web feature for feature would be pretty silly. The reason I always thought Zenter was a shoo-in was that there were obvious great, monetizable things they could do with presentations that a desktop app could never hope to do -- and during chats with them, it was quite clear they recognized this.
tipjoy 19y ago
You mention the necessity to have 2-3 cofounders, as does Paul in his "why to not not start a startup." In a 2-person startup, do you think both people need to be software developers? I'm an interaction designer, and so although I do the HTML and CSS, my real contribution to the team is my focus on the personas, the design, and the user experience, while my partner focuses on the implementation. So far, things have been moving along at a nice clip, but I'd like to hear your take on this issue. (Note I didn't use the term 'hackers' because although I don't code, I would consider myself someone who works to "design beautiful software.")
- myoung8 19y ago
  I'm in a very similar situation, I'd like to think we complement the hardcore hacker pretty well (especially since I also love the business side of things). If I recall correctly, PG did say that every team should ideally have a developer, a designer, and someone good at both to be a "sweeper."
- mattmaroon 19y ago
  I think that's actually great. That was more or less Reddit's situation as I understand it. There's so much non-hacking stuff to do that I honestly think each group should have someone who feels no compulsion to write code, freeing the hacker(s) from distraction. My ideal candidate, were I doing the funding, would be a group consisting of two hackers and one non-hacker. Maybe I'm biased though because that's what we have.
- pg 19y ago
  Not all the founders have to be hackers. You just need at least one person who can hack, and at least one person who can deal with people (including investors and customers). Three kinds of design ability are needed: product design (what does it do?); software design (how does it do it?); and graphic design (what does the site look like?). Somehow between them the founders have to cover the first two. Graphic designers can be hired, though it's better if the founders can do that too. The ideal configuration would of course be a group where all the founders had all these skills. Haven't seen that yet, though.
ALee 19y ago
Thanks for the advice Matt. (Better late than never)

54 points by toffer 19y ago

I'll add one more... Don't get stressed in the interview if they criticize your idea! They may seem a bit negative towards you but its their job to take a critical angle. In other words, be cool and dont take stabs at your idea personal. Chances are, the comments they're making turn out true anyway so heed the advice.

mattmaroon 19y ago
Agreed. I was planning on putting that in tips for interviewees since you don't get any feedback until then.
- rms 19y ago
  It wasn't feedback on the idea, but I got a call from Jessica and an email from Paul trying to estimate if we were truly prepared to do this as undergraduates.
  - drusenko 19y ago
    i think we were asked 3 or 4 times in a row if we were really going to go with it, as undergrads...
    - jl 19y ago
      I must have asked 3 out of 4 times - I didn't want you to miss getting your degree when you were so close!
      - drusenko 19y ago
        completely understandable, of course!
  - mattmaroon 19y ago
    Interesting. My philosophy is that you can always go back to college, but then maybe that's why I'm 26 and still haven't graduated.
ivankirigin 19y ago
This makes a lot of sense. I see around 1/3 the reason to pursue a startup with YCombinator is to receive harsh criticism. The other reasons for me include the luxury of focus and the opportunity to meet a gaggle of smart people.

drusenko 19y ago

congrats on the wedding!

mattmaroon 19y ago
Thanks!

aquateen 19y ago

Regarding the number of founders, YouOS springs to mind as a 4-person team. I thought I read PG say he funded a few individual founders this last round?

drusenko 19y ago
heysan! has 4 founders and a couple other people working on it, as far as i last remember
pg 19y ago
We've funded a few startups with 4 founders. I think there's one in the current batch (though only 3 came to Cambridge). Heysan was not one though; they only had 3 people when we funded them. There's one single-founder startup in the current batch. He just posted an ad for another person: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33472 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33472

martin 19y ago

"For instance Zenter, which is obviously much more suited for integration with an online office suite like Google's than as a standalone business" If there's no potential for a business based around presentations, somebody'd better get on the horn with WebEx and let them know. (Then again, they're probably still too busy counting the $3.2bn from their Cisco acquisition to notice.) PowerPoint is huge in medium/large companies, and the tools available for delivering PPT presentations remotely still suck. And aside from providing awesome presentation design functionality, Zenter would've absolutely given WebEx a run for its money on the presentation delivery side.

immad 19y ago
I think Matt was just making a point using Zenter as an example. For zenter to go the webex route they would have had to add a lot more functionality, but it was obviously possible.
- martin 19y ago
  Of course, but just taking PPT and porting it to the web feature for feature would be pretty silly. The reason I always thought Zenter was a shoo-in was that there were obvious great, monetizable things they could do with presentations that a desktop app could never hope to do -- and during chats with them, it was quite clear they recognized this.

tipjoy 19y ago

You mention the necessity to have 2-3 cofounders, as does Paul in his "why to not not start a startup." In a 2-person startup, do you think both people need to be software developers? I'm an interaction designer, and so although I do the HTML and CSS, my real contribution to the team is my focus on the personas, the design, and the user experience, while my partner focuses on the implementation. So far, things have been moving along at a nice clip, but I'd like to hear your take on this issue. (Note I didn't use the term 'hackers' because although I don't code, I would consider myself someone who works to "design beautiful software.")

myoung8 19y ago
I'm in a very similar situation, I'd like to think we complement the hardcore hacker pretty well (especially since I also love the business side of things). If I recall correctly, PG did say that every team should ideally have a developer, a designer, and someone good at both to be a "sweeper."
mattmaroon 19y ago
I think that's actually great. That was more or less Reddit's situation as I understand it. There's so much non-hacking stuff to do that I honestly think each group should have someone who feels no compulsion to write code, freeing the hacker(s) from distraction. My ideal candidate, were I doing the funding, would be a group consisting of two hackers and one non-hacker. Maybe I'm biased though because that's what we have.
pg 19y ago
Not all the founders have to be hackers. You just need at least one person who can hack, and at least one person who can deal with people (including investors and customers). Three kinds of design ability are needed: product design (what does it do?); software design (how does it do it?); and graphic design (what does the site look like?). Somehow between them the founders have to cover the first two. Graphic designers can be hired, though it's better if the founders can do that too. The ideal configuration would of course be a group where all the founders had all these skills. Haven't seen that yet, though.

ALee 19y ago

Thanks for the advice Matt. (Better late than never)