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Show HN: iPG - YC Interview Simulator
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- vyrotek 14y agoYou can expect to be banned shortly.
- Zephyr314 14y agoNow I really want to know what he/she said...
- robwgibbons 14y agoMe too.
- jerf 14y agoLink to some presumably spam site and nothing else. Don't know, didn't follow.
- jansen 14y agoLove it, good luck guys!
- aorshan 14y agoThis is pretty clever. Well done guys.
- makeee 14y agoLove it! It helped me a lot before my interview ;)
- ColinHayhurst 14y agoGreat to know it helped you today. Best of luck.
- CompiledCode 14y agoClever and fun! Please fix the misspelling though... "quick, consice [sic] answers"
- martin_k 14y agoPress N
- jamescun 14y agoWow, you found that fast.
- GuiA 14y agoIt's quite visible in the source :P
- jerf 14y agoAre you suggesting that this is in some sense the answer to all the questions? It probably would at least have the distinction of being an answer that pg/YCombinator had never heard before... Where's the rocket science here?
- evincarofautumn 14y agoHe applies next round and gets an interview. He surreptitiously brings a boom box. When asked what it’s for, he says “please, hold your questions till the end of the interview”. After all of the questions have been asked and answered, he slams play and rips off his shirt to reveal that he’s been covered in strawberry Pop-Tarts and rainbow Spandex the whole time. Verily, this is the hacker equivalent of professionalism.
- geoffschmidt 14y agoSeveral times in a row
- Dhekke 14y agoIf all else fails, apply Nyan cat
- dr_win 14y agoBrilliant!
- thenonsequitur 14y agoWell done. I'd like to see some more pro tips!
- Animus7 14y agoHeh, I thought my team was the only one that made this kind of thing before interviews. This one's got much better content than ours though; thanks for sharing! For those like me who are curious what the RNG missed, here's the data list: http://www.jamescun.com/ycs12/data.js http://www.jamescun.com/ycs12/data.js
- sparknlaunch12 14y agoWhy do your team use this approach? Does it improve your performance? If yes, why and how? What do you do better in the actual pitch?
- amarcus 14y agoLink seems to be down. Anyone got a mirror?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- reso 14y agoWe're using this right now to prepare for our interview. Nice work guys!
- rooshdi 14y agoHoly macro! This is like a never-ending interrogation! But one hell of a good one, nonetheless. Great piece of stuff James and iPG! Should help out a ton of interviewees.
- mceachen 14y agoWhen talking to PG and the other YC partners, be substantive, and get straight to the point. DO NOT BEAT AROUND THE BUSH. Do not hem and haw. "Uhm"s and "uh"s don't lend an aura of intelligence. Use precise and concise language. You aren't pitching a VC that will ask you what your "secret sauce" is. He talks quickly, and so do the other YC partners. Try to match their tempo (as you should when talking to anyone).
- Gring 14y ago> Try to match their tempo (as you should when talking to anyone). That's stupid advice. Why should I always match my tempo to somebody else? I'm not going to adapt to your talking speed for the same reason that you're probably not going to try to match mine. I'm not your monkey.
- RockyMcNuts 14y agoBecause you want to persuade them? When you speak someone's language, using similar posture, vocabulary, style, and being attentive and tuned into them, they're more likely to react positively and buy what you're selling. http://lifehacker.com/5894462/use-mirroring-and-matching-to-build-a-good-rapport-and-become-more-persuasive http://lifehacker.com/5894462/use-mirroring-and-matching-to-...
- mindcrime 14y agoThat's stupid advice. Why should I always match my tempo to somebody else? Because it's an important element of building rapport. And rapport is important if you want to get someone on "your side" in a discussion. for the same reason that you're probably not going to try to match mine But people usually do just that. It's a fairly well established thing, that people in a conversation usually eventually match each other's talking pace. And it generally feels awkward when you're talking to someone and that doesn't happen.
- sp332 14y agoThe word "should" is ambiguous. Here it doesn't mean some kind of moral duty, but just that you'll generally have better results.
- DTrejo 14y agoRecord the person's response! Would be great if you could replay each of your responses at the end to see if you sounded horrible (or good).
- tonyjwang 14y agoAny way to make this a generic tool? Would love to be able to use this with my own questions for other purposes.
- jamescun 14y agoIt's completely static and javascript, so just download all the files (index.html, functions.js, data.js and style.css) and edit the array in data.js.
- sparknlaunch12 14y agoThanks for sharing!
- xanadohnt 14y agoI have some good engrish for you today: What resistance will they have to trying you and how will you overcome it?
- parlane 14y agoNice nyan cat lol.
- michael_nielsen 14y agoThe person who is perhaps the brightest [1] person I've ever met would - if this is a fair simulation - be rejected by YC. When answering a question he often won't even have begun to reply after fifteen seconds. I wonder how often YC rejects people such as that. [1] I mean this in a particular way: capable of extraordinarily deep insight very, very rapidly. Just not 15 seconds rapid.
- jamescun 14y agoYes of course, the 15 seconds is not a particularly valid method, however the intention was to try and make you think on your feet and keep your answers concise.
- zck 14y agoThis page really has a different lesson than what you think. The lesson is not "respond quickly"; that only shows that you can think on your feet. While that's useful, you don't build a business by thinking on your feet. The real lesson is that you should have already answered these questions. Before you try to get funding, you should already know who's going to use your product. Before you launch, you should know who your competitors are. Before talking to anyone you don't know about your product, you should be able to describe your product quickly. You're trying to convince YC to invest in you. Why would anyone want to give money to founders who haven't thought about these questions?
- lusr 14y agoRight - none of these questions are difficult to answer quickly and concisely or to prepare for - if you have a valid business model. Applying for investment without a business model you understand through and through is like applying for a job without a resume.
- sparknlaunch12 14y agoSo do you disagree with the questions or technique/method? If the questions were better or more relevant would it help you? what are your feelings on this method of reversal?
- elliottcarlson 14y agoAre questions such as "How will you make money?" answerable in 15 seconds? I tried it with my personal concept, and even with trying to remain concise and to the point, I can't answer that question without it becoming a string of words that would not pass as a sentence.
- joelandren 14y agoIf it takes longer than 10 seconds you don't have the right answer.
- ebiester 14y agohttp://book.personalmba.com/12-standard-forms-of-value/ http://book.personalmba.com/12-standard-forms-of-value/ It is likely you fall into one or more of these. "We're depending on user aggregation to drive advertising revenues initially, but hope to move to move into white label SaaS as we develop our platform." would be a good 15 second answer.
- OpenAmazing 14y agoAre you guys affiliated with http://www.backblaze.com http://www.backblaze.com? If not, you should change your logo and website design fast. Possibly your name too.
- jdale27 14y agoLogo and name, yes. Website design? I see two generic landing pages; they all look alike these days.
- jamescun 14y agoWe are not affiliated in any way. We have come across them before and we feel the name and market is different enough to not be a problem. As for the logo, it's kinda difficult to make a fire (as in, blaze) look different. Our name story is that, our original project name was just "stack" but stack.com was taken. After struggling for a new name, a historic chimney stack local to us caught fire and the newspaper headline was "Stack Blaze".
- benohear 14y agoIANAL, but I have had to deal with trademark issues and as I understand trademark law you would be considered to be in exactly the same market. The difference between, say, pet food and hosting would be considered relevant, not between storing backups and storing PHP websites. Also, regardless of whether you did so or not, the logo really does look like a slightly masked copy. Do an image search for "blaze" to see a number of possible treatments on that theme that would not result in such a resemblance. I am less sure about the name, but the difference is swapping "b" with "st", so I wouldn't be surprised if that would also be considered trademark infringement. Anyway, it depends how you understand "not a problem"; You might feel morally justified, but I believe that legally you are on pretty shaky grounds. On the other hand, Backblaze would have to kick up a fuss for that to actually matter.
- metaphorical 14y agoThis is both stimulating and depressing at the same time. As if there's only one correct way of thinking and communicating. Why conform yourself to someone else's nature? You're not Steve Jobs, and you're not pg, you are yourself -- forget the pro-tip and be yourself.
- lusr 14y agoYou can be yourself after you've spent 3 to 5 minutes getting through these questions qualifying yourself as somebody worthwhile getting to know better. Investors are busy people with thousands of proposals crossing their paths every year - they need a quick way to disqualify the proposals that haven't been thought through properly.
- sparknlaunch12 14y agoForgetting the questions and answers, do you think the practice would make you perform better? ie is there any value with this approach?
- qdot76367 14y agoTo prepare for demo day, I've decided to use iPG with M-x doctor (she's from a small, not widely known country that has some native naming eccentricites and is in constant war with their two lettered neighbors), the CEO at my new health startup Psychologr. Obviously I'm the technical cofounder and she's the ideas person, so I let her do the talking. ----- iPG: Who might become competitors? M-x doctor: What do you think? iPG: How big an opportunity is there? M-x doctor: I'll ask the questions, if you don't mind! iPG: What do you understand that others don't? M-x doctor: Can you elaborate on that? iPG: Why will you succeed? M-x doctor: I could ask the same thing myself. iPG: Who would be your next hire? M-x doctor: I would appreciate it if you would allow me to do the questioning. iPG: Would you relocate to Silicon Valley? M-x doctor: Why do you say? iPG: How much does customer acquisition cost? M-x doctor: I have asked myself that question many times. ----- So, the tactic seems to be stay firm, and let him know who's asking the questions. Can we have our money now?
- davidw 14y agoIf someone's looking for a fun, kind of silly weekend hack, I've always thought it would be lots of fun to feed PG's essays and comments into Megahal or something like that that is more advanced than M-x doctor.
- KaeseEs 14y agoIncidentally, Hailo is in pretty much every way a much better Megahal (esp. when your text corpus is large): http://search.cpan.org/~hinrik/Hailo-0.70/bin/hailo http://search.cpan.org/~hinrik/Hailo-0.70/bin/hailo
- sparknlaunch12 14y agoWow! This is exactly what we have been playing around with. The tool looks really good. Is this something you are looking to take further? What has been the feedback in terms of usefulness? Do users this this type of mock interview works? Have you done any research or analysis on the effectiveness?
- ColinHayhurst 14y agoThanks. We put it together in a couple of hours for our own purposes and a bit if fun. A YC alumni suggested we put it out here. It's great that it's helping other folks.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- tzury 14y agoThe speed of question makes it more like RPG than iPG (*) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket-propelled_grenade http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket-propelled_grenade
- freshfey 14y agoI don't like the timing effect, but I believe that those are super important questions to ask yourself before attending an interview (be it for/at YC or somewhere else)
- mindcrime 14y agoGiven the nature of this conversation, I'll throw in a gratuitous plug for "pgbot" a half-baked "AIML implementation of pg" that I cooked up one night in response to something somebody said here (or on #startups). https://github.com/mindcrime/pgbot https://github.com/mindcrime/pgbot It might be fun to get some other people to fork that and start making it "smarter."
- charlieok 14y ago...however, there is also a “separate application track for groups that don't have an idea yet” http://ycombinator.com/noidea.html http://ycombinator.com/noidea.html
- aoprisan 14y agoit would be nice if sample answers could be recorded and votes recorded, pushing higher score responses up..
- ColinHayhurst 14y agoTake a look at this great list of questions too by Francis Dierick who created an iPhone app too. http://fr.anc.is/2012/01/21/top-100-startup-questions/ http://fr.anc.is/2012/01/21/top-100-startup-questions/
- c1sc0 14y agoThanks for sharing this Colin, I originally wanted to do something more fun & pg-like for the iPhone as well but I decided against doing fancy stuff in favor of actually prepping for the interview. I actually only published the app to the AppStore quite a bit after our interview.
- pbreit 14y agoSeems to require a keyboard so not usable on iPad.