21 ms·

What We Should Have Said To PG

247 points by drupeek 14y ago

olliesaunders 14y ago
Reading this I find myself in the same position as PG: I know nothing about the app and trying to “get it”. The later explanations are more enlightening but I still don’t get what this app does.
- drupeek 14y ago
  We're working on it. :)
  - olliesaunders 14y ago
    Hopefully you’ll interpret this as constructive criticism: perhaps you should have saved the publicity exercise of posting to HN till the time when you actually had this straight.
    - drupeek 14y ago
      Debated it. But truthfully, it's like saying you'll launch the product when it's perfect. It's never done. It's always improving.
      - jonmb 14y ago
        "It's always improving." But what is "it"? It does sound like a wiki, or an article with comments. Tell me a story. Get me to empathize. :)
        olliesaunders 14y ago
        I think what drupeek says applies to this as well. You can be working on something and not really know what it is. I wrote this app a quite ago, only took me about 5 days to write it because it was quite simple, but it’s been years since I finally understood what it was for. In designing another system recently, I wrote down my entire thought process as it developed in the form of questions and answers to myself. When I read it back now I can see how I had this mixed up set of ideas and was actually quite confused. Then, as you read down, things start to become clearer and ideas become more developed. I guess it still has quite a long way to go as well because things certainly aren’t as clear as I would like them to be. So the point I’m making is that definition and clarity can take as long, and sometimes--although I think this is infrequent--longer, than the software development. As for the question of whether you should blog about it. I think it’s a difficult call. In a way you could say this story has wasted everyone’s time because I still have no idea what the app drupeek’s developing is about. But on the other hand we wouldn’t be having this conversation now were it not for it.
        jonmb 14y ago
        Interesting... how did you write an app without knowing what it is for? It seems very backwards to write an app (or create anything, really) and then later figure out what to use it for.
        olliesaunders 14y ago
        Well I wrote it with one thing in mind and when I finished it, it didn’t really help with that thing much. I was pretty sure it would be useful for other things though. Since then I’ve discovered a couple of other uses for it. I think this happens more when you write something that is very abstract as this is.
      - lambda 14y ago
        We have this long thread, in which you have lots of people asking "what does this product actually do?" No one can figure it out from your pitch, either the original or your rewrite. People have been guessing at what this is like, and yet you haven't really clarified, you've just made excuses. You have the opportunity to get exposure to thousands of hackers, entrepreneurs, and investors, right here on Hacker News. And yet, you haven't yet provided a compelling story that anyone can actually understand. What does your product do? What problems does it solve? How is it better or suited to a different niche than many other tools (wikis, bugtrackers, Google Docs, email) that people already use?
    - ericabiz 14y ago
      Truthfully, as another startup founder, I think now was a great time to post it. I grew my last business to an awesome success. And one of my regrets, looking back, is that I didn't blog more about the process of getting it there. About all the hurdles we had and the missteps we took. I look back fondly on the few blog posts where I did talk openly about what we were going through, in part because I am so proud of how far we came from those darker moments, and in part because I can remember what I was feeling then and re-absorb the lesson. I think this is great. You should never hold back when you have something to share with a wider audience, but more importantly, to share with your future self. He'll have plenty more chances to get on Hacker News in the future. This isn't a one-time opportunity. :) So blog, blog, blog!
- asto 14y ago
  I think it's like what I used wave for soon after it launched. Let's say you're coming up with a business plan with your friends to pitch for VC money and you're putting your thoughts together. You add in your stuff the wave. Others add their stuff. If somebody has an epiphany later, they can add it then. A week or two later you'd have a document with everybody's thoughts in one place that you can run through and compile a slideshow. I wonder if I got that right. Anyway, great blogpost!
  - drupeek 14y ago
    This is exactly correct.
    - ColinWright 14y ago
      Then I still don't see how this is different from a wiki, or a pure collaborative document, or a federated wiki. It's taking serious effort to try to work out what pain this solves that isn't catered for by the above options.
    - Matt_Cutts 14y ago
      I don't see how this is different from a Google doc, where you have one doc owner and you can set permissions so that other people can view, edit, or only leave a comment?
      - mrtron 14y ago
        Agree with you Matt. Check out the google docs promo vids they used during day 2 of Google IO. (wow this was painful to find) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPtJd6AzU8c&feature=youtu.be&t=20m58s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPtJd6AzU8c&feature=youtu... That style of fun product demonstration would be perfect for this type of app. Also google docs now work offline really well and across multiple devices, which is incredibly useful.
      - drupeek 14y ago
        Who gets attribution for every thought embodied in that doc?
- waterlesscloud 14y ago
  I don't know that I buy into the "tell a story" trope, I think that's not really an accurate description of what needs to be done. Could just be my personal connotations for what a story is, though. But I do have to say the best part of this whole blog post is the part when he talks about the problem he imagines YC to have. He paints a compelling picture of the pain point. I still have no clue how he plans to solve it, but at least that paragraph told me what he envisions as the problem he's after.
- jasonlotito 14y ago
  I agree. Dissecting their initial answer: > So what is Rocketr? > “Rocketr is a bottom-up approach to knowledge management. We connect people through their notepads. Basically, people take notes and decide how to share them. The primary mechanism by which they share them is through co-authored notebooks.” > Rocketr is a bottom-up approach to knowledge management. That reads like pure marketing fluff. That's your opening statement, and the first thing I hear is dead air. Rocketr is, from here, a methodology. It's an idea. Nothing more. > We connect people through their notepads. Okay, this is what it wants to accomplish. My notepad is on paper. How is this methodology going to help me share my notepad and connect me with people? Which people, btw? Why do they want to see my notepad?. Up until this point, we still don't know what Rocketr is. What is the actual product? Hell, I'm not even sure what the problem is. A notepad is, for me, a place to jot notes down in. It's not a formal document. It contains phrases and doodles. So, I'm not even sure I'm in the right frame of mind. > Basically, people take notes and decide how to share them. Again, is note sharing a big issue? I can see content management being something, but note sharing? And the "decide how to share them" has me confused. I thought that was the problem you were solving, how to share them. Maybe you just mean permissions, which is really something I would assume anyways. It's not a feature. > The primary mechanism by which they share them is through co-authored notebooks. So... what? This is going to be an iPad app? I'm assuming here, as it could be something like one of those pens that you take a note with and records the sound (I forget the name), and it has the ability to share the actual notes. That would be interesting. But I'm assuming that's not what you are doing, and so you are going with an actual iPad? Maybe real time notes, for a meeting? Seems that could get confusing fast. Regardless, I'm still not sure what it is, or where it sits, or what problem it's solving for me. You need an elevator pitch. Something that describe what the product is, who the customer is, and what problem does it solve for the customer, and how it solves it. From there, you can expand, but something simple, something straight forward. Something that is filled with nouns and verbs. Because, I honestly believe if you can't define your product like that, you don't completely understand it as well.
  - hexagonc 14y ago
    I'm assuming here, as it could be something like one of those pens that you take a note with and records the sound (I forget the name), and it has the ability to share the actual notes. I think you're referring to a Livescribe Smartpen (http://www.livescribe.com/en-us/ http://www.livescribe.com/en-us/). I have one and even extra notebooks but I never ended up using it. Very cool device, at least at first.
sgdesign 14y ago
Sorry if this is a dumb question, but can't you just do a demo of your product during these interviews?
- drupeek 14y ago
  Yes. You can. We did do a demo as well, though we got to it a little too late in the interview and were caught between our first version of the app, and the latest (which wasn't quite ready yet).
  - Maro 14y ago
    It'd be nice if the site had a screenshot at least. Anything to give a clue how this could be different/better than Evernote.
Maro 14y ago
I would ask how it's different than Evernote, and how it will compete with Evernote.
- drupeek 14y ago
  It does the social side of note-taking extremely well.
  - jpeterson 14y ago
    You keep saying this, but what does it mean? What is social note-taking, exactly?
    - drupeek 14y ago
      Have you tried a shared task management app like Asana or Flow? Same premise... applied to note-taking.
      - jc4p 14y ago
        I... I still don't get it. I haven't used any of those applications before but I'm assuming it works by different people putting different things in a to-do list and assigning them to members, etc. How does this work in a notebook? Do you assign different part of notes to different people? Do you just come in and work like a wiki without revision history (just removing what others have written and writing your own things in its place)? What does your company actually do?
      - bhousel 14y ago
        I can share notebooks in Evernote with people and it Just Works. Where's the pain? I hope there's more to your app than "I see them type on my screen, and they see me type on their screen".
  - michaelt 14y ago
    I'm sure everyone takes notes differently, but with the way I do it I'm not sure a social note-taking system makes sense. For a note to be useful to me, it has to be quick to make. For a note to be useful to another person, it has to contain enough context for them to be able to decipher it. For example, the notebook on my desk reads "core 495 0.20%" which I know is the number and fraction of users in the core group - and I have enough context to know what those all mean. If I had to write down that context in a way other people could understand, it would no longer be quick to write, so it would no longer be a note. Is your idea of what note-taking is different to mine?
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
- drupeek 14y ago
  We actually did make mention of them later in the interview and are now running a pilot with a class at University of Toronto.
shimon 14y ago
Can a YC-accepted startup confirm that it's possible to drive a PG interview? In my experience we had a story and demo but these were immediately declined in favor of PG-driven questions. I'm trying to figure out if I could have driven -- perhaps I'm just not a good enough pitchman -- or if this is just the YC interview style and rather than perfecting a story you'd be better off steeling yourself for the inevitable barrage of tough questions.
debacle 14y ago
While this is a good piece in theory, and provides some good HN publicity for rocketr, I'll play devil's advocate for the other side of the coin: maybe you just weren't good enough. I'm not saying that's the case, knowing nothing about the batch that made it in ahead of you or the rocketr team, but the startup scene right now is like a track meet. Making the YC interview is like making nationals - you're the fastest sprinter across several states, and you were born to do it. But at the nationals, so is everyone else there. You can do better than your best and still lose. That doesn't mean you're not faster than 99% percent of the population, it just means you're not the fastest, and YC is looking for the fastest. The analogy breaks down in a few places - running is purely objective, choosing who to fund is much more subjective. YC will always make mistakes, and timing ideas is important, but I think the core takeaway is that just because you didn't make it doesn't mean you're not fundable.
- drupeek 14y ago
  Great comment.
- batista 14y ago
  >Making the YC interview is like making nationals - you're the fastest sprinter across several states, and you were born to do it. But at the nationals, so is everyone else there. You can do better than your best and still lose. That doesn't mean you're not faster than 99% percent of the population, it just means you're not the fastest, and YC is looking for the fastest. Well, it's not like they have not picked lots of lame ducks too...
  - debacle 14y ago
    Startups fail for a lot of reasons. We'd have to do a fair assessment of the percentage of failures compared to the industry as a whole to really get a feel for whether YC is successful or not.
    - pjscott 14y ago
      You'd also have to consider the magnitude of the successes and the amount invested per company. The handful of companies that make it really big pretty much dominate startup investment economics.
dangrover 14y ago
Great advice. I screwed up a PG interview the same way!
sopooneo 14y ago
The phrase "...the questions of an impatient (if not, widely respected) mind..." implies that Paul Graham may be neither patient nor widely respected. Also, the comma in the parenthetical is unnecessary. I have never read any of PG's code, but I've read his essays, and he would not make those mistakes. Edit: While I stand by the above correction, my tone is obnoxious. It's a good essay and I enjoyed it and learned from it.
- drupeek 14y ago
  Good catch. It should have said ("yet", widely respected).
  - qntmfred 14y ago
    well now you just have an unnecessary comma AND unnecessary quotes
    - rayval 14y ago
      I think he is using quotemarks to highlight the revised wording, and that these are not intended for final consumption.
- binxbolling 14y ago
  Let me nitpick on two other things: 1. Your blockquote color is basically unreadable if you're not young and/or have perfect vision. 2. If you want to excise marketing jargon from your life, you can start by dropping "action" as a verb.
parfe 14y ago
He thought you were making a wiki and you countered with "No no no! We're making another threaded forum!" How does rocketr differ from the news.yc interface we're all using to comment? We're collaborating right now, are we not?
- drupeek 14y ago
  It takes the same approach to productivity, that news.yc takes to news. They are, in fact, very similar in that regard.
  - parfe 14y ago
    Thanks for the reply. I still have no idea what your product does.
rexreed 14y ago
I you have to carefully wordsmith and "spin" so that others who don't have much time for you get it, then I think you really are in a tough spot. Forget PG for a moment. What about your customers? If THEY don't get it in a short amount of time and you have to carefully control ("drive" as you put it) the conversation just so they understand it (nevermind actually buying what you're selling), then you really are in a tough spot. I think PG called this right - your product has to be intuitive to the point that someone understands what you have and how you compare to the rest of the universe without verbal jousting. Now, whether or not they agree or buy into the value proposition is another matter. But you got hung up on the "what are you doing and how does it relate to what I know" part.
devgutt 14y ago
I´d love to hear from PG whether what the OP thinks that is better, is really better.
pkteison 14y ago
Opening with "Rocketr is a bottom-up approach to knowledge management" - this is an entirely useless fluff sentence, tells nobody anything, doesn't provide a useful frame of reference for what's coming next... I feel like the story here is that Mr. Peek needed a harsher critic when he was practicing. It's surprising how rarely we encounter good critics in our lives, everybody is focused on supporting and validating and has little practice at really challenging, reviewing, evaluating. I don't really see a problem with PG driving, I see a problem with not being ready to clearly and concisely differentiate. How is it different from Evernote and how is it different from Wikipedia should be completely anticipated ready-to-handle followups with great one-sentence answers that focus on the customers. I really don't like the alternate suggested approach because I'm not willing to grant the premise. Does work get done using team based tools? Work gets done to a shocking degree with email, excel, individual text editors, powerpoint... none of which are really 'team based'. My first thought is to go with something like "We help individuals collaborate by [whatever it is this thing does]" simply because that gets me a frame of reference faster and gets to talking about the interesting part sooner. But I'm still not sure what the interesting part is... so far this sounds more like Google Wave than anything else, and that alone might be enough to pass on backing the idea, under the "will fail because it's too hard to convince people they need this" category.
- mgkimsal 14y ago
  "It's surprising how rarely we encounter good critics in our lives, everybody is focused on supporting and validating and has little practice at really challenging, reviewing, evaluating." This is a bit off-topic but I was reading some time ago about Dan/Dani Bunten (of MULE fame, among other things), who had gender reassignment surgery. More info here: http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Warning.html#Dani http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Warning.html#Dani but this is what I was reminded of: "Despite following the rules and being as honest as I could with the medical folks at each stage, nobody stopped me and said "Are you honest to God absolutely sure this is the ONLY path for you?!" To the contrary, the voices were all cheerfully supportive of my decision." No one really challenged Dan at the time - possibly for fear of being labelled as a bigot or hater or whatever - and Dani later regretted the decision. Again, somewhat off-topic, but finding people to really challenge you (in a supporting way) is hard to do.
btilly 14y ago
People say that hindsight is 20/20. No. Hindsight is speculation with the benefit of never being able to be proven wrong. Having read this "what we should have said" article, I'm suspicious that if they had done everything differently like they suggested, that they would have still come out to the same result. Why? Because the idea of an article with a revision tree and multiple current versions is naturally confusing to users. No matter how nice the formalism is. Until you can start to think about and present things in terms that the users can "get", you're going to have a serious UI problem that limits adoption. And even once you have that version, you still need to be able to compare and contrast it to things that people are familiar with so you can talk to people who don't "get" it yet.
- rexreed 14y ago
  It's interesting how many people see PG as the test of their company's viability (did he get it, didn't he get it?) when what really matters is what the customers think. Did they get it? Did they not? All this handwringing over a post-mortem with PG, and I rarely see the same with regards to customers. Customers are walking from your site, failing to respond to your marketing, failing to convert, choosing competitive solutions, etc., and where's the post-mortem? This is a valuable lesson. Not about what to say or not to PG, but rather, how much a poorly crafted value proposition or explanation of your product can instantly and quickly turn off your customers. Make your products easy to understand, easy to purchase, and easy to get value from, and you will win. Make it complex on any of those fronts, you will lose.
  - larrys 14y ago
    I think you make excellent points. But "PG as the test of their company's viability" is because PG is a gatekeeper. "but rather, how much a poorly crafted value proposition or explanation of your product can instantly and quickly turn off your customers." People have to be able to understand what you are saying. You can't confuse them or give them big words or concepts. Ironically PG isn't really a good filter for this because he is so high level. If you are selling to a pizza shop owner most likely they didn't go to Harvard and their brain isn't wired the way PG's is. OTOH a concept that the pizza owner understands can be understood by PG as well. One of the things I always suggest (for researching business ideas) is to run stuff by "normals". Whether it be people at the train platform, Starbucks, or Walmart to use as additional intel and data points.
raheemm 14y ago
This is one of the best post-portems of a YC interview. Thanks for being so open. And also, solid advice!
- alexro 14y ago
  I wouldn't call it a solid advice. Others on the thread have already noted that the problem isn't really in not driving the conversation. It's how you differentiate and make it easy to grasp what you do. I find both advices in the end of OP blog post to be misleading.
slyrus 14y ago
Your WWSHS version suffers from two major problems. First, it identifies (arguably, muddily) a pain point while offering no solution. I need a robot that does my dishes in a big way, but I doubt your startup has a product that addresses that need. Second, you're suggesting that a VC needs your product as a customer, not as an investor. What VC's really need is to make money for their limited partners (PG is perhaps an exception here, but that's beside the point). A gold-plated golf club cover that measures wind speed (oh and makes a damn good cup of coffee on the side) might be needed by a particular VC, but it says nothing about whether or not that's likely to be the basis of a reasonable investment thesis. What you describe sounds like a big hairy problem and you haven't even begun to address how your product/offering/team are going to tackle the problem.
jgrahamc 14y ago
I think if I'd been PG I would have said "So, it's like Google Wave?"
ErrantX 14y ago
Hmm, my analysis (writing as I go): - Too much "fluff"; his response sounds like a marketer not a builder - In the opening two answers he basically contradicts his description; "co-authored notebooks" vs. "one author for a given note, and a threaded conversation around it". It's confusing. - The alternative opening is even worse; I still have no idea what problem your solving. You just gave me a marketing pitch.. - The alternate answer for "Who needs what you’re making?" is better - but immediately begs the question "how are my labels necessarily effective for both myself, and the YC alumni" and "How do you know the YC alumni don't have their own tag system which they apply as they read emails" or even "sounds handy, but how are you overcoming the convenience factor associated with email" - Any sensible listener will realise that a) and b) are not the only choices (this is a variation on my last bullet point) and be concerned that you are limiting yourself to only those outcomes. - It also seems risky to pitch such a personal use case on a supposition. The "problem" might already have been effectively resolved for YC's communications. All in all it reads a lot like a business person pitching to an engineer. One that is attuned to the problems of "gloss", and is looking for disruption and good engineering rather than a glossy pitch. I get that all the time and it is off putting. It strikes me that the key problem is you possibly don't speak the same language as pg. As with other commentators; even with the revised answers, I'm still not sure what Rocketr is beyond a note taking app with social features.
- drupeek 14y ago
  My thoughts... - What does a builder sound like? Aren't we all just trying to speak to customers? Are builders naturally better at that? - "Co-authored notebooks" and "one author per note" are not contradictions at all. They speak to entirely different units (notes and notebooks). - While you are correct that you and the startup may have different systems for categorizing, that's exactly the problem we're trying to point to. The siloed nature of how we capture and categorize information. In closing, I am trying to speak to customers... not engineers. Thank you for the feedback. I know it took time to write.
  - ynniv 14y ago
    What does a builder sound like? "When I write in emacs, it's inconvenient to share that with my team. When I write in the Wiki... well, I don't write in the wiki because it's annoying. I have been more productive doing X, and I think you will too." In closing, I am trying to speak to customers... not engineers. That's marketing speak for "I don't know who my customer is". You are pitching to a customer who is an engineer, so you should be speaking to engineers. Thank you for the feedback. I know it took time to write. That's what we do here... this sounds hollow.
maxcameron 14y ago
Why are so many of the commentators entirely missing the point of @drupeek's article? Folks - this isn't about screenshots, whether to blog or not, grammar, or market segments. I know Andrew, and he's really not in need of most of the advice being offered to him in this post. His point is about pitching, breaking through the noise, and controlling the frame while you have ten minutes with an type-A personality. We all need to learn how to deal with this, and Andrew's making a valuable contribution. A lot of Andrew's advice reminds me of a book called Pitch Anything - I highly recommend you read it. The book is mostly about two things: using stories to capture and excite the most basic parts of the basic human brain, and controlling the frame of a conversation in order to make sure your story is heard by an audience which is naturally hostile. I believe anyone who's pitching deals should take a look. In conclusion, please stop patronizing Andrew, and contribute something meaningful to the conversation.
- waterlesscloud 14y ago
  He's top of the page on HN, a great position from which to promote his product. It's pretty clear from the responses here that nothing in the post communicates clearly what his product does, despite being about finding a better way to do just that. That's a shame, and there's a rapidly vanishing opportunity here to correct that. So the feedback he's getting here is the most valuable he's likely to ever get.
  - drupeek 14y ago
    "So the feedback he's getting here is the most valuable he's likely to ever get." I'm getting valuable feedback to be sure, but in now way do I agree with this premise.
  - corkill 14y ago
    After reading the post (and not understanding the product), I went to the homepage and yep still don't get what it is or who it would be for.
- mindcrime 14y ago
  Well said. Frame control is a crucial skill, and most people seem to know very little about it. Curiously, I only became aware of the concept, and started studying it, when I start hanging around some of the "pick up artist" guys. Turns out the PUAs dig pretty deep into psychology, storyteling, salesmanship, and related fields, trying to figure out how to connect with women. And, regardless of what you think of their aims in that regard, reading a lot of the material they recommend takes you in some interesting places. These guys got me studying Cialdini's Influence and a number of related works, which have been very influential to me... and in a way that has nothing to do with meeting women. This is not to say that everyone should rush out and jump into the PUA scene, just noting the (seemingly obscure) connection between that world and some of the areas that we all find interesting. It turns out that understanding influence, constructing narratives, frame control, etc. are important skills in many areas of our lives.
nl 14y ago
I've read both the version you told PG, and what you say you should have said a number of times and I still don't get it. It sounds like Google Wave. I'm not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing, but it sounds like you are having the same problem they had: explaining what the hell it does. When I tried to explain Wave to people I said it was a combination of the ideas of Wiki, email, chat and a forum, designed to make accomplishing shared work easier. It's still not great, but I don't think it's an easy thing to communicate.
nopal 14y ago
I don't like the part about using people's names. I personally don't like it when someone I don't know uses my name unnecessarily. It strikes me as odd and makes me think they're trying some psych 101 tactic on me. It's completely counterproductive because it makes meh mind jump off topic. It's fine to show that you know someone's name (like at the end of a call), but if you wouldn't throw a friend's name into a sentence, don't inject a stranger's.
- waterlesscloud 14y ago
  When anyone trying to sell me anything in any way uses my name, it throws up 4 or 5 extra layers of defense. At that point I know you're trying to manipulate me, and you've just made your job infinitely harder. Having said that, I've tried the trick myself on others and they seem to respond very differently from the way that I do. So I guess the point is to be very careful of this approach. It might help a little with some people, but it might be a gigantic turnoff to others.
jakeonthemove 14y ago
I still don't understand what Rocketr does :-). It's like a shared notebook, right? I've been using the OneNote WebApp lately for collaborative work (mainly sharing ideas/notes) and while it's not perfect, it's better than Google docs IMO. Does Rocketr do something like this?
- drupeek 14y ago
  Yes. It is just like a shared notebook.
macspoofing 14y ago
Having read the amendment, I still don't know what the product is, or rather, how it's different from something like Evernote.
larrys 14y ago
I like your idea and would like to know more about it. I'd consider angel investing in it (and I'm not an angel investor currently throwing money at the fan). If you are interested get in contact with me.
- drupeek 14y ago
  Will do. Appreciate the interest.
pg 14y ago
"And most importantly, drive." This advice is disastrously wrong. That's not how YC interviews work. They're interviews, not presentations. We want random access to your thoughts, not to listen to a single path through them, prepared in advance. When people walk into the room with a predetermined pitch that they're determined to stick to, things usually end badly.
- brlewis 14y ago
  From what I've been learning about sales in the past year or two, this advice is disastrously wrong not only for YC interviews, but for sales in general. If you ever drive in a sales conversation, it should be to dig out what problem the prospect is interested in solving.
- rexreed 14y ago
  Wholeheartedly agree. You simply can't drive all the conversations that happen about your company and product. If your success is determined by your necessity to drive the conversations, you're going to lose badly. The interview with PG notwithstanding, you have a company to run and marketing and sales to tackle -- the latter two of which are notoriously hard to control the conversation. I see the YCombinator interview as a minimal test - if you can pass that barrier, then you have a chance at possibly getting your customers to understand what you have and its value. But if you can't, then it's going to be tough.
  - mindcrime 14y ago
    I see the YCombinator interview as a minimal test - if you can pass that barrier, then you have a chance at possibly getting your customers to understand what you have and its value. Disclaimer: I've never been through a YC interview. I don't think that's an apt comparison. Pg and the YC crew, as smart, insightful and interesting as they are, are still a very small group of people, compared to the world of customers out there. It's entirely possible that you could fail a YC interview for whatever mysterious reason (maybe pg was having a bad day, maybe something to do with pre-existing (and unconscious) biases, maybe you were having a bad day) and still do fine at getting customers to understand what you do and it's value. In some ways, the YC interview may even be a higher bar: It's automatically an extra stressful situation, and you're dealing with some "type A" personality types who feel some need to control the interview, and you go in knowing you're limited to 10 minutes or whatever. When you're out talking to customers, you may well find yourself in a lower stress situation, with people who aren't necessarily trying to challenge you, etc. And I think this is borne out by the fact that there are groups who failed to get into YC, who went on to be successful.
clarky07 14y ago
Still not sure if this helps me, but as others noted it sounds like Wave. If it actually is, I'd pay for it today in a heartbeat. While wave didn't reach the critical mass google wanted or needed, I suspect there are enough users that a small startup could make a few bucks with it.
demachina 14y ago
Focusing on your blog post more than your pitch, do you think it really adds value to your message to use gratuitous language like "shit the bed" and "f*cking". Dave McClure and Brad Feld have made it in to an art form but they've already made it. It doesn't add any value to your message but does distract from it. Your blog post suggests you haven't learned to carefully focus the words you use in your message for maximum positive impact.
robot 14y ago
"Rocketr bridges two worlds that could not be further apart right now – how we ..." This is also an entry that is trying to sound nice to the listener. Use wording that doesn't try to look nice, only give facts straight. it will sound more pro (because shows you only care and focus on facts) also you will get a more candid discussion. (because your entry was candid in the first place, without adding an artificial tone) One of the VCs that I talked to had the harshest comments about my presentation but his tone was so candid, it felt like he is the one that cared the most, gives the best advice, and I also thought he was a really cool person to know.
millions 14y ago
Not related to the article, but you have a very solid front end designer on board. Beautiful front page.
- drupeek 14y ago
  We actually have two of the best in Toronto. :)
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
dgurney 14y ago
I read that entire blog post and I still have no idea what the product does...
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
Udo 14y ago
After reading this I have no idea what Rocketr actually is and what it really does, and from that I infer that nobody in the room understood it either. I see a lot of statements that apparently should be prefixed with "our vision is" or "we want to" - statements of intent. I don't get the impression that the team actually knows how to build this thing. Just out of curiosity: are product demos allowed at these meetings? If so, was it done in this case? I think sometimes all it takes is one minute of actual UI presentation to determine whether there is anything of substance behind the idea or not.
- nostromo 14y ago
  Yes, live product demos are common.
engtech 14y ago
has anyone used rocketr vs asana? I've been using Asana for a 16 person team and enjoying the experience.
sachingulaya 14y ago
“Rocketr is a bottom-up approach to knowledge management. We connect people through their notepads. Basically, people take notes and decide how to share them. The primary mechanism by which they share them is through co-authored notebooks." "2. I stripped out so much of the marketing jargon (a YC rule)" No, you didn't. I couldn't understand what you were talking about. "Knowledge management" is jargon."Connecting people" is jargon. "Rocketr is about having one author for a given note, and a threaded conversation around it." I thought Rocketr was about "co-authored notebooks"(your words). So we co-author notebooks but not notes? "Rocketr bridges two worlds that could not be further apart right now how we capture information (using personal tools), and how we get work done (using team-based tools). We’re betting that these worlds will converge, because if they don’t, it will get harder and harder for teams if they can’t collaborate at the speed that information is changing around them. Oh and the medium we use to facilitate all this, is note-taking something we all know how to do." That still doesn't tell me what Rocketr does. "Organizations need this to drive innovation" = Marketing speak that says nothing. I still have no clue what Rocketr does or how it works after reading your blog post. Keep it short and simple.
rdl 14y ago
After reading that, I still have no idea what they're actually building, who would use it, or why. "Driving" is horrible advice, too -- even in sales. The best introduction to sales is SPIN Selling by Neil Rackham; in short, "consultative" vs. "slimy used salesman", where you work with the prospect to develop needs and then show how your product addresses them. In the 10 minute YC format, I wouldn't put more than 30 seconds into developing needs (i.e. getting buy-in that a certain problem exists and is worth solving), since I'd assume the YC people are both informed and generally biased towards accepting that problems exist. If they don't believe a problem exists, having a few great datapoints to justify your position is worthwhile ("medical transcription is a $10b/yr industry, and 0.1% of people are killed by iatrogenic errors traceable to mis-transcription every year. We want to make billions of dollars and save 50k lives per year with our direct neural interface for doctors, and we're the team to do it because we've each earned MDs and started 3 fortune 500 companies in the past 5 years...)
dsrguru 14y ago
gbattle's comment in the article is gold, possibly the single most useful thing I've ever read on making pitches. For those who didn't read it yet, gbattle provides a strict template for wording one's mission statement in a highly descriptive yet highly concise manner. The point isn't that your optimal mission statement should use the exact wording of the template, but rather that if you're unable to produce a mission statement using the exact wording of the template, either you don't understand your product well enough to bring it to market or your product has serious issues that need to be addressed immediately.
- prawn 14y ago
  Thought the same and wish I could upvote you more. HN comment readers, if you are rushed for time and don't think you'll bother even clicking through to the blog entry, here is the best takeaway from either blog or gbattle's comment: -- ...mission statement exercise that I stole from famed marketer/author Marty Neumeier... o WHAT: (productname) is the ONLY_________ o HOW: that _________________ o WHO: for _______________________ o WHERE: in ________________________ o WHY: who ___________________________ o WHEN: in an era of __________________.
pclark 14y ago
I don't understand why people do not just speak like humans when it comes to marketing. Succinct and explicit. It is as if people are embarrassed to speak in simple terms and feel the need to big their product up with verbosity.
lambda 14y ago
I stopped reading once I hit "action every idea immediately." This entire thing drips of the kind of marketing speak that he says he ripped out because YC demands it. Did he think that YC demands it just to be arbitrary and capricious? This style of presentation turns me (and likely many others) off immediately. The real problem is that he's trying to sell a product that solves a problem that most people don't have. People have tons of ways to write down, organize, and sort ideas. They can stick it in a wiki, in a Google doc, in email, in a bugtracker. All of these have ways of sorting and labeling content. I have seen nothing, in either you original or "what you should have said" version, that answers the question of how what you are doing is better than all of these things that people already have access to. What problem are you trying to solve? What does your tool do that other tools don't? If you can't answer these questions in 10 minutes, nor at your leisure afterwards when writing a blog post about what you should have said, nor in all the time you spent setting up a slick website with a "sign up to try us out" form, I have to ask whether you actually have a product or are just a bunch of empty marketing.
danielpal 14y ago
I read your whole blog post and I still don't understand what you do. My advice, when pg asked So what is Rocketr? You should have just answered the question with a straigh, no BS answer. PG: What is twilio? Twilio is an API for developers to build apps that use SMS and Voice. PG: What is Google? Google is a search engine. PG: What is twitter? Twitter is a social platform were users can send small messages and others can suscribe to them, so they can read those messages.
orph 14y ago
How is this different from Hackpad (YCW12)?
CookWithMe 14y ago
If you don't want PG to drive - then why are you applying for YC? You don't trust him to ask the right questions for HIS understanding. Judging from your blog post, you don't seem to trust his judgement in rejecting you - the only reason you came up with (in your blog) is that your pitch/answers were badly delivered. Maybe they were fine, but you have been rejected for other reasons (e.g. UVP not strong enough, market crowded with strong competition, customer segment too small, ...). I guess the real value of getting into YC is to get great, personalized advice. (You can get great, non-personalized advice from books or blogs). For that, you need to let your advisers drive. If the need your input at a turn, they will ask you - otherwise let them go wherever they want to. You need to understand why they are driving the way they do. In the end, you can and probably will take a few different turns than them (because you [should] have more domain knowledge). But by understanding where they would want to drive, you learn a lot from them. You may ask yourself, why PG was driving the interview the way he was. Maybe because he questions your UNIQUE VP (So what is Rocketr?), thinks there is strong competition solving this problem already (So it’s like a wiki?), or that your customer segment is too small (Who needs what you’re making?). Maybe because of completely different reasons. Comparing your two answers for "Who needs what you’re making?", it is the same content, but wrapped differently. While there is definitively value in making your message as clear as it can be, I think a good adviser will be able to get to the content. And then give you the same advice, no matter how the content was wrapped. Think about it: Would you really want to take advice from someone who would reject you with the first answer, but not with the second answer? I wouldn't. Anyway, good write-up nevertheless. I still think it is worthwhile to try to make a message as clear and easy to understand as possible.
Tichy 14y ago
I wonder if YC keeps statistics about coffee consumption. I can't imagine how much coffee I would need to make it through so many interviews. Is there a kickstarter for a coffee machine that keeps track already? Would be a fun graph for any company...
derek1800 14y ago
A great book to read in regards to this is: "Made to Stick"
lewisflude 14y ago
You're not solving a problem. At least, it doesn't feel like you are. As another commenter in this thread said "I hope there's more to your app than "I see them type on my screen, and they see me type on their screen"."
ekianjo 14y ago
Interesting story. This is something I can relate to as I have seen in a number of occasions people presenting new projects/products without being clear about the end user benefit. There's several ways to do it, but the "classical" one is to first talk about WHO your users are, and WHAT problems or needs they are currently facing without a reliable solution. Then, you bring your product, and you need to explain HOW it will modify their condition and solve their problem. Then, explain what your users will feel, what actual or perceived benefit they will get through it. It's the basis of Marketing: Framing, framing, framing.
alttab 14y ago
Trello
ricardobeat 14y ago
I'm sorry to interrupt this lively discussion, but I still have no idea what Rocketr is. Could somebody please explain? Is there a video, screenshots or mock-ups somewhere?
perfunctory 14y ago
no matter how you prepare your “benefits” pitch it's hard to sell a wiki.
perfunctory 14y ago
> Organizations need this to drive innovation The ability of a note-taking app to drive innovation is highly overrated.
eddmc 14y ago
Here's a suggestion for your value proposition: Collaborative notetaking made simple. I actually started with a more complicated sentence [Real-time collaborative editing made simple] but then I saw Helen's comment below your blog post and think she has a more concise description. I suggest you follow this up with a way (such as a story) of how a customer uses your product. This is where you can use the phrases: notetaking, realtime, and capturing ideas. I understand why you're trying to steer people towards "notes" and "notebooks". You might not like the fact that people are going to assume your competition is [strike]Google[/strike] Apache Wave or Wikipedia (ok - I mean wiki software) or Evernote, but you need to come up with good answers to those questions and this is where you can focus on important features that you have. It doesn't matter who you think your competition is - it matters what your customers think your competition is. Keep in mind that people are familiar with Wikipedia, and understand the idea of editing a wiki. Use this to your advantage. You need to paint the picture of how this affects them by making it real to them i.e. zero in on their pain point - they may not even know that they have it. Hope this helps
mnl 14y ago
Probably you should have said what exactly does your product do, which real problems does it solve, and what is your USP. Just answer, leave 'drive' to the one with the money.
drupeek 14y ago
I have to say that this comment thread is far beyond what we expected when publishing our post. Our original intention was to start a discussion around honing your pitch, telling your story - and to demonstrate how costly it can be when you don't do that well. By no means do we feel that we are "there" yet, but at the time of the post, we felt there was some progress from when we had interviewed. Interestingly, this thread has now provided us with a tremendous amount of additional value (for much less of a cost) which we intend on putting to use in the coming weeks. Thanks to all those who took the time to read the post, sit with it for a moment, and then carefully and compassionately construct their feedback in an honest and direct way. We genuinely appreciate it.
grout 14y ago
Rule of thumb: If any part of your pitch sounds like Microsoft marketing, you're not ready.

247 points by drupeek 14y ago

Reading this I find myself in the same position as PG: I know nothing about the app and trying to “get it”. The later explanations are more enlightening but I still don’t get what this app does.

drupeek 14y ago
We're working on it. :)
- olliesaunders 14y ago
  Hopefully you’ll interpret this as constructive criticism: perhaps you should have saved the publicity exercise of posting to HN till the time when you actually had this straight.
  - drupeek 14y ago
    Debated it. But truthfully, it's like saying you'll launch the product when it's perfect. It's never done. It's always improving.
    - jonmb 14y ago
      "It's always improving." But what is "it"? It does sound like a wiki, or an article with comments. Tell me a story. Get me to empathize. :)
      - olliesaunders 14y ago
        I think what drupeek says applies to this as well. You can be working on something and not really know what it is. I wrote this app a quite ago, only took me about 5 days to write it because it was quite simple, but it’s been years since I finally understood what it was for. In designing another system recently, I wrote down my entire thought process as it developed in the form of questions and answers to myself. When I read it back now I can see how I had this mixed up set of ideas and was actually quite confused. Then, as you read down, things start to become clearer and ideas become more developed. I guess it still has quite a long way to go as well because things certainly aren’t as clear as I would like them to be. So the point I’m making is that definition and clarity can take as long, and sometimes--although I think this is infrequent--longer, than the software development. As for the question of whether you should blog about it. I think it’s a difficult call. In a way you could say this story has wasted everyone’s time because I still have no idea what the app drupeek’s developing is about. But on the other hand we wouldn’t be having this conversation now were it not for it.
        jonmb 14y ago
        Interesting... how did you write an app without knowing what it is for? It seems very backwards to write an app (or create anything, really) and then later figure out what to use it for.
        olliesaunders 14y ago
        Well I wrote it with one thing in mind and when I finished it, it didn’t really help with that thing much. I was pretty sure it would be useful for other things though. Since then I’ve discovered a couple of other uses for it. I think this happens more when you write something that is very abstract as this is.
    - lambda 14y ago
      We have this long thread, in which you have lots of people asking "what does this product actually do?" No one can figure it out from your pitch, either the original or your rewrite. People have been guessing at what this is like, and yet you haven't really clarified, you've just made excuses. You have the opportunity to get exposure to thousands of hackers, entrepreneurs, and investors, right here on Hacker News. And yet, you haven't yet provided a compelling story that anyone can actually understand. What does your product do? What problems does it solve? How is it better or suited to a different niche than many other tools (wikis, bugtrackers, Google Docs, email) that people already use?
  - ericabiz 14y ago
    Truthfully, as another startup founder, I think now was a great time to post it. I grew my last business to an awesome success. And one of my regrets, looking back, is that I didn't blog more about the process of getting it there. About all the hurdles we had and the missteps we took. I look back fondly on the few blog posts where I did talk openly about what we were going through, in part because I am so proud of how far we came from those darker moments, and in part because I can remember what I was feeling then and re-absorb the lesson. I think this is great. You should never hold back when you have something to share with a wider audience, but more importantly, to share with your future self. He'll have plenty more chances to get on Hacker News in the future. This isn't a one-time opportunity. :) So blog, blog, blog!
asto 14y ago
I think it's like what I used wave for soon after it launched. Let's say you're coming up with a business plan with your friends to pitch for VC money and you're putting your thoughts together. You add in your stuff the wave. Others add their stuff. If somebody has an epiphany later, they can add it then. A week or two later you'd have a document with everybody's thoughts in one place that you can run through and compile a slideshow. I wonder if I got that right. Anyway, great blogpost!
- drupeek 14y ago
  This is exactly correct.
  - ColinWright 14y ago
    Then I still don't see how this is different from a wiki, or a pure collaborative document, or a federated wiki. It's taking serious effort to try to work out what pain this solves that isn't catered for by the above options.
  - Matt_Cutts 14y ago
    I don't see how this is different from a Google doc, where you have one doc owner and you can set permissions so that other people can view, edit, or only leave a comment?
    - mrtron 14y ago
      Agree with you Matt. Check out the google docs promo vids they used during day 2 of Google IO. (wow this was painful to find) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPtJd6AzU8c&feature=youtu.be&t=20m58s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPtJd6AzU8c&feature=youtu... That style of fun product demonstration would be perfect for this type of app. Also google docs now work offline really well and across multiple devices, which is incredibly useful.
    - drupeek 14y ago
      Who gets attribution for every thought embodied in that doc?
waterlesscloud 14y ago
I don't know that I buy into the "tell a story" trope, I think that's not really an accurate description of what needs to be done. Could just be my personal connotations for what a story is, though. But I do have to say the best part of this whole blog post is the part when he talks about the problem he imagines YC to have. He paints a compelling picture of the pain point. I still have no clue how he plans to solve it, but at least that paragraph told me what he envisions as the problem he's after.
jasonlotito 14y ago
I agree. Dissecting their initial answer: > So what is Rocketr? > “Rocketr is a bottom-up approach to knowledge management. We connect people through their notepads. Basically, people take notes and decide how to share them. The primary mechanism by which they share them is through co-authored notebooks.” > Rocketr is a bottom-up approach to knowledge management. That reads like pure marketing fluff. That's your opening statement, and the first thing I hear is dead air. Rocketr is, from here, a methodology. It's an idea. Nothing more. > We connect people through their notepads. Okay, this is what it wants to accomplish. My notepad is on paper. How is this methodology going to help me share my notepad and connect me with people? Which people, btw? Why do they want to see my notepad?. Up until this point, we still don't know what Rocketr is. What is the actual product? Hell, I'm not even sure what the problem is. A notepad is, for me, a place to jot notes down in. It's not a formal document. It contains phrases and doodles. So, I'm not even sure I'm in the right frame of mind. > Basically, people take notes and decide how to share them. Again, is note sharing a big issue? I can see content management being something, but note sharing? And the "decide how to share them" has me confused. I thought that was the problem you were solving, how to share them. Maybe you just mean permissions, which is really something I would assume anyways. It's not a feature. > The primary mechanism by which they share them is through co-authored notebooks. So... what? This is going to be an iPad app? I'm assuming here, as it could be something like one of those pens that you take a note with and records the sound (I forget the name), and it has the ability to share the actual notes. That would be interesting. But I'm assuming that's not what you are doing, and so you are going with an actual iPad? Maybe real time notes, for a meeting? Seems that could get confusing fast. Regardless, I'm still not sure what it is, or where it sits, or what problem it's solving for me. You need an elevator pitch. Something that describe what the product is, who the customer is, and what problem does it solve for the customer, and how it solves it. From there, you can expand, but something simple, something straight forward. Something that is filled with nouns and verbs. Because, I honestly believe if you can't define your product like that, you don't completely understand it as well.
- hexagonc 14y ago
  I'm assuming here, as it could be something like one of those pens that you take a note with and records the sound (I forget the name), and it has the ability to share the actual notes. I think you're referring to a Livescribe Smartpen (http://www.livescribe.com/en-us/ http://www.livescribe.com/en-us/). I have one and even extra notebooks but I never ended up using it. Very cool device, at least at first.

sgdesign 14y ago

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but can't you just do a demo of your product during these interviews?

drupeek 14y ago
Yes. You can. We did do a demo as well, though we got to it a little too late in the interview and were caught between our first version of the app, and the latest (which wasn't quite ready yet).
- Maro 14y ago
  It'd be nice if the site had a screenshot at least. Anything to give a clue how this could be different/better than Evernote.

Maro 14y ago

I would ask how it's different than Evernote, and how it will compete with Evernote.

drupeek 14y ago
It does the social side of note-taking extremely well.
- jpeterson 14y ago
  You keep saying this, but what does it mean? What is social note-taking, exactly?
  - drupeek 14y ago
    Have you tried a shared task management app like Asana or Flow? Same premise... applied to note-taking.
    - jc4p 14y ago
      I... I still don't get it. I haven't used any of those applications before but I'm assuming it works by different people putting different things in a to-do list and assigning them to members, etc. How does this work in a notebook? Do you assign different part of notes to different people? Do you just come in and work like a wiki without revision history (just removing what others have written and writing your own things in its place)? What does your company actually do?
    - bhousel 14y ago
      I can share notebooks in Evernote with people and it Just Works. Where's the pain? I hope there's more to your app than "I see them type on my screen, and they see me type on their screen".
- michaelt 14y ago
  I'm sure everyone takes notes differently, but with the way I do it I'm not sure a social note-taking system makes sense. For a note to be useful to me, it has to be quick to make. For a note to be useful to another person, it has to contain enough context for them to be able to decipher it. For example, the notebook on my desk reads "core 495 0.20%" which I know is the number and fraction of users in the core group - and I have enough context to know what those all mean. If I had to write down that context in a way other people could understand, it would no longer be quick to write, so it would no longer be a note. Is your idea of what note-taking is different to mine?

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

drupeek 14y ago
We actually did make mention of them later in the interview and are now running a pilot with a class at University of Toronto.

shimon 14y ago

Can a YC-accepted startup confirm that it's possible to drive a PG interview? In my experience we had a story and demo but these were immediately declined in favor of PG-driven questions. I'm trying to figure out if I could have driven -- perhaps I'm just not a good enough pitchman -- or if this is just the YC interview style and rather than perfecting a story you'd be better off steeling yourself for the inevitable barrage of tough questions.

debacle 14y ago

While this is a good piece in theory, and provides some good HN publicity for rocketr, I'll play devil's advocate for the other side of the coin: maybe you just weren't good enough. I'm not saying that's the case, knowing nothing about the batch that made it in ahead of you or the rocketr team, but the startup scene right now is like a track meet. Making the YC interview is like making nationals - you're the fastest sprinter across several states, and you were born to do it. But at the nationals, so is everyone else there. You can do better than your best and still lose. That doesn't mean you're not faster than 99% percent of the population, it just means you're not the fastest, and YC is looking for the fastest. The analogy breaks down in a few places - running is purely objective, choosing who to fund is much more subjective. YC will always make mistakes, and timing ideas is important, but I think the core takeaway is that just because you didn't make it doesn't mean you're not fundable.

drupeek 14y ago
Great comment.
batista 14y ago
>Making the YC interview is like making nationals - you're the fastest sprinter across several states, and you were born to do it. But at the nationals, so is everyone else there. You can do better than your best and still lose. That doesn't mean you're not faster than 99% percent of the population, it just means you're not the fastest, and YC is looking for the fastest. Well, it's not like they have not picked lots of lame ducks too...
- debacle 14y ago
  Startups fail for a lot of reasons. We'd have to do a fair assessment of the percentage of failures compared to the industry as a whole to really get a feel for whether YC is successful or not.
  - pjscott 14y ago
    You'd also have to consider the magnitude of the successes and the amount invested per company. The handful of companies that make it really big pretty much dominate startup investment economics.

dangrover 14y ago

Great advice. I screwed up a PG interview the same way!

sopooneo 14y ago

The phrase "...the questions of an impatient (if not, widely respected) mind..." implies that Paul Graham may be neither patient nor widely respected. Also, the comma in the parenthetical is unnecessary. I have never read any of PG's code, but I've read his essays, and he would not make those mistakes. Edit: While I stand by the above correction, my tone is obnoxious. It's a good essay and I enjoyed it and learned from it.

drupeek 14y ago
Good catch. It should have said ("yet", widely respected).
- qntmfred 14y ago
  well now you just have an unnecessary comma AND unnecessary quotes
  - rayval 14y ago
    I think he is using quotemarks to highlight the revised wording, and that these are not intended for final consumption.
binxbolling 14y ago
Let me nitpick on two other things: 1. Your blockquote color is basically unreadable if you're not young and/or have perfect vision. 2. If you want to excise marketing jargon from your life, you can start by dropping "action" as a verb.

parfe 14y ago

He thought you were making a wiki and you countered with "No no no! We're making another threaded forum!" How does rocketr differ from the news.yc interface we're all using to comment? We're collaborating right now, are we not?

drupeek 14y ago
It takes the same approach to productivity, that news.yc takes to news. They are, in fact, very similar in that regard.
- parfe 14y ago
  Thanks for the reply. I still have no idea what your product does.

rexreed 14y ago

I you have to carefully wordsmith and "spin" so that others who don't have much time for you get it, then I think you really are in a tough spot. Forget PG for a moment. What about your customers? If THEY don't get it in a short amount of time and you have to carefully control ("drive" as you put it) the conversation just so they understand it (nevermind actually buying what you're selling), then you really are in a tough spot. I think PG called this right - your product has to be intuitive to the point that someone understands what you have and how you compare to the rest of the universe without verbal jousting. Now, whether or not they agree or buy into the value proposition is another matter. But you got hung up on the "what are you doing and how does it relate to what I know" part.

devgutt 14y ago

I´d love to hear from PG whether what the OP thinks that is better, is really better.

pkteison 14y ago

Opening with "Rocketr is a bottom-up approach to knowledge management" - this is an entirely useless fluff sentence, tells nobody anything, doesn't provide a useful frame of reference for what's coming next... I feel like the story here is that Mr. Peek needed a harsher critic when he was practicing. It's surprising how rarely we encounter good critics in our lives, everybody is focused on supporting and validating and has little practice at really challenging, reviewing, evaluating. I don't really see a problem with PG driving, I see a problem with not being ready to clearly and concisely differentiate. How is it different from Evernote and how is it different from Wikipedia should be completely anticipated ready-to-handle followups with great one-sentence answers that focus on the customers. I really don't like the alternate suggested approach because I'm not willing to grant the premise. Does work get done using team based tools? Work gets done to a shocking degree with email, excel, individual text editors, powerpoint... none of which are really 'team based'. My first thought is to go with something like "We help individuals collaborate by [whatever it is this thing does]" simply because that gets me a frame of reference faster and gets to talking about the interesting part sooner. But I'm still not sure what the interesting part is... so far this sounds more like Google Wave than anything else, and that alone might be enough to pass on backing the idea, under the "will fail because it's too hard to convince people they need this" category.

mgkimsal 14y ago
"It's surprising how rarely we encounter good critics in our lives, everybody is focused on supporting and validating and has little practice at really challenging, reviewing, evaluating." This is a bit off-topic but I was reading some time ago about Dan/Dani Bunten (of MULE fame, among other things), who had gender reassignment surgery. More info here: http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Warning.html#Dani http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Warning.html#Dani but this is what I was reminded of: "Despite following the rules and being as honest as I could with the medical folks at each stage, nobody stopped me and said "Are you honest to God absolutely sure this is the ONLY path for you?!" To the contrary, the voices were all cheerfully supportive of my decision." No one really challenged Dan at the time - possibly for fear of being labelled as a bigot or hater or whatever - and Dani later regretted the decision. Again, somewhat off-topic, but finding people to really challenge you (in a supporting way) is hard to do.

btilly 14y ago

People say that hindsight is 20/20. No. Hindsight is speculation with the benefit of never being able to be proven wrong. Having read this "what we should have said" article, I'm suspicious that if they had done everything differently like they suggested, that they would have still come out to the same result. Why? Because the idea of an article with a revision tree and multiple current versions is naturally confusing to users. No matter how nice the formalism is. Until you can start to think about and present things in terms that the users can "get", you're going to have a serious UI problem that limits adoption. And even once you have that version, you still need to be able to compare and contrast it to things that people are familiar with so you can talk to people who don't "get" it yet.

rexreed 14y ago
It's interesting how many people see PG as the test of their company's viability (did he get it, didn't he get it?) when what really matters is what the customers think. Did they get it? Did they not? All this handwringing over a post-mortem with PG, and I rarely see the same with regards to customers. Customers are walking from your site, failing to respond to your marketing, failing to convert, choosing competitive solutions, etc., and where's the post-mortem? This is a valuable lesson. Not about what to say or not to PG, but rather, how much a poorly crafted value proposition or explanation of your product can instantly and quickly turn off your customers. Make your products easy to understand, easy to purchase, and easy to get value from, and you will win. Make it complex on any of those fronts, you will lose.
- larrys 14y ago
  I think you make excellent points. But "PG as the test of their company's viability" is because PG is a gatekeeper. "but rather, how much a poorly crafted value proposition or explanation of your product can instantly and quickly turn off your customers." People have to be able to understand what you are saying. You can't confuse them or give them big words or concepts. Ironically PG isn't really a good filter for this because he is so high level. If you are selling to a pizza shop owner most likely they didn't go to Harvard and their brain isn't wired the way PG's is. OTOH a concept that the pizza owner understands can be understood by PG as well. One of the things I always suggest (for researching business ideas) is to run stuff by "normals". Whether it be people at the train platform, Starbucks, or Walmart to use as additional intel and data points.

raheemm 14y ago

This is one of the best post-portems of a YC interview. Thanks for being so open. And also, solid advice!

alexro 14y ago
I wouldn't call it a solid advice. Others on the thread have already noted that the problem isn't really in not driving the conversation. It's how you differentiate and make it easy to grasp what you do. I find both advices in the end of OP blog post to be misleading.

slyrus 14y ago

Your WWSHS version suffers from two major problems. First, it identifies (arguably, muddily) a pain point while offering no solution. I need a robot that does my dishes in a big way, but I doubt your startup has a product that addresses that need. Second, you're suggesting that a VC needs your product as a customer, not as an investor. What VC's really need is to make money for their limited partners (PG is perhaps an exception here, but that's beside the point). A gold-plated golf club cover that measures wind speed (oh and makes a damn good cup of coffee on the side) might be needed by a particular VC, but it says nothing about whether or not that's likely to be the basis of a reasonable investment thesis. What you describe sounds like a big hairy problem and you haven't even begun to address how your product/offering/team are going to tackle the problem.

jgrahamc 14y ago

I think if I'd been PG I would have said "So, it's like Google Wave?"

ErrantX 14y ago

Hmm, my analysis (writing as I go): - Too much "fluff"; his response sounds like a marketer not a builder - In the opening two answers he basically contradicts his description; "co-authored notebooks" vs. "one author for a given note, and a threaded conversation around it". It's confusing. - The alternative opening is even worse; I still have no idea what problem your solving. You just gave me a marketing pitch.. - The alternate answer for "Who needs what you’re making?" is better - but immediately begs the question "how are my labels necessarily effective for both myself, and the YC alumni" and "How do you know the YC alumni don't have their own tag system which they apply as they read emails" or even "sounds handy, but how are you overcoming the convenience factor associated with email" - Any sensible listener will realise that a) and b) are not the only choices (this is a variation on my last bullet point) and be concerned that you are limiting yourself to only those outcomes. - It also seems risky to pitch such a personal use case on a supposition. The "problem" might already have been effectively resolved for YC's communications. All in all it reads a lot like a business person pitching to an engineer. One that is attuned to the problems of "gloss", and is looking for disruption and good engineering rather than a glossy pitch. I get that all the time and it is off putting. It strikes me that the key problem is you possibly don't speak the same language as pg. As with other commentators; even with the revised answers, I'm still not sure what Rocketr is beyond a note taking app with social features.

drupeek 14y ago
My thoughts... - What does a builder sound like? Aren't we all just trying to speak to customers? Are builders naturally better at that? - "Co-authored notebooks" and "one author per note" are not contradictions at all. They speak to entirely different units (notes and notebooks). - While you are correct that you and the startup may have different systems for categorizing, that's exactly the problem we're trying to point to. The siloed nature of how we capture and categorize information. In closing, I am trying to speak to customers... not engineers. Thank you for the feedback. I know it took time to write.
- ynniv 14y ago
  What does a builder sound like? "When I write in emacs, it's inconvenient to share that with my team. When I write in the Wiki... well, I don't write in the wiki because it's annoying. I have been more productive doing X, and I think you will too." In closing, I am trying to speak to customers... not engineers. That's marketing speak for "I don't know who my customer is". You are pitching to a customer who is an engineer, so you should be speaking to engineers. Thank you for the feedback. I know it took time to write. That's what we do here... this sounds hollow.

maxcameron 14y ago

Why are so many of the commentators entirely missing the point of @drupeek's article? Folks - this isn't about screenshots, whether to blog or not, grammar, or market segments. I know Andrew, and he's really not in need of most of the advice being offered to him in this post. His point is about pitching, breaking through the noise, and controlling the frame while you have ten minutes with an type-A personality. We all need to learn how to deal with this, and Andrew's making a valuable contribution. A lot of Andrew's advice reminds me of a book called Pitch Anything - I highly recommend you read it. The book is mostly about two things: using stories to capture and excite the most basic parts of the basic human brain, and controlling the frame of a conversation in order to make sure your story is heard by an audience which is naturally hostile. I believe anyone who's pitching deals should take a look. In conclusion, please stop patronizing Andrew, and contribute something meaningful to the conversation.

waterlesscloud 14y ago
He's top of the page on HN, a great position from which to promote his product. It's pretty clear from the responses here that nothing in the post communicates clearly what his product does, despite being about finding a better way to do just that. That's a shame, and there's a rapidly vanishing opportunity here to correct that. So the feedback he's getting here is the most valuable he's likely to ever get.
- drupeek 14y ago
  "So the feedback he's getting here is the most valuable he's likely to ever get." I'm getting valuable feedback to be sure, but in now way do I agree with this premise.
- corkill 14y ago
  After reading the post (and not understanding the product), I went to the homepage and yep still don't get what it is or who it would be for.
mindcrime 14y ago
Well said. Frame control is a crucial skill, and most people seem to know very little about it. Curiously, I only became aware of the concept, and started studying it, when I start hanging around some of the "pick up artist" guys. Turns out the PUAs dig pretty deep into psychology, storyteling, salesmanship, and related fields, trying to figure out how to connect with women. And, regardless of what you think of their aims in that regard, reading a lot of the material they recommend takes you in some interesting places. These guys got me studying Cialdini's Influence and a number of related works, which have been very influential to me... and in a way that has nothing to do with meeting women. This is not to say that everyone should rush out and jump into the PUA scene, just noting the (seemingly obscure) connection between that world and some of the areas that we all find interesting. It turns out that understanding influence, constructing narratives, frame control, etc. are important skills in many areas of our lives.

nl 14y ago

I've read both the version you told PG, and what you say you should have said a number of times and I still don't get it. It sounds like Google Wave. I'm not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing, but it sounds like you are having the same problem they had: explaining what the hell it does. When I tried to explain Wave to people I said it was a combination of the ideas of Wiki, email, chat and a forum, designed to make accomplishing shared work easier. It's still not great, but I don't think it's an easy thing to communicate.

nopal 14y ago

I don't like the part about using people's names. I personally don't like it when someone I don't know uses my name unnecessarily. It strikes me as odd and makes me think they're trying some psych 101 tactic on me. It's completely counterproductive because it makes meh mind jump off topic. It's fine to show that you know someone's name (like at the end of a call), but if you wouldn't throw a friend's name into a sentence, don't inject a stranger's.

waterlesscloud 14y ago
When anyone trying to sell me anything in any way uses my name, it throws up 4 or 5 extra layers of defense. At that point I know you're trying to manipulate me, and you've just made your job infinitely harder. Having said that, I've tried the trick myself on others and they seem to respond very differently from the way that I do. So I guess the point is to be very careful of this approach. It might help a little with some people, but it might be a gigantic turnoff to others.

jakeonthemove 14y ago

I still don't understand what Rocketr does :-). It's like a shared notebook, right? I've been using the OneNote WebApp lately for collaborative work (mainly sharing ideas/notes) and while it's not perfect, it's better than Google docs IMO. Does Rocketr do something like this?

drupeek 14y ago
Yes. It is just like a shared notebook.

macspoofing 14y ago

Having read the amendment, I still don't know what the product is, or rather, how it's different from something like Evernote.

larrys 14y ago

I like your idea and would like to know more about it. I'd consider angel investing in it (and I'm not an angel investor currently throwing money at the fan). If you are interested get in contact with me.

drupeek 14y ago
Will do. Appreciate the interest.

pg 14y ago

"And most importantly, drive." This advice is disastrously wrong. That's not how YC interviews work. They're interviews, not presentations. We want random access to your thoughts, not to listen to a single path through them, prepared in advance. When people walk into the room with a predetermined pitch that they're determined to stick to, things usually end badly.

brlewis 14y ago
From what I've been learning about sales in the past year or two, this advice is disastrously wrong not only for YC interviews, but for sales in general. If you ever drive in a sales conversation, it should be to dig out what problem the prospect is interested in solving.
rexreed 14y ago
Wholeheartedly agree. You simply can't drive all the conversations that happen about your company and product. If your success is determined by your necessity to drive the conversations, you're going to lose badly. The interview with PG notwithstanding, you have a company to run and marketing and sales to tackle -- the latter two of which are notoriously hard to control the conversation. I see the YCombinator interview as a minimal test - if you can pass that barrier, then you have a chance at possibly getting your customers to understand what you have and its value. But if you can't, then it's going to be tough.
- mindcrime 14y ago
  I see the YCombinator interview as a minimal test - if you can pass that barrier, then you have a chance at possibly getting your customers to understand what you have and its value. Disclaimer: I've never been through a YC interview. I don't think that's an apt comparison. Pg and the YC crew, as smart, insightful and interesting as they are, are still a very small group of people, compared to the world of customers out there. It's entirely possible that you could fail a YC interview for whatever mysterious reason (maybe pg was having a bad day, maybe something to do with pre-existing (and unconscious) biases, maybe you were having a bad day) and still do fine at getting customers to understand what you do and it's value. In some ways, the YC interview may even be a higher bar: It's automatically an extra stressful situation, and you're dealing with some "type A" personality types who feel some need to control the interview, and you go in knowing you're limited to 10 minutes or whatever. When you're out talking to customers, you may well find yourself in a lower stress situation, with people who aren't necessarily trying to challenge you, etc. And I think this is borne out by the fact that there are groups who failed to get into YC, who went on to be successful.

clarky07 14y ago

Still not sure if this helps me, but as others noted it sounds like Wave. If it actually is, I'd pay for it today in a heartbeat. While wave didn't reach the critical mass google wanted or needed, I suspect there are enough users that a small startup could make a few bucks with it.

demachina 14y ago

Focusing on your blog post more than your pitch, do you think it really adds value to your message to use gratuitous language like "shit the bed" and "f*cking". Dave McClure and Brad Feld have made it in to an art form but they've already made it. It doesn't add any value to your message but does distract from it. Your blog post suggests you haven't learned to carefully focus the words you use in your message for maximum positive impact.

robot 14y ago

"Rocketr bridges two worlds that could not be further apart right now – how we ..." This is also an entry that is trying to sound nice to the listener. Use wording that doesn't try to look nice, only give facts straight. it will sound more pro (because shows you only care and focus on facts) also you will get a more candid discussion. (because your entry was candid in the first place, without adding an artificial tone) One of the VCs that I talked to had the harshest comments about my presentation but his tone was so candid, it felt like he is the one that cared the most, gives the best advice, and I also thought he was a really cool person to know.

millions 14y ago

Not related to the article, but you have a very solid front end designer on board. Beautiful front page.

drupeek 14y ago
We actually have two of the best in Toronto. :)

deleted 14y ago

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dgurney 14y ago

I read that entire blog post and I still have no idea what the product does...

deleted 14y ago

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Udo 14y ago

After reading this I have no idea what Rocketr actually is and what it really does, and from that I infer that nobody in the room understood it either. I see a lot of statements that apparently should be prefixed with "our vision is" or "we want to" - statements of intent. I don't get the impression that the team actually knows how to build this thing. Just out of curiosity: are product demos allowed at these meetings? If so, was it done in this case? I think sometimes all it takes is one minute of actual UI presentation to determine whether there is anything of substance behind the idea or not.

nostromo 14y ago
Yes, live product demos are common.

engtech 14y ago

has anyone used rocketr vs asana? I've been using Asana for a 16 person team and enjoying the experience.

sachingulaya 14y ago

“Rocketr is a bottom-up approach to knowledge management. We connect people through their notepads. Basically, people take notes and decide how to share them. The primary mechanism by which they share them is through co-authored notebooks." "2. I stripped out so much of the marketing jargon (a YC rule)" No, you didn't. I couldn't understand what you were talking about. "Knowledge management" is jargon."Connecting people" is jargon. "Rocketr is about having one author for a given note, and a threaded conversation around it." I thought Rocketr was about "co-authored notebooks"(your words). So we co-author notebooks but not notes? "Rocketr bridges two worlds that could not be further apart right now how we capture information (using personal tools), and how we get work done (using team-based tools). We’re betting that these worlds will converge, because if they don’t, it will get harder and harder for teams if they can’t collaborate at the speed that information is changing around them. Oh and the medium we use to facilitate all this, is note-taking something we all know how to do." That still doesn't tell me what Rocketr does. "Organizations need this to drive innovation" = Marketing speak that says nothing. I still have no clue what Rocketr does or how it works after reading your blog post. Keep it short and simple.

rdl 14y ago

After reading that, I still have no idea what they're actually building, who would use it, or why. "Driving" is horrible advice, too -- even in sales. The best introduction to sales is SPIN Selling by Neil Rackham; in short, "consultative" vs. "slimy used salesman", where you work with the prospect to develop needs and then show how your product addresses them. In the 10 minute YC format, I wouldn't put more than 30 seconds into developing needs (i.e. getting buy-in that a certain problem exists and is worth solving), since I'd assume the YC people are both informed and generally biased towards accepting that problems exist. If they don't believe a problem exists, having a few great datapoints to justify your position is worthwhile ("medical transcription is a $10b/yr industry, and 0.1% of people are killed by iatrogenic errors traceable to mis-transcription every year. We want to make billions of dollars and save 50k lives per year with our direct neural interface for doctors, and we're the team to do it because we've each earned MDs and started 3 fortune 500 companies in the past 5 years...)

dsrguru 14y ago

gbattle's comment in the article is gold, possibly the single most useful thing I've ever read on making pitches. For those who didn't read it yet, gbattle provides a strict template for wording one's mission statement in a highly descriptive yet highly concise manner. The point isn't that your optimal mission statement should use the exact wording of the template, but rather that if you're unable to produce a mission statement using the exact wording of the template, either you don't understand your product well enough to bring it to market or your product has serious issues that need to be addressed immediately.

prawn 14y ago
Thought the same and wish I could upvote you more. HN comment readers, if you are rushed for time and don't think you'll bother even clicking through to the blog entry, here is the best takeaway from either blog or gbattle's comment: -- ...mission statement exercise that I stole from famed marketer/author Marty Neumeier... o WHAT: (productname) is the ONLY_________ o HOW: that _________________ o WHO: for _______________________ o WHERE: in ________________________ o WHY: who ___________________________ o WHEN: in an era of __________________.

pclark 14y ago

I don't understand why people do not just speak like humans when it comes to marketing. Succinct and explicit. It is as if people are embarrassed to speak in simple terms and feel the need to big their product up with verbosity.

lambda 14y ago

I stopped reading once I hit "action every idea immediately." This entire thing drips of the kind of marketing speak that he says he ripped out because YC demands it. Did he think that YC demands it just to be arbitrary and capricious? This style of presentation turns me (and likely many others) off immediately. The real problem is that he's trying to sell a product that solves a problem that most people don't have. People have tons of ways to write down, organize, and sort ideas. They can stick it in a wiki, in a Google doc, in email, in a bugtracker. All of these have ways of sorting and labeling content. I have seen nothing, in either you original or "what you should have said" version, that answers the question of how what you are doing is better than all of these things that people already have access to. What problem are you trying to solve? What does your tool do that other tools don't? If you can't answer these questions in 10 minutes, nor at your leisure afterwards when writing a blog post about what you should have said, nor in all the time you spent setting up a slick website with a "sign up to try us out" form, I have to ask whether you actually have a product or are just a bunch of empty marketing.

danielpal 14y ago

I read your whole blog post and I still don't understand what you do. My advice, when pg asked So what is Rocketr? You should have just answered the question with a straigh, no BS answer. PG: What is twilio? Twilio is an API for developers to build apps that use SMS and Voice. PG: What is Google? Google is a search engine. PG: What is twitter? Twitter is a social platform were users can send small messages and others can suscribe to them, so they can read those messages.

orph 14y ago

How is this different from Hackpad (YCW12)?

CookWithMe 14y ago

If you don't want PG to drive - then why are you applying for YC? You don't trust him to ask the right questions for HIS understanding. Judging from your blog post, you don't seem to trust his judgement in rejecting you - the only reason you came up with (in your blog) is that your pitch/answers were badly delivered. Maybe they were fine, but you have been rejected for other reasons (e.g. UVP not strong enough, market crowded with strong competition, customer segment too small, ...). I guess the real value of getting into YC is to get great, personalized advice. (You can get great, non-personalized advice from books or blogs). For that, you need to let your advisers drive. If the need your input at a turn, they will ask you - otherwise let them go wherever they want to. You need to understand why they are driving the way they do. In the end, you can and probably will take a few different turns than them (because you [should] have more domain knowledge). But by understanding where they would want to drive, you learn a lot from them. You may ask yourself, why PG was driving the interview the way he was. Maybe because he questions your UNIQUE VP (So what is Rocketr?), thinks there is strong competition solving this problem already (So it’s like a wiki?), or that your customer segment is too small (Who needs what you’re making?). Maybe because of completely different reasons. Comparing your two answers for "Who needs what you’re making?", it is the same content, but wrapped differently. While there is definitively value in making your message as clear as it can be, I think a good adviser will be able to get to the content. And then give you the same advice, no matter how the content was wrapped. Think about it: Would you really want to take advice from someone who would reject you with the first answer, but not with the second answer? I wouldn't. Anyway, good write-up nevertheless. I still think it is worthwhile to try to make a message as clear and easy to understand as possible.

Tichy 14y ago

I wonder if YC keeps statistics about coffee consumption. I can't imagine how much coffee I would need to make it through so many interviews. Is there a kickstarter for a coffee machine that keeps track already? Would be a fun graph for any company...

derek1800 14y ago

A great book to read in regards to this is: "Made to Stick"

lewisflude 14y ago

You're not solving a problem. At least, it doesn't feel like you are. As another commenter in this thread said "I hope there's more to your app than "I see them type on my screen, and they see me type on their screen"."

ekianjo 14y ago

Interesting story. This is something I can relate to as I have seen in a number of occasions people presenting new projects/products without being clear about the end user benefit. There's several ways to do it, but the "classical" one is to first talk about WHO your users are, and WHAT problems or needs they are currently facing without a reliable solution. Then, you bring your product, and you need to explain HOW it will modify their condition and solve their problem. Then, explain what your users will feel, what actual or perceived benefit they will get through it. It's the basis of Marketing: Framing, framing, framing.

alttab 14y ago

Trello

ricardobeat 14y ago

I'm sorry to interrupt this lively discussion, but I still have no idea what Rocketr is. Could somebody please explain? Is there a video, screenshots or mock-ups somewhere?

perfunctory 14y ago

no matter how you prepare your “benefits” pitch it's hard to sell a wiki.

perfunctory 14y ago

> Organizations need this to drive innovation The ability of a note-taking app to drive innovation is highly overrated.

eddmc 14y ago

Here's a suggestion for your value proposition: Collaborative notetaking made simple. I actually started with a more complicated sentence [Real-time collaborative editing made simple] but then I saw Helen's comment below your blog post and think she has a more concise description. I suggest you follow this up with a way (such as a story) of how a customer uses your product. This is where you can use the phrases: notetaking, realtime, and capturing ideas. I understand why you're trying to steer people towards "notes" and "notebooks". You might not like the fact that people are going to assume your competition is [strike]Google[/strike] Apache Wave or Wikipedia (ok - I mean wiki software) or Evernote, but you need to come up with good answers to those questions and this is where you can focus on important features that you have. It doesn't matter who you think your competition is - it matters what your customers think your competition is. Keep in mind that people are familiar with Wikipedia, and understand the idea of editing a wiki. Use this to your advantage. You need to paint the picture of how this affects them by making it real to them i.e. zero in on their pain point - they may not even know that they have it. Hope this helps

mnl 14y ago

Probably you should have said what exactly does your product do, which real problems does it solve, and what is your USP. Just answer, leave 'drive' to the one with the money.

drupeek 14y ago

I have to say that this comment thread is far beyond what we expected when publishing our post. Our original intention was to start a discussion around honing your pitch, telling your story - and to demonstrate how costly it can be when you don't do that well. By no means do we feel that we are "there" yet, but at the time of the post, we felt there was some progress from when we had interviewed. Interestingly, this thread has now provided us with a tremendous amount of additional value (for much less of a cost) which we intend on putting to use in the coming weeks. Thanks to all those who took the time to read the post, sit with it for a moment, and then carefully and compassionately construct their feedback in an honest and direct way. We genuinely appreciate it.

grout 14y ago

Rule of thumb: If any part of your pitch sounds like Microsoft marketing, you're not ready.