12 ms·

Tailgating YC

298 points by mbellotti 13y ago

evanjacobs 13y ago
Wow! One of the best self-aware posts I've read in a long time. Looking forward to reading more and following the progress of Exversion (which sounds like an awesome idea, btw).
Udo 13y ago
An excellent read. Life is rejection. I loved the symmetry between the co-founders' mutual rejection when they first met and then finally their company's rejection at YC. Cultural matches are important and they drive more decisions than we're all comfortable with. The truth is, we often like to hire, promote, or buy from people who fit a certain stereotype. It's essentially a cargo cult around what successful startup people are expected to look like, and the most uncomfortable thought arising from that is not the number of founders who "wrongly" received funding, but the number of hopefuls who never got the chance. However, taking the time to really get to know and appreciate a startup person is not something that can reasonably happen a lot when you're in contact with customers, the press, or even your own employees - so the (bad) impression a team makes while interviewing for an incubator or fund raising does tends to follow them around. People can and do change their appearance to match other people's expectations - and it's a proven, working method of upping your chances. Learning how to interact better with others, while certainly painful, also helps and is more often than not necessary to become successful. We're often distracted by the Zuckerbergs or Jobs' who are abrasive and embody their own don't-care-for-anything style, but the ugly truth is that those guys got so unbelievably lucky that they never needed to actually work on themselves.
- fearless 13y ago
  >>We're often distracted by the Zuckerbergs or Jobs' who are abrasive and embody their own don't-care-for-anything style, but the ugly truth is that those guys got so unbelievably lucky that they never needed to actually work on themselves. [citation needed]
  - Udo 13y ago
    > [citation needed] This is obviously my opinion. You are free to voice another one or present data that offers another perspective. There is really no "citation needed" for every thesis a person happens to entertain, and that comment alone with no other content accomplishes absolutely nothing besides being rude. Try to reason with me, or if you're lazy, vote me down; though I personally prefer to vote on post quality rather than agreement/disagreement. [citation needed] is not a meaningful interaction in my opinion.
    - obviouslygreen 13y ago
      While I agree that "citation needed" is rampant around here, part of the reason is phrasing. You stated an opinion as a fact. A lot of people roll their eyes at this, but if you expect something to be taken as an opinion -- which is totally reasonable -- then you should phrase it that way. "I get the impression they never had to work on themselves" doesn't beg a citation. It's clearly an opinion and doesn't imply that it's attempting or intended to be anything else. It may seem pedantic, but when all people have to go on are the words you put in the form, being clear is important.
      - Udo 13y ago
        I think you have a point, but context is important. And I say this as someone who has been repeatedly accused in this forum to make abundant use of "weasel words" just to qualify the boundary between fact and opinion. As a result I don't do it as often anymore, especially when the context of the subject itself already serves as a good indicator that whatever follows will be opinion. Still, I have to admit that I do believe it to be factual that extremely successful people did not have to work on making themselves pleasant or conformant to the same degree as normal people. I explained the reasoning for this in the sister comment, but the upshot is that I indeed see this as a fact that probably could be supported by biographical evidence.
      - mindcrime 13y ago
        Meh... I used to feel that way, but over time I've realized that life is too short to stop and waste the time to put "I think" or "I feel" or "in my opinion" in front of everything I write. If I write something, it's implicit that it's my opinion. It may or may not also be a fact. In either case, if somebody disagrees or has a counter-claim or wants to present evidence to the contrary, then let them do it. But bitching because people don't load every paragraph with qualifiers, weasel-words and cop-outs is just silly.
- orangethirty 13y ago
  You can create your own luck, too. Not as big s theirs, but enough to open up good opportunities. Its just a matter of spending some time away from the keyboard, talking with the people who have the keys to the doors. Almost all of the time, a simple please will get them to open up the door for you. Just ask.
  - w1ntermute 13y ago
    Talking to people is of course important, but it's also about being in the right place at the right time. You can't just "create your own luck."
    - orangethirty 13y ago
      That is where the being away from the keyboard part comes into action. You have to actually meet with people to be able to talk them into giving you opportunities.
      - w1ntermute 13y ago
        I don't mean physically being in the right place at the right time. I mean that you happen to be interested in and start a company at the right point in history, where a confluence of technological and societal factors enable you to be that one-in-a-billion person like Jobs or the Zuck. Just running around talking to people isn't going to make you Jobs or the Zuck. It's necessary, but definitely not sufficient. Of course, that's not to say that you can't be a moderately successful entrepreneur if you "hustle" enough. Just don't expect to have books written and movies made about you. I know plenty of people who have started ventures in important niches and have found moderate success. There's absolutely nothing to be ashamed of if you exit for $10 or 20 million after a couple of years of hard work. But, going in, you have to be aware of the fact that you're almost definitely not going to end up a multi-billionaire.
    - mindcrime 13y ago
      Depends on how you define "luck" I guess. In a strictly pedantic sense, I agree that you "can't create luck" as there is no such thing. Luck is just a word we apply, in retrospect, to describe what did or didn't happen. But I would argue very ardently that the expression "the harder I work, the luckier I get" contains a great deal of truth. Work, intent, and focused will can do a lot to shape the world we live in. I'm reminded of that post that showed up here a year or so back about "how to date a supermodel", which started with something like "move to where supermodels live and go the bars where they go". Yeah, that might not be sufficient, but there's a lot to be said for the "create my own luck" aspect of at least taking the actions that are needed to move you towards your goals.
daned 13y ago
I can't accept the one off 'hacking the slot machines' comment.
- greenlander 13y ago
  Yeah, I didn't get that one either. The game is rigged: anyone with any understanding of math knows that. The house always wins. Unless he's opening the thing up and downloading firmware, he's not 'hacking' anything. He's just losing money. And if he was somehow up money for the night as he claims, he just got lucky. The expected case is that the house wins.
  - antoko 13y ago
    ..., I figured I could at least nickel and dime the casino. This means SHE was avoiding the losses not actively trying to make a profit. That's how I read first time and still how it reads now. I guess the use of the term "hacking" in this sense wasn't a great idea. The term is being used like life-hacking. I have to be in the casino, I have to play slots (no blackjack) How do I make this work? ... I play for penny stakes instead of dollar stakes. The fact that she did actually win something was just dumb luck. You should really go back and read the rest of it, it is well worth it.
    - jholman 13y ago
      Einh, she specifically claims she had a system. "I walked out of the casino at a profit just by being aware of what the actual odds were and sticking to a system that would milk the machine of as much money as possible. That it did this bit by bit was irrelevant. Cash is cash." It's certainly conceivable that the A.C. slots have a negative vig under some circumstances, but I'm skeptical. My conclusion from the references to the slots is that the author probably isn't as smart as she thinks she is. Preliminary finding. I agree that this usage is idiomatically consistent with the HN-standard use of "hacking", though.
      - DanBC 13y ago
ridruejo 13y ago
"It’s no secret that YC tends to invest in a certain type” That's simply not true. If anything, what I have found is an incredible variety of backgrounds. In the latest batch you could find from teenagers to people in their forties. From former national kickboxing champions to people who could use some gym time. From really charming extroverts to people who were more on the shy side. Everybody was incredibly talented and passionate, though, and that was what everyone I met had in common. Being rejected by YC is not the end of the world (and you can always reapply the next cycle if you still want to do it) but I would not blame it on not fitting an imaginary "type"
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jgrahamc 13y ago
I'd like to hear about the 'system' that allows you to win at slot machines. That sounds unlikely or perhaps just a martingale[1] applied to slots. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martingale_(probability_theory) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martingale_(probability_theory)
- Udo 13y ago
  She already answered that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5669088 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5669088
  - ableal 13y ago
    (posted the same minute the question was asked by jgrahamc, by the way, hold the arrows ;-)
- deleted 13y ago
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sjtgraham 13y ago
The more accounts I read of the YC application process the more resolutely I feel that YC alumni recommendations are basically key to getting to the interview stage. I wonder if PG et al could chime in on how applications are ranked, i.e. how much weighting is given to alumni recommendations, alumni reviewer votes (alumni screen applications to prevent poor ones ever reaching partners), and partner votes. It would be cool to have some insight into how that worked.
- pg 13y ago
  It depends which alumni. A handful are good judges of startups. Most just loyally recommend their friends. Off the top of my head, I'd guess alumni recommendations are a factor in maybe 5-10 of the 255 groups we invite to interviews.
  - rdl 13y ago
    255? I assume that is per year, not per batch.
    - pg 13y ago
      That's per batch. 5 days x 3 interview tracks x 17 slots per day. Which is why we're usually a bit tired by the end of interviews.
      - 6thSigma 13y ago
        I assume the number of interviews is a big bottleneck for you guys. Is the number of applicants continuing to increase?
      - YuriNiyazov 13y ago
        Nice binary number.
- plehoux 13y ago
  We had 0 connection with past alumni and we got an interview.
pg 13y ago
I should know better than to make jokes that align with people's existing fears. Once we funded someone who reminded me of Zuckerberg, and even then it was far from the only reason. And the fact that the YC partners have taunted me about it ever since shows that if anything we're probably extra skeptical about Zuckomorphs. I realize it's possible to be unconsciously influenced by applicants' appearance and manner, but can anyone at this point believe we're not aware of that danger, and simply pick people based on matching some crude archetype? That we could remain that naively incompetent after 16 cycles of picking founders and then watching how they do?
- sharkweek 13y ago
  This makes me curious -- let's say Mark Zuckerberg himself applied to YC with the objectively worst idea you've ever seen on an application. Do you give it a shot?
  - pg 13y ago
    Of course!
    - loganfrederick 13y ago
      This reminds me of one of Warren Buffet's famous quotes: "When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact." Taking this thinking another step, one of the characteristics of good management is probably the ability to avoid bad businesses. If Zuckerberg were to leave Facebook to start another startup, and analysis of the idea makes an investor think it's a bad idea, I'm guessing they would still invest in Zuckerberg based on the assumptions: 1. He knows something you don't. 2. He'd move from a bad idea to a good idea later and it's worth investing in smart businesspeople.
      - staunch 13y ago
        Tablets were a bad business before Apple got involved.
pramodbiligiri 13y ago
>> It’s how the human mind is designed to operate: looking for connections when there’s not enough evidence to support a connection, jumping to conclusions Psychologist and Nobel econ prize winner Daniel Kahneman has written about this in his book "Thinking, Fast and Slow" [1]. I am currently halfway through this book and it's been an insightful read so far. [1] - http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0374275637 http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/...
- taliban 13y ago
  +1000000 Thinking Fast and Slow is one of those books that changes your life by permanently altering your worldview. On some level it makes you resent yourself as you start learning how to identify your own biases (and even worse, just how many there are! Good God!) but once the bruises on your ego start fading you'll find that you're a far better person for it.
john_w_t_b 13y ago
I like this attitude: Everything I have ever achieved in life has started with a panel rejecting me, YC was just another notch. Think I will subscribe to her blog.
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ajju 13y ago
I think YC has reached a point where anything PG says is likely to be interpreted in the worst possible light. That's unfortunate, because YC really doesn't have a type. I don't think there was a single Zuckerberg clone in our batch[1], a large portion of the batch had a foreign accent (me included), there were several awesome women led teams (Shoptiques, HireArt, TheDailyMuse, 99Dresses...) and we all got in. As I told a friend somewhat indelicately recently, the best attitude to have post YC-rejection is "Screw YC, we are going to go gangbusters on this anyway". Ironically, this makes you more likely to get in the the next time, should you choose to apply. If not, you still win. Mbellotti clearly got that part right with this: "Everything I have ever achieved in life has started with a panel rejecting me, YC was just another notch." So godspeed to her! [1] The closest may have been Jason Freedman, and he looks nothing like Zuckerberg http://42floors.com/team http://42floors.com/team
- rock_hard 13y ago
  All the YC founders I know are the same type of person. And I'm not talking about genders, age or cultural backgrounds. They are intelligent (obviously), unexited (by my standards), determined and tent to listen more then to talk. They move baby steps instead of trying to make huge jumps. They all also seem to be very scared of losing (which is different from wanting to win).
taliban 13y ago
I'm mbellotti's cofounder at Exversion. For me, the main takeaway of her post is just how different the YC interview experience can appear even to members of the same team. As the other female on the team, I've always found my chromosomal makeup to be a huge advantage rather than a disadvantage (especially after establishing some level of technical competence). Despite my own belief in merit over affirmative action, it's one of the biggest tools in my toolkit, frankly. Where males have nepotism, we have novelty and the promise of good PR. I would even go so far as to say it may give us a net advantage over all-male teams. I digress. My own view of the YC interview is such, taking into account the magic of hindsight: that we shouldn't have depended on PB and our interviewers to drive the conversation toward market size. We should have anticipated the concern on our own and brought it up as it's something we're already used to having to defend. Should've, could've, would've -- who knows if that would've mattered, but it's my best guess. Then again, we also spent our 10 minutes successfully selling them on our team and execution abilities, which we evidently did very well based on the feedback we got in our rejection email. In fact, I don't think our interview could have gone much better than it did and I still feel overwhelmingly positive about it. Contrary to Marianne, perhaps, I feel pretty viscerally that we sell our team better than we sell our product/market fit at the moment. And with the caliber of applications YC sees these days that include companies with crazy good traction, we can't properly apply the YC priorities of yore ("great team, not much else yet? You're in!") to our interview and extrapolate that it was our demographics that didn't get us in. As Marianne's (mbellotti's) experience shows, it is certainly something to consider, but it is just one of dozens of possibilities. It's also worth considering that demographics may have helped rather than hindered us in getting the interview in the first place.
- breck 13y ago
  why the username?
  - taliban 13y ago
    My full first name is Tal. While I'm far too busy with work to engage in any meaningful fundamentalism, this doesn't stop my friends from giving me irreverent nicknames that start with the three letters of my name. As you can imagine, this particular one has by far the most sticking power, which has oddly morphed into a sort of personal brand over the years.
TomGullen 13y ago
> I walked out of the casino at a profit just by being aware of what the actual odds were and sticking to a system that would milk the machine of as much money as possible. Care to explain this in more detail? Are you sure you know what the actual odds are? If you were actually making money through the odds, why were you only playing for cents? I'd be looking for higher stakes machines with similar exploits.
ChuckMcM 13y ago
Always interesting to see how people process their YC experience, it says a lot about where the author's head is. Any selection process has biases, some intrinsic, some extrinsic. But unless the process is very loosely tuned, such selections are rarely driven by those biases, When I started at Sun the 'top' of the engineering ladder was the title 'Distinguished Engineer' and I wanted to be one, and so to know what it took to be promoted to that role. Some of the best advice I got was that, that was the wrong question. The question was simply whether or not I was a Distinguished Engineer. The subtle difference in phrasing aligns with whether or not the organization recognizes Distinguished Engineers or appoints Distinguished Engineers. Sun was very much the former and not the latter. It changed my whole perspective from trying to do something which got me promoted, to doing stuff that I was proud of, with the understanding that if that was something Sun considered worthy they would promote me, if not it didn't matter. I know, hard to believe it wouldn't matter but the place you have to be is you're true to your path and in some groups that will be recognized as awesome and in other groups it won't, but that is the group's problem, not your problem. So in the YC selection process, perhaps it is more about recognizing teams that are building YC companies, than it is picking teams to be YC companies. I've never sat in on the discussion so I can't say but from what I've seen of the demo day presentations there is certainly some homogeneity in the "vibe" these companies give off.
ValentineC 13y ago
Great article. mbellotti: Just a comment on your blog's style: my eyes didn't take well to the white-on-black colour scheme, and I had to install Chrome's High Resolution extension to finish it without killing my eyes. Of course, YMMV.
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dvt 13y ago
This comment may get a significant number of downvotes, but here I go. I think there has been an increasing number of these types of posts on HN -- especially in the past couple of years (for some reason). Having a good attitude when faced with rejection is great. I'm not a fatalist in the sense that I would encourage anyone to jump off a bridge if they get rejected by YC. HOWEVER, it's important to understand the role that rejection plays. And it's also important to understand the baggage that rejection carries with it. Sort of blowing off rejection - to me - seems utterly stupid. Especially if it's something you want. The point of founding a start-up is to be successful (whether that's an exit strategy, positive growth, getting into YC, etc. is irrelevant). Failure/rejection loses all of its beneficial characteristics if all you do is blow it off ("oh it's just another notch"). You need to ask yourself: 1. Why did I fail? 2. What can I do to not fail again? In some cases (1) will simply be bad luck. Consider an athlete that slips and tears his achilles or consider me asking a pretty girl out that happens to have a boyfriend. Oh well -- that's just bad luck. However, if the athlete in question failed to train hard or I made a bad joke that completely irked a girl I'm interested in, that's something completely different. I truly believe that the start-up world is, in many ways, a lottery. By that I mean that not only do you need to be in tip-top shape, but you also need to get pretty damn lucky to end up like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. Blowing off failure prevents any positive improvements (hey maybe I should've trained harder, maybe that was a bad joke, etc.) and encourages a kind of isolated entrepreneurship where you think you know best and you're convinced you're doing your best (even though you may not be). Also, lets face it: failure sucks. Being rejected by a cute girl/guy sucks. Not being accepted into YC sucks. Not getting into your school of choice sucks. I think that downplaying the suckiness of these events is not the way to go. Instead, figure out how to get what you want next time. It's a careful balancing act. On one hand, you don't want to be a fatalist that gives up after the first failure; but on the other, you don't want to be a hard-headed and obnoxious positivist that doesn't acknowledge failure when it's staring them in the face.
- mindcrime 13y ago
  I think I agree with the general sentiment of your post, but I do think it's also important to have a mindset that "getting rejected by YC is not failure". That is, it's not "failure in the large". It's just "failure to get into YC". It doesn't mean your startup is dead, or won't succeed, or that your dreams are over. It's a setback, possibly, but it shouldn't be the death knell. IMO, if you let failure to get into YC translate into "failure of our startup" then you were doing it wrong to begin with. Now, should you take the feedback (whatever that may be) that you get from the YC rejection, and incorporate it into your worldview, and learn from the process, and use it to grow? Sure... who wouldn't want to benefit from some wisdom from pg, paul, rtm, etc.? But as smart and talented as the YC crew is, they aren't totally prescient, and there are plenty of stories of teams that got rejected and went on to success.
tocomment 13y ago
Does anyone know what the slot machine strategy is?
- DanBC 13y ago
  Grab as many credits as you can. You can't cash out those credits, but you can gamble them and cash out any winnings. Slot machines pay out something like 60% 70% (according to the author) so you're just converting non-cash to cash with a hefty markup for the casino. The author played the low-stakes machines and cashed out any win over 10c.
  - tocomment 13y ago
    Sorry maybe dumb it down one more level for me? What's a credit? why can't you cash them out, how do you get them?
    - lifeformed 13y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5669088 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5669088
dsugarman 13y ago
This was a great read, and for the most part it is the exact attitude you should take. YC is a great experience but it is not the end all be all, and if you really should go in to an interview with the mindset "If we don't get in, screw it". Mass rejection is the norm when starting a new company with a new team. One note though: I really give a lot of credit to YC for thinking outside the box in the interview process, I would consider myself far from the typical tech founder archetype and our company sits in an industry that is typically not that interesting to the startup community. They took a chance on my team and me and we strive to prove them right.
paul 13y ago
This was a very interesting read and I hope that she continues blogging about her startup journey. Having interviewed the team, I have my own expectations for how it will play out, so I would love to see how that matches with reality. However, it definitely isn't the case though that we're just looking for a bunch of Zuck clones. In this business, we make all of our money off a small number of outliers, and my assumption is that outliers are likely to be outliers in a number of ways. For example, Brian Chesky was a bodybuilder who graduated from Rhode Island School of Design. If anything, I'm more likely to take a chance on an unconventional team. Also, a word of advice, if people are consistently getting the "wrong impression" about you, then perhaps you should work on hacking their perception. To build a big business, you're going to need to sell yourself to potential employees, customers, investors, etc.
- mindcrime 13y ago
  Also, a word of advice, if people are consistently getting the "wrong impression" about you, then perhaps you should work on hacking their perception. Danger, Wil Robinson, danger! If you start down the path of trying to project yourself to somebody as what you think they want to see, you are taking on a big risk, as you never really know what the expectations are. You're probably just as likely to screw things up by trying to be perceived differently, than by just being yourself. To build a big business, you're going to need to sell yourself to potential employees, customers, investors, etc. Right, but you have to sell yourself not some alternate-reality, fictional version of yourself. Of course you want to present your best self to people, to the extent that you can know what that is. And maybe that's all you're really saying. If so, then sure. But if it means actively molding your dress, behavior, mannerisms, speech, appearance, etc. to something artificial in order to cater to someone's whims, I'm not so sure.
  - paul 13y ago
    Maybe we have a different definition of hacking. I'm not particularly good at molding myself to cater to other people's whims, which is part of the reason I have always avoided normal jobs. However, that doesn't mean I can't still be mindful of how others perceive me.
tbs 13y ago
Had to stop reading after incorrect use of 'infinitesimally'
jgrebski 13y ago
Hi all, Jacek here, and third founder of Exversion. Considering that this post has garnered a bit of attention, I figured I might as well chime in. First let me say that I found mbellotti's post absolutely wonderful, and find that it serves as an example to the type of team we have become in a very short period of time. We as humans, all have pre-conceived notions of one another whether they be based on appearance, mannerism, figure of speech, etc. For some of us, these first impressions become much more deeply rooted than for others, and I, at least personally, believe them to be a hinderance in getting to understand people. Social relationships aside, this knowledge of, and understanding of one another is an absolutely pivotal part of any team as it leads to better communication, and more importantly builds trust, and friendship. But excellence in teams is also derived from hardship. Mbellotti, in her post mentions that we took the RV to save money, which is true, however, as we started this project on a bus, under somewhat strenuous conditions we noticed that much like a hazing of sorts, the experience brought us, much closer together. Would the discomfort of an RV do the same, I dare say it has. I don't mean to sound trite by saying this, but team really is everything. How often do you see a team fall apart because of squabbles over who's going to be CEO of a 3 person company, or an argument over the hue of blue that's served as a background. To me the post was more about this anything, the trust, and belief in one another, and the internal knowledge that we can and will make it regardless of obstacles, because (excuse the mush) we actually do have one another to rely on. As for the YC interview and later rejection, yes it was disappointing as all rejections are, and as a self confessed PR junkie it would have made that as well as fundraising all the much easier, but it was a great experience nonetheless, as was meeting the brilliant people who interviewed along side us, and whose relationships I would like to continue and nurture, because they really are great people. With that, I highly urge anyone in a startup to get an RV and go a bouts the bay area or NE corridor in it, is a killer experience, leads to some absolutely brilliant stories and elevates the concept of "The "Mobile" Startup" to whole other level. #hackingWhileMoving.
- taliban 13y ago
  I love you to death but please watch your double quote-nesting when using marketing buzzwords if you don't want me and mbellotti to deliver 40 lashings in a public square <3
rdl 13y ago
The big optimization I would make during interviews, if you possibly can, is stay with alumni and meet up with them first. That only really works if you know them already, or have some connection to them. (If anyone applies in the future that I know, I'd be happy to meet up with you if you get an interview. Offer extends to people I don't know yet if it is security, network infrastructure, or if you are US/UK/CA/AU/ZA military or comtractor from Iraq/Afghanistan/HOA, or MIT or Technion. Maybe IL mil too, but in that case you already know plenty of people...)
SeanDav 13y ago
According to the OP the interview process went quite smoothly. Since this appears to not be typical YC style I would think that this shows something else at play here. It seems to be a matter of perception. They sound like a rather alternate bunch that don't appear to go to great lengths to sell themselves as a team. They were probably doomed in the first 10 seconds. The failure to stress test them out on their ideas would make it appear that the interviewers were just going through the motions to be polite. Not sure there is any blame to apportion here. The world is what it is and people are what they are. In an ideal world they would have been a given a thorough grilling about their ideas, enthusiasm, skills and approach despite an initial very negative perception - but in an ideal world they would have recognized their potentially negative appearance/behaviour and done something about it, so it would not have been an issue in the first place.
rurounijones 13y ago
Off-topic: After reading that tiny white text on black background and returning to HN I can see stripes going across the screen. It is the first time a site has managed to actually hurt my eyes, ye gods.
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trg2 13y ago
fascinating read - thanks for posting, took guts.

298 points by mbellotti 13y ago

Wow! One of the best self-aware posts I've read in a long time. Looking forward to reading more and following the progress of Exversion (which sounds like an awesome idea, btw).

Udo 13y ago

An excellent read. Life is rejection. I loved the symmetry between the co-founders' mutual rejection when they first met and then finally their company's rejection at YC. Cultural matches are important and they drive more decisions than we're all comfortable with. The truth is, we often like to hire, promote, or buy from people who fit a certain stereotype. It's essentially a cargo cult around what successful startup people are expected to look like, and the most uncomfortable thought arising from that is not the number of founders who "wrongly" received funding, but the number of hopefuls who never got the chance. However, taking the time to really get to know and appreciate a startup person is not something that can reasonably happen a lot when you're in contact with customers, the press, or even your own employees - so the (bad) impression a team makes while interviewing for an incubator or fund raising does tends to follow them around. People can and do change their appearance to match other people's expectations - and it's a proven, working method of upping your chances. Learning how to interact better with others, while certainly painful, also helps and is more often than not necessary to become successful. We're often distracted by the Zuckerbergs or Jobs' who are abrasive and embody their own don't-care-for-anything style, but the ugly truth is that those guys got so unbelievably lucky that they never needed to actually work on themselves.

fearless 13y ago
>>We're often distracted by the Zuckerbergs or Jobs' who are abrasive and embody their own don't-care-for-anything style, but the ugly truth is that those guys got so unbelievably lucky that they never needed to actually work on themselves. [citation needed]
- Udo 13y ago
  > [citation needed] This is obviously my opinion. You are free to voice another one or present data that offers another perspective. There is really no "citation needed" for every thesis a person happens to entertain, and that comment alone with no other content accomplishes absolutely nothing besides being rude. Try to reason with me, or if you're lazy, vote me down; though I personally prefer to vote on post quality rather than agreement/disagreement. [citation needed] is not a meaningful interaction in my opinion.
  - obviouslygreen 13y ago
    While I agree that "citation needed" is rampant around here, part of the reason is phrasing. You stated an opinion as a fact. A lot of people roll their eyes at this, but if you expect something to be taken as an opinion -- which is totally reasonable -- then you should phrase it that way. "I get the impression they never had to work on themselves" doesn't beg a citation. It's clearly an opinion and doesn't imply that it's attempting or intended to be anything else. It may seem pedantic, but when all people have to go on are the words you put in the form, being clear is important.
    - Udo 13y ago
      I think you have a point, but context is important. And I say this as someone who has been repeatedly accused in this forum to make abundant use of "weasel words" just to qualify the boundary between fact and opinion. As a result I don't do it as often anymore, especially when the context of the subject itself already serves as a good indicator that whatever follows will be opinion. Still, I have to admit that I do believe it to be factual that extremely successful people did not have to work on making themselves pleasant or conformant to the same degree as normal people. I explained the reasoning for this in the sister comment, but the upshot is that I indeed see this as a fact that probably could be supported by biographical evidence.
    - mindcrime 13y ago
      Meh... I used to feel that way, but over time I've realized that life is too short to stop and waste the time to put "I think" or "I feel" or "in my opinion" in front of everything I write. If I write something, it's implicit that it's my opinion. It may or may not also be a fact. In either case, if somebody disagrees or has a counter-claim or wants to present evidence to the contrary, then let them do it. But bitching because people don't load every paragraph with qualifiers, weasel-words and cop-outs is just silly.
orangethirty 13y ago
You can create your own luck, too. Not as big s theirs, but enough to open up good opportunities. Its just a matter of spending some time away from the keyboard, talking with the people who have the keys to the doors. Almost all of the time, a simple please will get them to open up the door for you. Just ask.
- w1ntermute 13y ago
  Talking to people is of course important, but it's also about being in the right place at the right time. You can't just "create your own luck."
  - orangethirty 13y ago
    That is where the being away from the keyboard part comes into action. You have to actually meet with people to be able to talk them into giving you opportunities.
    - w1ntermute 13y ago
      I don't mean physically being in the right place at the right time. I mean that you happen to be interested in and start a company at the right point in history, where a confluence of technological and societal factors enable you to be that one-in-a-billion person like Jobs or the Zuck. Just running around talking to people isn't going to make you Jobs or the Zuck. It's necessary, but definitely not sufficient. Of course, that's not to say that you can't be a moderately successful entrepreneur if you "hustle" enough. Just don't expect to have books written and movies made about you. I know plenty of people who have started ventures in important niches and have found moderate success. There's absolutely nothing to be ashamed of if you exit for $10 or 20 million after a couple of years of hard work. But, going in, you have to be aware of the fact that you're almost definitely not going to end up a multi-billionaire.
  - mindcrime 13y ago
    Depends on how you define "luck" I guess. In a strictly pedantic sense, I agree that you "can't create luck" as there is no such thing. Luck is just a word we apply, in retrospect, to describe what did or didn't happen. But I would argue very ardently that the expression "the harder I work, the luckier I get" contains a great deal of truth. Work, intent, and focused will can do a lot to shape the world we live in. I'm reminded of that post that showed up here a year or so back about "how to date a supermodel", which started with something like "move to where supermodels live and go the bars where they go". Yeah, that might not be sufficient, but there's a lot to be said for the "create my own luck" aspect of at least taking the actions that are needed to move you towards your goals.

daned 13y ago

I can't accept the one off 'hacking the slot machines' comment.

greenlander 13y ago
Yeah, I didn't get that one either. The game is rigged: anyone with any understanding of math knows that. The house always wins. Unless he's opening the thing up and downloading firmware, he's not 'hacking' anything. He's just losing money. And if he was somehow up money for the night as he claims, he just got lucky. The expected case is that the house wins.
- antoko 13y ago
  ..., I figured I could at least nickel and dime the casino. This means SHE was avoiding the losses not actively trying to make a profit. That's how I read first time and still how it reads now. I guess the use of the term "hacking" in this sense wasn't a great idea. The term is being used like life-hacking. I have to be in the casino, I have to play slots (no blackjack) How do I make this work? ... I play for penny stakes instead of dollar stakes. The fact that she did actually win something was just dumb luck. You should really go back and read the rest of it, it is well worth it.
  - jholman 13y ago
    Einh, she specifically claims she had a system. "I walked out of the casino at a profit just by being aware of what the actual odds were and sticking to a system that would milk the machine of as much money as possible. That it did this bit by bit was irrelevant. Cash is cash." It's certainly conceivable that the A.C. slots have a negative vig under some circumstances, but I'm skeptical. My conclusion from the references to the slots is that the author probably isn't as smart as she thinks she is. Preliminary finding. I agree that this usage is idiomatically consistent with the HN-standard use of "hacking", though.
    - DanBC 13y ago

ridruejo 13y ago

"It’s no secret that YC tends to invest in a certain type” That's simply not true. If anything, what I have found is an incredible variety of backgrounds. In the latest batch you could find from teenagers to people in their forties. From former national kickboxing champions to people who could use some gym time. From really charming extroverts to people who were more on the shy side. Everybody was incredibly talented and passionate, though, and that was what everyone I met had in common. Being rejected by YC is not the end of the world (and you can always reapply the next cycle if you still want to do it) but I would not blame it on not fitting an imaginary "type"

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jgrahamc 13y ago

I'd like to hear about the 'system' that allows you to win at slot machines. That sounds unlikely or perhaps just a martingale[1] applied to slots. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martingale_(probability_theory) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martingale_(probability_theory)

Udo 13y ago
She already answered that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5669088 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5669088
- ableal 13y ago
  (posted the same minute the question was asked by jgrahamc, by the way, hold the arrows ;-)
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sjtgraham 13y ago

The more accounts I read of the YC application process the more resolutely I feel that YC alumni recommendations are basically key to getting to the interview stage. I wonder if PG et al could chime in on how applications are ranked, i.e. how much weighting is given to alumni recommendations, alumni reviewer votes (alumni screen applications to prevent poor ones ever reaching partners), and partner votes. It would be cool to have some insight into how that worked.

pg 13y ago
It depends which alumni. A handful are good judges of startups. Most just loyally recommend their friends. Off the top of my head, I'd guess alumni recommendations are a factor in maybe 5-10 of the 255 groups we invite to interviews.
- rdl 13y ago
  255? I assume that is per year, not per batch.
  - pg 13y ago
    That's per batch. 5 days x 3 interview tracks x 17 slots per day. Which is why we're usually a bit tired by the end of interviews.
    - 6thSigma 13y ago
      I assume the number of interviews is a big bottleneck for you guys. Is the number of applicants continuing to increase?
    - YuriNiyazov 13y ago
      Nice binary number.
plehoux 13y ago
We had 0 connection with past alumni and we got an interview.

pg 13y ago

I should know better than to make jokes that align with people's existing fears. Once we funded someone who reminded me of Zuckerberg, and even then it was far from the only reason. And the fact that the YC partners have taunted me about it ever since shows that if anything we're probably extra skeptical about Zuckomorphs. I realize it's possible to be unconsciously influenced by applicants' appearance and manner, but can anyone at this point believe we're not aware of that danger, and simply pick people based on matching some crude archetype? That we could remain that naively incompetent after 16 cycles of picking founders and then watching how they do?

sharkweek 13y ago
This makes me curious -- let's say Mark Zuckerberg himself applied to YC with the objectively worst idea you've ever seen on an application. Do you give it a shot?
- pg 13y ago
  Of course!
  - loganfrederick 13y ago
    This reminds me of one of Warren Buffet's famous quotes: "When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact." Taking this thinking another step, one of the characteristics of good management is probably the ability to avoid bad businesses. If Zuckerberg were to leave Facebook to start another startup, and analysis of the idea makes an investor think it's a bad idea, I'm guessing they would still invest in Zuckerberg based on the assumptions: 1. He knows something you don't. 2. He'd move from a bad idea to a good idea later and it's worth investing in smart businesspeople.
    - staunch 13y ago
      Tablets were a bad business before Apple got involved.

pramodbiligiri 13y ago

>> It’s how the human mind is designed to operate: looking for connections when there’s not enough evidence to support a connection, jumping to conclusions Psychologist and Nobel econ prize winner Daniel Kahneman has written about this in his book "Thinking, Fast and Slow" [1]. I am currently halfway through this book and it's been an insightful read so far. [1] - http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0374275637 http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/...

taliban 13y ago
+1000000 Thinking Fast and Slow is one of those books that changes your life by permanently altering your worldview. On some level it makes you resent yourself as you start learning how to identify your own biases (and even worse, just how many there are! Good God!) but once the bruises on your ego start fading you'll find that you're a far better person for it.

john_w_t_b 13y ago

I like this attitude: Everything I have ever achieved in life has started with a panel rejecting me, YC was just another notch. Think I will subscribe to her blog.

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ajju 13y ago

I think YC has reached a point where anything PG says is likely to be interpreted in the worst possible light. That's unfortunate, because YC really doesn't have a type. I don't think there was a single Zuckerberg clone in our batch[1], a large portion of the batch had a foreign accent (me included), there were several awesome women led teams (Shoptiques, HireArt, TheDailyMuse, 99Dresses...) and we all got in. As I told a friend somewhat indelicately recently, the best attitude to have post YC-rejection is "Screw YC, we are going to go gangbusters on this anyway". Ironically, this makes you more likely to get in the the next time, should you choose to apply. If not, you still win. Mbellotti clearly got that part right with this: "Everything I have ever achieved in life has started with a panel rejecting me, YC was just another notch." So godspeed to her! [1] The closest may have been Jason Freedman, and he looks nothing like Zuckerberg http://42floors.com/team http://42floors.com/team

rock_hard 13y ago
All the YC founders I know are the same type of person. And I'm not talking about genders, age or cultural backgrounds. They are intelligent (obviously), unexited (by my standards), determined and tent to listen more then to talk. They move baby steps instead of trying to make huge jumps. They all also seem to be very scared of losing (which is different from wanting to win).

taliban 13y ago

I'm mbellotti's cofounder at Exversion. For me, the main takeaway of her post is just how different the YC interview experience can appear even to members of the same team. As the other female on the team, I've always found my chromosomal makeup to be a huge advantage rather than a disadvantage (especially after establishing some level of technical competence). Despite my own belief in merit over affirmative action, it's one of the biggest tools in my toolkit, frankly. Where males have nepotism, we have novelty and the promise of good PR. I would even go so far as to say it may give us a net advantage over all-male teams. I digress. My own view of the YC interview is such, taking into account the magic of hindsight: that we shouldn't have depended on PB and our interviewers to drive the conversation toward market size. We should have anticipated the concern on our own and brought it up as it's something we're already used to having to defend. Should've, could've, would've -- who knows if that would've mattered, but it's my best guess. Then again, we also spent our 10 minutes successfully selling them on our team and execution abilities, which we evidently did very well based on the feedback we got in our rejection email. In fact, I don't think our interview could have gone much better than it did and I still feel overwhelmingly positive about it. Contrary to Marianne, perhaps, I feel pretty viscerally that we sell our team better than we sell our product/market fit at the moment. And with the caliber of applications YC sees these days that include companies with crazy good traction, we can't properly apply the YC priorities of yore ("great team, not much else yet? You're in!") to our interview and extrapolate that it was our demographics that didn't get us in. As Marianne's (mbellotti's) experience shows, it is certainly something to consider, but it is just one of dozens of possibilities. It's also worth considering that demographics may have helped rather than hindered us in getting the interview in the first place.

breck 13y ago
why the username?
- taliban 13y ago
  My full first name is Tal. While I'm far too busy with work to engage in any meaningful fundamentalism, this doesn't stop my friends from giving me irreverent nicknames that start with the three letters of my name. As you can imagine, this particular one has by far the most sticking power, which has oddly morphed into a sort of personal brand over the years.

TomGullen 13y ago

> I walked out of the casino at a profit just by being aware of what the actual odds were and sticking to a system that would milk the machine of as much money as possible. Care to explain this in more detail? Are you sure you know what the actual odds are? If you were actually making money through the odds, why were you only playing for cents? I'd be looking for higher stakes machines with similar exploits.

ChuckMcM 13y ago

Always interesting to see how people process their YC experience, it says a lot about where the author's head is. Any selection process has biases, some intrinsic, some extrinsic. But unless the process is very loosely tuned, such selections are rarely driven by those biases, When I started at Sun the 'top' of the engineering ladder was the title 'Distinguished Engineer' and I wanted to be one, and so to know what it took to be promoted to that role. Some of the best advice I got was that, that was the wrong question. The question was simply whether or not I was a Distinguished Engineer. The subtle difference in phrasing aligns with whether or not the organization recognizes Distinguished Engineers or appoints Distinguished Engineers. Sun was very much the former and not the latter. It changed my whole perspective from trying to do something which got me promoted, to doing stuff that I was proud of, with the understanding that if that was something Sun considered worthy they would promote me, if not it didn't matter. I know, hard to believe it wouldn't matter but the place you have to be is you're true to your path and in some groups that will be recognized as awesome and in other groups it won't, but that is the group's problem, not your problem. So in the YC selection process, perhaps it is more about recognizing teams that are building YC companies, than it is picking teams to be YC companies. I've never sat in on the discussion so I can't say but from what I've seen of the demo day presentations there is certainly some homogeneity in the "vibe" these companies give off.

ValentineC 13y ago

Great article. mbellotti: Just a comment on your blog's style: my eyes didn't take well to the white-on-black colour scheme, and I had to install Chrome's High Resolution extension to finish it without killing my eyes. Of course, YMMV.

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dvt 13y ago

This comment may get a significant number of downvotes, but here I go. I think there has been an increasing number of these types of posts on HN -- especially in the past couple of years (for some reason). Having a good attitude when faced with rejection is great. I'm not a fatalist in the sense that I would encourage anyone to jump off a bridge if they get rejected by YC. HOWEVER, it's important to understand the role that rejection plays. And it's also important to understand the baggage that rejection carries with it. Sort of blowing off rejection - to me - seems utterly stupid. Especially if it's something you want. The point of founding a start-up is to be successful (whether that's an exit strategy, positive growth, getting into YC, etc. is irrelevant). Failure/rejection loses all of its beneficial characteristics if all you do is blow it off ("oh it's just another notch"). You need to ask yourself: 1. Why did I fail? 2. What can I do to not fail again? In some cases (1) will simply be bad luck. Consider an athlete that slips and tears his achilles or consider me asking a pretty girl out that happens to have a boyfriend. Oh well -- that's just bad luck. However, if the athlete in question failed to train hard or I made a bad joke that completely irked a girl I'm interested in, that's something completely different. I truly believe that the start-up world is, in many ways, a lottery. By that I mean that not only do you need to be in tip-top shape, but you also need to get pretty damn lucky to end up like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. Blowing off failure prevents any positive improvements (hey maybe I should've trained harder, maybe that was a bad joke, etc.) and encourages a kind of isolated entrepreneurship where you think you know best and you're convinced you're doing your best (even though you may not be). Also, lets face it: failure sucks. Being rejected by a cute girl/guy sucks. Not being accepted into YC sucks. Not getting into your school of choice sucks. I think that downplaying the suckiness of these events is not the way to go. Instead, figure out how to get what you want next time. It's a careful balancing act. On one hand, you don't want to be a fatalist that gives up after the first failure; but on the other, you don't want to be a hard-headed and obnoxious positivist that doesn't acknowledge failure when it's staring them in the face.

mindcrime 13y ago
I think I agree with the general sentiment of your post, but I do think it's also important to have a mindset that "getting rejected by YC is not failure". That is, it's not "failure in the large". It's just "failure to get into YC". It doesn't mean your startup is dead, or won't succeed, or that your dreams are over. It's a setback, possibly, but it shouldn't be the death knell. IMO, if you let failure to get into YC translate into "failure of our startup" then you were doing it wrong to begin with. Now, should you take the feedback (whatever that may be) that you get from the YC rejection, and incorporate it into your worldview, and learn from the process, and use it to grow? Sure... who wouldn't want to benefit from some wisdom from pg, paul, rtm, etc.? But as smart and talented as the YC crew is, they aren't totally prescient, and there are plenty of stories of teams that got rejected and went on to success.

tocomment 13y ago

Does anyone know what the slot machine strategy is?

DanBC 13y ago
Grab as many credits as you can. You can't cash out those credits, but you can gamble them and cash out any winnings. Slot machines pay out something like 60% 70% (according to the author) so you're just converting non-cash to cash with a hefty markup for the casino. The author played the low-stakes machines and cashed out any win over 10c.
- tocomment 13y ago
  Sorry maybe dumb it down one more level for me? What's a credit? why can't you cash them out, how do you get them?
  - lifeformed 13y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5669088 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5669088

dsugarman 13y ago

This was a great read, and for the most part it is the exact attitude you should take. YC is a great experience but it is not the end all be all, and if you really should go in to an interview with the mindset "If we don't get in, screw it". Mass rejection is the norm when starting a new company with a new team. One note though: I really give a lot of credit to YC for thinking outside the box in the interview process, I would consider myself far from the typical tech founder archetype and our company sits in an industry that is typically not that interesting to the startup community. They took a chance on my team and me and we strive to prove them right.

paul 13y ago

This was a very interesting read and I hope that she continues blogging about her startup journey. Having interviewed the team, I have my own expectations for how it will play out, so I would love to see how that matches with reality. However, it definitely isn't the case though that we're just looking for a bunch of Zuck clones. In this business, we make all of our money off a small number of outliers, and my assumption is that outliers are likely to be outliers in a number of ways. For example, Brian Chesky was a bodybuilder who graduated from Rhode Island School of Design. If anything, I'm more likely to take a chance on an unconventional team. Also, a word of advice, if people are consistently getting the "wrong impression" about you, then perhaps you should work on hacking their perception. To build a big business, you're going to need to sell yourself to potential employees, customers, investors, etc.

mindcrime 13y ago
Also, a word of advice, if people are consistently getting the "wrong impression" about you, then perhaps you should work on hacking their perception. Danger, Wil Robinson, danger! If you start down the path of trying to project yourself to somebody as what you think they want to see, you are taking on a big risk, as you never really know what the expectations are. You're probably just as likely to screw things up by trying to be perceived differently, than by just being yourself. To build a big business, you're going to need to sell yourself to potential employees, customers, investors, etc. Right, but you have to sell yourself not some alternate-reality, fictional version of yourself. Of course you want to present your best self to people, to the extent that you can know what that is. And maybe that's all you're really saying. If so, then sure. But if it means actively molding your dress, behavior, mannerisms, speech, appearance, etc. to something artificial in order to cater to someone's whims, I'm not so sure.
- paul 13y ago
  Maybe we have a different definition of hacking. I'm not particularly good at molding myself to cater to other people's whims, which is part of the reason I have always avoided normal jobs. However, that doesn't mean I can't still be mindful of how others perceive me.

tbs 13y ago

Had to stop reading after incorrect use of 'infinitesimally'

jgrebski 13y ago

Hi all, Jacek here, and third founder of Exversion. Considering that this post has garnered a bit of attention, I figured I might as well chime in. First let me say that I found mbellotti's post absolutely wonderful, and find that it serves as an example to the type of team we have become in a very short period of time. We as humans, all have pre-conceived notions of one another whether they be based on appearance, mannerism, figure of speech, etc. For some of us, these first impressions become much more deeply rooted than for others, and I, at least personally, believe them to be a hinderance in getting to understand people. Social relationships aside, this knowledge of, and understanding of one another is an absolutely pivotal part of any team as it leads to better communication, and more importantly builds trust, and friendship. But excellence in teams is also derived from hardship. Mbellotti, in her post mentions that we took the RV to save money, which is true, however, as we started this project on a bus, under somewhat strenuous conditions we noticed that much like a hazing of sorts, the experience brought us, much closer together. Would the discomfort of an RV do the same, I dare say it has. I don't mean to sound trite by saying this, but team really is everything. How often do you see a team fall apart because of squabbles over who's going to be CEO of a 3 person company, or an argument over the hue of blue that's served as a background. To me the post was more about this anything, the trust, and belief in one another, and the internal knowledge that we can and will make it regardless of obstacles, because (excuse the mush) we actually do have one another to rely on. As for the YC interview and later rejection, yes it was disappointing as all rejections are, and as a self confessed PR junkie it would have made that as well as fundraising all the much easier, but it was a great experience nonetheless, as was meeting the brilliant people who interviewed along side us, and whose relationships I would like to continue and nurture, because they really are great people. With that, I highly urge anyone in a startup to get an RV and go a bouts the bay area or NE corridor in it, is a killer experience, leads to some absolutely brilliant stories and elevates the concept of "The "Mobile" Startup" to whole other level. #hackingWhileMoving.

taliban 13y ago
I love you to death but please watch your double quote-nesting when using marketing buzzwords if you don't want me and mbellotti to deliver 40 lashings in a public square <3

rdl 13y ago

The big optimization I would make during interviews, if you possibly can, is stay with alumni and meet up with them first. That only really works if you know them already, or have some connection to them. (If anyone applies in the future that I know, I'd be happy to meet up with you if you get an interview. Offer extends to people I don't know yet if it is security, network infrastructure, or if you are US/UK/CA/AU/ZA military or comtractor from Iraq/Afghanistan/HOA, or MIT or Technion. Maybe IL mil too, but in that case you already know plenty of people...)

SeanDav 13y ago

According to the OP the interview process went quite smoothly. Since this appears to not be typical YC style I would think that this shows something else at play here. It seems to be a matter of perception. They sound like a rather alternate bunch that don't appear to go to great lengths to sell themselves as a team. They were probably doomed in the first 10 seconds. The failure to stress test them out on their ideas would make it appear that the interviewers were just going through the motions to be polite. Not sure there is any blame to apportion here. The world is what it is and people are what they are. In an ideal world they would have been a given a thorough grilling about their ideas, enthusiasm, skills and approach despite an initial very negative perception - but in an ideal world they would have recognized their potentially negative appearance/behaviour and done something about it, so it would not have been an issue in the first place.

rurounijones 13y ago

Off-topic: After reading that tiny white text on black background and returning to HN I can see stripes going across the screen. It is the first time a site has managed to actually hurt my eyes, ye gods.

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trg2 13y ago

fascinating read - thanks for posting, took guts.