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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 th
by 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 agowhy the username?
- taliban 13y agoMy 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.
- breck 13y agoFair enough. You might want to consider a rebrand, at least as far as your online persona is concerned. Perception matters, and you might find yourself in trouble for an issue that you have no interest in. See the "terrorista" incident in Boston recently. Or the Duke Lacrosse case. I've seen it happy many times where tiny out-of-context jokes come back to bite hard. At the very least you'd probably save some poor guy at the NSA time who has to monitor your comments. :)
- ajju 13y agoI think the NSA deserves to waste time monitoring comments from "suspiciously" nicknamed users if that's what they are doing, because surely the real taliban would be posting comments under their own name, on hacker news :)
- taliban 13y agoAll valid points -- especially the last one, which in all honesty does make me giggle every time. Every word I write, Anonymous NSA Guy, I write for you <333 On a sincere note, breck, I truly do appreciate the thoughtful feedback and will certainly act on it if I come to perceive that the benefit of doing so will outweigh the difficulty of parting with the conversation starter that is my Twitter handle. I'll be the first to admit that this kind of shock value appears to have a high risk of backfiring (which, mind you, wasn't a very relevant concern 5 years ago when no one but close friends knew my online persona), but somehow -- and even I don't know how, really -- it has led to overwhelmingly positive interactions over the years, especially as people become familiar with my personality and sense of humor.
- breck 13y ago> it has led to overwhelmingly positive interactions over the years, especially as people become familiar with my personality and sense of humor. I guess if you can pull it off, my hat is off to you! :)
- ewoodrich 13y agoPerception is also strongly influenced by subsequent positive or negative confirmation. It may not be the best way to open up a unsolicited discussion with a YC partner, but even in this case, it served to induce some degree of interaction between you and "taliban". Which I presume ended on an amicable note.
- ValentineC 13y agoI love the part where mbellotti wrote that you were scoring introductions through your OKCupid matches. That's some great and unconventional hustling.
- taliban 13y agoMarianne just totally cockblocked me by mentioning that incident! It was a single isolated incident, mind you. Someone I've been talking to on OKCupid reads HN and found this post, which has now led to a heated argument about whether I'm a human capable of love or a Siri-like chat bot optimized for professional networking.
- djt 13y agoJust tell him you're really a chat bot that has become Sentient. Still wouldn't be the weirdest person on OK Cupid.
- namdnay 13y ago"That's some great and unconventional hustling" I'm not sure about that, it seems very regressive to me, playing into the stereotype that the way for a woman to succeed is by attaching herself to a successful man. I would say it's one step away from flirting with your boss to get a raise.
- ValentineC 13y agoI'm not sure if Tal had underlying motives behind her OKCupid use, but I don't see any problems with someone (regardless of sex) going on a date, and going, "Hey, you work at [company]? Do you know [person]? Mind if you introduce me to him/her?" Especially if the person's also in the startup scene. The ecosystem thrives on people helping each other out.
- namdnay 13y agoI fully agree with you that that's perfectly acceptable behaviour (if you didn't know in advance that they knew [person], or else it gets a little unethical...) But from the phrasing of the OP ("great hustling"), I took it to mean that she was actively "hustling" OKCupid by using her dating profile (i.e. people's desire to sleep with her) to get business contacts (i.e. money).
- austengary 13y agoAs 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 am not going to hypothesize on this converse. However, having evaluated the team, I'll just leave this here[1]. [1]: http://www.businessinsider.com/attractive-people-are-more-successful-2012-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/attractive-people-are-more-su...