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I'll say this, I feel for the YC partners reading through submission after submission. After reading the few that have been posted on HN the past few days, I'm

I'll say this, I feel for the YC partners reading through submission after submission. After reading the few that have been posted on HN the past few days, I'm exhausted. It's hard to give a lot of attention to each of these without skimming through and just saying "meh, next". Much like an English teacher reading through 30 essays.

deleted 13y ago
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- waterside81 13y ago
  No of course, that's what they do - but that doesn't mean it's easy. I was merely commenting (and not on your specific application, which seemed fine to me) on the general task of reading about ideas from a vast array of industries & niches. You have to do this context switch constantly and in a short amount of time make a yay or nay decision. It's tough. And again, it's not exactly reading for pleasure, like a novel. It's reading dense copy from developers. It's tough.
  - pacifi30 13y ago
    Yes, I agree I think couple of people pointed out the grammatical errors in our application so that might have been a red flag too.
- wtvanhest 13y ago
  I think when you say "dating app" you better come with it hard. Also, your numbers could use some improvement. You said you only did 63 dates but project 10 dates per user per month. I'm an ultra extrovert and I don't think I could deal with going on 10 dates per month. Further, if that were the case and people could do 10 dates per month on average, you should already be proving that statement. The market size is huge if you win the whole thing. But, the way you calculated it seemed off. If I were to apply with a dating site or any other common app idea, my first sentence would be something I have learned that is profound. Without a profound insight, or major traction, a dating website probably looks like a low expected value. One thing is certain, there will be killer dating apps that continue to come out over time and I doubt that tinder will be the last one. [ADDED] I was responding to the applicant's point which is now deleted.
  - pacifi30 13y ago
    I have got to digest all these points. If nothing I have got amazing points for marketing Truffle as well as improving our vision. For now all of our focus is on getting traction. Thank you for your feedback :)
    - wtvanhest 13y ago
      Yeah man, my comment was kind of negative, but its definitely worth trying to see what people think. I think you need to work on your market sizing though. If you had talked to a few people about it, they should have caught it.
VladRussian2 13y ago
>It's hard to give a lot of attention to each of these without skimming through and just saying "meh, next". >Much like an English teacher reading through 30 essays. An English teacher gets it worse as s/he forced to actually read and comment through "meh" content (i pity ones who read my essays back then in Russian and here in English) For this application I read only first couple phrases until "3 matches every 3 days", and just being an HN reader for 4 years, i see that this startup isn't YC-material (that isn't saying that they aren't A+/brilliant grade material in general as i didn't read further)
- pacifi30 13y ago
  >For this application I read only first couple phrases until "3 matches every 3 days", and just being an HN reader for 4 years, i see that this startup isn't YC-material Please elaborate on this so we can circle back on our marketing pitch.
  - VladRussian2 13y ago
    Boring, sounds like something that has been done before. 3 by 3 and bonus 4th on fish taco Thurdays. To put it in the terms of your business area, [my impression that] YC is looking to be swept from their feet.
  - angryasian 13y ago
    there were 2 other similar sites on the frontpage today as well

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waterside81 13y ago
No of course, that's what they do - but that doesn't mean it's easy. I was merely commenting (and not on your specific application, which seemed fine to me) on the general task of reading about ideas from a vast array of industries & niches. You have to do this context switch constantly and in a short amount of time make a yay or nay decision. It's tough. And again, it's not exactly reading for pleasure, like a novel. It's reading dense copy from developers. It's tough.
- pacifi30 13y ago
  Yes, I agree I think couple of people pointed out the grammatical errors in our application so that might have been a red flag too.
wtvanhest 13y ago
I think when you say "dating app" you better come with it hard. Also, your numbers could use some improvement. You said you only did 63 dates but project 10 dates per user per month. I'm an ultra extrovert and I don't think I could deal with going on 10 dates per month. Further, if that were the case and people could do 10 dates per month on average, you should already be proving that statement. The market size is huge if you win the whole thing. But, the way you calculated it seemed off. If I were to apply with a dating site or any other common app idea, my first sentence would be something I have learned that is profound. Without a profound insight, or major traction, a dating website probably looks like a low expected value. One thing is certain, there will be killer dating apps that continue to come out over time and I doubt that tinder will be the last one. [ADDED] I was responding to the applicant's point which is now deleted.
- pacifi30 13y ago
  I have got to digest all these points. If nothing I have got amazing points for marketing Truffle as well as improving our vision. For now all of our focus is on getting traction. Thank you for your feedback :)
  - wtvanhest 13y ago
    Yeah man, my comment was kind of negative, but its definitely worth trying to see what people think. I think you need to work on your market sizing though. If you had talked to a few people about it, they should have caught it.

VladRussian2 13y ago

>It's hard to give a lot of attention to each of these without skimming through and just saying "meh, next". >Much like an English teacher reading through 30 essays. An English teacher gets it worse as s/he forced to actually read and comment through "meh" content (i pity ones who read my essays back then in Russian and here in English) For this application I read only first couple phrases until "3 matches every 3 days", and just being an HN reader for 4 years, i see that this startup isn't YC-material (that isn't saying that they aren't A+/brilliant grade material in general as i didn't read further)

pacifi30 13y ago
>For this application I read only first couple phrases until "3 matches every 3 days", and just being an HN reader for 4 years, i see that this startup isn't YC-material Please elaborate on this so we can circle back on our marketing pitch.
- VladRussian2 13y ago
  Boring, sounds like something that has been done before. 3 by 3 and bonus 4th on fish taco Thurdays. To put it in the terms of your business area, [my impression that] YC is looking to be swept from their feet.
- angryasian 13y ago
  there were 2 other similar sites on the frontpage today as well