7 ms·

The Muse's Successful Application to YC W12

81 points by acav 13y ago

canistr 13y ago
Don't want to sound like a downer, but I'd also love to see applications where the founders weren't your typical white MIT, Harvard, Yale graduates/PhDs who worked at McKinsey GoogleBookSoft.
- untilHellbanned 13y ago
  yeah, i'm very surprised and disappointed how much YC has allowed itself to be gamed just like any other industry they seek to disrupt.
  - samfisher83 13y ago
    They want smart people and those smart people tend to go to good schools and get hired by Google, McK, Bain, etc.
    - untilHellbanned 13y ago
      they should want risk-takers, not people seeking the shelter of Google, McK, Bain, etc.
      - rwissmann 13y ago
        Those companies can be fantastic environments to grow and learn. Not everyone knows at 21 that they want to be an entrepreneur, much less has a great idea that they want to pursue. Muse uses technology to tackle very traditional industry-type problems - career planning and recruiting. A team with a combined 5-10 years at McKinsey and the exposure to an international network of thousands of very smart and career-driven people (plus lots of client companies) is exactly who you would want for this kind of company. Yahoo and Google were started by PhD students. AirBnB by designers. Marissa Mayer planed to start with McKinsey, Sheryl Sandberg actually worked there (and in politics). Peter Thiel was a lawyer and derivatives trader. Marc Benioff spent 13 years at Oracle. Why all the hate for people who have not dropped out of college / have worked in another industry? Clearly great entrepreneurs come from all sorts of backgrounds.
        untog 13y ago
        Clearly great entrepreneurs come from all sorts of backgrounds. But YC only funds one sort.
      - hootener 13y ago
        "not people seeking the shelter of Google, McK, Bain, etc." It seems that by leaving such companies to form startups, such individuals would represent the very definition of 'risk-taker'...
      - loganu 13y ago
        I wouldn't say they're risk averse. This is the second company they've started and they're 25. Bonus: Educated at top-level schools and companies. This is one of the best YC applications I've seen. Smart people working on a huge opportunity that they understand and have some traction in. Numbers and initial strategy suggest they've done their homework and can succeed. This is exactly who YC should want.
      - canistr 13y ago
        I suppose you could substitute "risk-takers" for "scrappy" since risk-taking is inherent in starting a company. I would say that scrappy is more indicative of someone who is entrepreneurial without necessarily relying on a strong background or network already available to them (since the use of risk-takers has received some backlash from some commenters).
    - Iftheshoefits 13y ago
      The number of people who are smart and also go to those schools and get hired by those companies is a small number compared to the population of "smart people" at large. A bias toward people coming from those places indicates that the same old fashioned "good ol' boys" style network is a much bigger factor in "success" than intelligence or any other measure of capability.
      - mattgreenrocks 13y ago
        The frequent defense is that "schooling doesn't matter much," but the halo effect of the Ivies always seems to magically help differentiate. It's a damn shame; tech becomes incredibly less interesting the more it slides into the realm of who you are (as opposed to what you can do). But, hey, there's lots of money flowing, so that's cool, right? We can all sit around and grasp at success for the rest of our days! (This is not an indictment of Muse; they sound like they know what they're doing.)
        Iftheshoefits 13y ago
        I think the issue here is more that our society in general selects these people for "success" more than those "without pedigree" by virtue of various complicated socioeconomic conditions. I don't think it's an active (or even "unconscious", if you'll permit the flawed adjective in describing a group of people) bias that YC has against any one group or another. The simple fact is that it's easier for persons with these backgrounds to be less conservative in their entrepreneurial endeavors than for, say, the guy who struggled through a B.S. or B.A. program and who came from poverty. That sort of conditioning lasts for life almost every time. As a result, the population of people who are likely to put together a truly acceptable YC application are more likely to be found in the "pedigreed" group. It's a flaw in society at large, not necessarily with YC itself.
        untilHellbanned 13y ago
        "It's a flaw in society at large, not necessarily with YC itself." YC is getting a big pass here. Just like the grade inflation in those good ole ivy leagues.
    - mintplant 13y ago
      You mean wealthy people. There are lots of smart people out there who can't afford to go to Ivy League schools.
      - brandnewlow 13y ago
        Your thinking on this is factually incorrect. If you're middle class or worse, and have the smarts, you can basically go to any of the top Ivies for free these days.
        deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
        bsamuels 13y ago
        That doesnt change the overwhelming competitive advantage rich families have when it comes to prestige schools. Many wealthy families sink tens of thousands of dollars into preparing their child for university admissions - an advantage only the most brilliant middle class students can overcome. Even then you have to ask yourself what it means to attend a prestige school. Are the students honestly getting a better education? It's not like they use a special set of books reserved for prestige schools only, and I have a hard time believing slave-labor TAs teaching skills would be any different at such schools.
        learc83 13y ago
        Except that plenty of kids don't know this. I had a pretty good shot of getting into an Ivy League school 10 years ago(4.0 and highest SAT score in the county), but I didn't apply because I thought my parents couldn't afford it.
        zodiac 13y ago
        I'm not sure about how true this is in the US, but it's definitely much less true for international students, a group that YC doesn't want to leave out.
      - deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
  - untilHellbanned 13y ago
    http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/magazine/y-combinator-silicon-valleys-start-up-machine.html?pagewanted=all http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/magazine/y-combinator-s... "I can be tricked by anyone who looks like Mark Zuckerberg."-Paul Graham
- beambot 13y ago
  We (Lollipuff) released our application. We were undergrads at Nebraska, Iowa State, and Idaho: https://www.lollipuff.com/blog/102/lollipuffs-ycombinator-experience https://www.lollipuff.com/blog/102/lollipuffs-ycombinator-ex... (Though I did a PhD at GT, and David worked at Google post-ITA acquisition. :-/ However, our CEO did neither.)
  - canistr 13y ago
    Thanks for sharing!
  - kirubakaran 13y ago
    From the application: "Women think about fashion more than men think about sex". Wow! I had no idea! I wonder if the study had a selection bias (eg. if it was a poll conducted on the parent website very.co.uk)
- btrautsc 13y ago
  White, male, southeastern state school, to quote a VC "literally no fucking pedigree", no engineering backgrounds... we just participated in demo day. YC has been incredible for us and the partners have been amazing to work with. Hustlers. Recruited PhDs & MSs with great experience/ backgrounds and empowered our team (hire smarter than yourself). Build a product that makes sense and people are demanding you take their money for... we are not perfectly outside the norm, but I would assume we're pretty unusual (at least in education/ experience/ skillset). You can email me any questions re YC.
jl 13y ago
"We didn't think we were what YC was looking for..." I'm so glad you took the time to apply! Your idea was slightly different back then, but I remember how impressive you were during the YC interview. As you said in your application: Among the members of the founding team we have domain expertise in recruiting; in content creation and promotion; and in directly engaging with women ages 20-35. What's more, we've been working in this specific field (job opportunities and career advice for professional women) for the last year, and the response from women has been unbelievable. Our user testimonials sometimes verge on the fanatical. We could tell when we met you that you really understood the business you were in. You were exactly what YC looks for.
- KMinshew 13y ago
  Thanks so much Jessica- we're so glad we did. YC was an unbelievably valuable experience. To the commenter below who asked how YC changed us & our company, there's not much that's more useful to an early, growing company than getting to spend time with people like Jessica & PG, and having their regular/honest feedback on what's working (and what's not). I'll try to write more about that here later.
  - uiboss 13y ago
    Ms. Minshew, would you mind answering the question that how specifically targeting women for jobs is not sexist in itself? What if you could find perfect male candidate for a particular position than women applicants ? Do you think its fair to pass on such opportunity for male candidate because he is male ?
Asparagirl 13y ago
Huh, their careers page has several "jobs" available for people to write articles for them... unpaid. You know, the old "it's good exposure" bait for people who don't know any better.
- KMinshew 13y ago
  Hi Asparagirl, there are 4-5x the number of people who ask to write for us compared to the number who ultimately get to, so clearly there's some value there :) The reality is that most of our writers are also mentors to other people, and they really enjoy it. Writing for The Muse is their way of scaling that mentorship to a broader audience.
  - ot 13y ago
    I share the sentiment of the parent in that the illusion of value could be much larger than the actual value. Ultimately the work these people do is more valuable for themuse than for themselves, and even if there are a lot of people willing to do it, it does not mean it is ethical to let them do it for free.
  - zodiac 13y ago
    I think the argument against unpaid internships is not so much that they don't provide value, but that they're only open to people who can afford to do an unpaid internship.
    - KMinshew 13y ago
      I'm in agreement with you on that - we pay all of our interns at The Muse. The posting referred to above is a way of recruiting people who are interested in contributing 1-4 mentoring posts per month, so very low commitment nights-and-weekends type thing.
thejteam 13y ago
Out of curiosity, if the founders are reading this thread, how did YC help you to improve your company? Specifically, did they help you in any way that you couldn't have done without them?
- muglug 13y ago
  Kathryn talked about the YC influence at the female founders conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoF10tFmNmY#t=360 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoF10tFmNmY#t=360
  - KMinshew 13y ago
    Thanks for posting that - YC definitely helped us avoid some classic early-stage startup mistakes
acjohnson55 13y ago
I got a kick for a second imagining the band Muse as a YC company.
OoTheNigerian 13y ago
Take it easy people. If what people get after publishing their applications is divertory criticism, it would discourage others from doing same. Today is the deadline for YC. The idea is to give applicants final ideas to help in their application. That's what this thread should be about. Ladies, thanks for publishing. If there are international applicants that have been successful, please share. If you are ok sharing privately, I'd really appreciate it. My email is on my profile.
spada 13y ago
Their traffic saw a massive drop in 2014. Google algo change screw them over?
- acav 13y ago
  We've actually seen 30% UV growth from Jan to March - some of that growth has been search given, though there are other channels driving it as well. In Jan we merged thedailymuse.com into themuse.com (under http://themuse.com/advice http://themuse.com/advice) so all of our products would live in one place
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
LukeWalsh 13y ago
The biggest thing that stuck out to me was how long some of your answers were. Everyone seems to always point to Drew's application with all of the short concise answers but it looks like thats not the only way to put together a winning app!
icedog 13y ago
Since today's topic on HN is usability testing. I'm a bit confused by the connection between the goal stated on the YC application and thedailymuse.com. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see anywhere that says this is a resource for women or "non-traditional candidates". How are you targeting this demographic without being discriminatory in your job applications?
- acav 13y ago
  When we applied to YC in 2011, we originally focused on professional women as that is where we saw the biggest need for our content, although 90% of our content was not gender-specific. Very quickly we watched our demographic grow to be 30+% men, and we made the decision to broaden our focus, while continuing to focus on our core: careers. One reason we made that decision is because one of the things we originally wanted to combat was women not feeling welcome in the workplace, so the idea of men not feeling welcome on The Muse (since they were actively using it "in secret" as they said) didn't feel in line with our principles. More info on that change here: http://www.themuse.com/advice/join-our-new-journey-updates-from-the-muse http://www.themuse.com/advice/join-our-new-journey-updates-f...

81 points by acav 13y ago

Don't want to sound like a downer, but I'd also love to see applications where the founders weren't your typical white MIT, Harvard, Yale graduates/PhDs who worked at McKinsey GoogleBookSoft.

untilHellbanned 13y ago
yeah, i'm very surprised and disappointed how much YC has allowed itself to be gamed just like any other industry they seek to disrupt.
- samfisher83 13y ago
  They want smart people and those smart people tend to go to good schools and get hired by Google, McK, Bain, etc.
  - untilHellbanned 13y ago
    they should want risk-takers, not people seeking the shelter of Google, McK, Bain, etc.
    - rwissmann 13y ago
      Those companies can be fantastic environments to grow and learn. Not everyone knows at 21 that they want to be an entrepreneur, much less has a great idea that they want to pursue. Muse uses technology to tackle very traditional industry-type problems - career planning and recruiting. A team with a combined 5-10 years at McKinsey and the exposure to an international network of thousands of very smart and career-driven people (plus lots of client companies) is exactly who you would want for this kind of company. Yahoo and Google were started by PhD students. AirBnB by designers. Marissa Mayer planed to start with McKinsey, Sheryl Sandberg actually worked there (and in politics). Peter Thiel was a lawyer and derivatives trader. Marc Benioff spent 13 years at Oracle. Why all the hate for people who have not dropped out of college / have worked in another industry? Clearly great entrepreneurs come from all sorts of backgrounds.
      - untog 13y ago
        Clearly great entrepreneurs come from all sorts of backgrounds. But YC only funds one sort.
    - hootener 13y ago
      "not people seeking the shelter of Google, McK, Bain, etc." It seems that by leaving such companies to form startups, such individuals would represent the very definition of 'risk-taker'...
    - loganu 13y ago
      I wouldn't say they're risk averse. This is the second company they've started and they're 25. Bonus: Educated at top-level schools and companies. This is one of the best YC applications I've seen. Smart people working on a huge opportunity that they understand and have some traction in. Numbers and initial strategy suggest they've done their homework and can succeed. This is exactly who YC should want.
    - canistr 13y ago
      I suppose you could substitute "risk-takers" for "scrappy" since risk-taking is inherent in starting a company. I would say that scrappy is more indicative of someone who is entrepreneurial without necessarily relying on a strong background or network already available to them (since the use of risk-takers has received some backlash from some commenters).
  - Iftheshoefits 13y ago
    The number of people who are smart and also go to those schools and get hired by those companies is a small number compared to the population of "smart people" at large. A bias toward people coming from those places indicates that the same old fashioned "good ol' boys" style network is a much bigger factor in "success" than intelligence or any other measure of capability.
    - mattgreenrocks 13y ago
      The frequent defense is that "schooling doesn't matter much," but the halo effect of the Ivies always seems to magically help differentiate. It's a damn shame; tech becomes incredibly less interesting the more it slides into the realm of who you are (as opposed to what you can do). But, hey, there's lots of money flowing, so that's cool, right? We can all sit around and grasp at success for the rest of our days! (This is not an indictment of Muse; they sound like they know what they're doing.)
      - Iftheshoefits 13y ago
        I think the issue here is more that our society in general selects these people for "success" more than those "without pedigree" by virtue of various complicated socioeconomic conditions. I don't think it's an active (or even "unconscious", if you'll permit the flawed adjective in describing a group of people) bias that YC has against any one group or another. The simple fact is that it's easier for persons with these backgrounds to be less conservative in their entrepreneurial endeavors than for, say, the guy who struggled through a B.S. or B.A. program and who came from poverty. That sort of conditioning lasts for life almost every time. As a result, the population of people who are likely to put together a truly acceptable YC application are more likely to be found in the "pedigreed" group. It's a flaw in society at large, not necessarily with YC itself.
        untilHellbanned 13y ago
        "It's a flaw in society at large, not necessarily with YC itself." YC is getting a big pass here. Just like the grade inflation in those good ole ivy leagues.
  - mintplant 13y ago
    You mean wealthy people. There are lots of smart people out there who can't afford to go to Ivy League schools.
    - brandnewlow 13y ago
      Your thinking on this is factually incorrect. If you're middle class or worse, and have the smarts, you can basically go to any of the top Ivies for free these days.
      - deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
      - bsamuels 13y ago
        That doesnt change the overwhelming competitive advantage rich families have when it comes to prestige schools. Many wealthy families sink tens of thousands of dollars into preparing their child for university admissions - an advantage only the most brilliant middle class students can overcome. Even then you have to ask yourself what it means to attend a prestige school. Are the students honestly getting a better education? It's not like they use a special set of books reserved for prestige schools only, and I have a hard time believing slave-labor TAs teaching skills would be any different at such schools.
      - learc83 13y ago
        Except that plenty of kids don't know this. I had a pretty good shot of getting into an Ivy League school 10 years ago(4.0 and highest SAT score in the county), but I didn't apply because I thought my parents couldn't afford it.
      - zodiac 13y ago
        I'm not sure about how true this is in the US, but it's definitely much less true for international students, a group that YC doesn't want to leave out.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
- untilHellbanned 13y ago
  http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/magazine/y-combinator-silicon-valleys-start-up-machine.html?pagewanted=all http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/magazine/y-combinator-s... "I can be tricked by anyone who looks like Mark Zuckerberg."-Paul Graham
beambot 13y ago
We (Lollipuff) released our application. We were undergrads at Nebraska, Iowa State, and Idaho: https://www.lollipuff.com/blog/102/lollipuffs-ycombinator-experience https://www.lollipuff.com/blog/102/lollipuffs-ycombinator-ex... (Though I did a PhD at GT, and David worked at Google post-ITA acquisition. :-/ However, our CEO did neither.)
- canistr 13y ago
  Thanks for sharing!
- kirubakaran 13y ago
  From the application: "Women think about fashion more than men think about sex". Wow! I had no idea! I wonder if the study had a selection bias (eg. if it was a poll conducted on the parent website very.co.uk)
btrautsc 13y ago
White, male, southeastern state school, to quote a VC "literally no fucking pedigree", no engineering backgrounds... we just participated in demo day. YC has been incredible for us and the partners have been amazing to work with. Hustlers. Recruited PhDs & MSs with great experience/ backgrounds and empowered our team (hire smarter than yourself). Build a product that makes sense and people are demanding you take their money for... we are not perfectly outside the norm, but I would assume we're pretty unusual (at least in education/ experience/ skillset). You can email me any questions re YC.

jl 13y ago

"We didn't think we were what YC was looking for..." I'm so glad you took the time to apply! Your idea was slightly different back then, but I remember how impressive you were during the YC interview. As you said in your application: Among the members of the founding team we have domain expertise in recruiting; in content creation and promotion; and in directly engaging with women ages 20-35. What's more, we've been working in this specific field (job opportunities and career advice for professional women) for the last year, and the response from women has been unbelievable. Our user testimonials sometimes verge on the fanatical. We could tell when we met you that you really understood the business you were in. You were exactly what YC looks for.

KMinshew 13y ago
Thanks so much Jessica- we're so glad we did. YC was an unbelievably valuable experience. To the commenter below who asked how YC changed us & our company, there's not much that's more useful to an early, growing company than getting to spend time with people like Jessica & PG, and having their regular/honest feedback on what's working (and what's not). I'll try to write more about that here later.
- uiboss 13y ago
  Ms. Minshew, would you mind answering the question that how specifically targeting women for jobs is not sexist in itself? What if you could find perfect male candidate for a particular position than women applicants ? Do you think its fair to pass on such opportunity for male candidate because he is male ?

Asparagirl 13y ago

Huh, their careers page has several "jobs" available for people to write articles for them... unpaid. You know, the old "it's good exposure" bait for people who don't know any better.

KMinshew 13y ago
Hi Asparagirl, there are 4-5x the number of people who ask to write for us compared to the number who ultimately get to, so clearly there's some value there :) The reality is that most of our writers are also mentors to other people, and they really enjoy it. Writing for The Muse is their way of scaling that mentorship to a broader audience.
- ot 13y ago
  I share the sentiment of the parent in that the illusion of value could be much larger than the actual value. Ultimately the work these people do is more valuable for themuse than for themselves, and even if there are a lot of people willing to do it, it does not mean it is ethical to let them do it for free.
- zodiac 13y ago
  I think the argument against unpaid internships is not so much that they don't provide value, but that they're only open to people who can afford to do an unpaid internship.
  - KMinshew 13y ago
    I'm in agreement with you on that - we pay all of our interns at The Muse. The posting referred to above is a way of recruiting people who are interested in contributing 1-4 mentoring posts per month, so very low commitment nights-and-weekends type thing.

thejteam 13y ago

Out of curiosity, if the founders are reading this thread, how did YC help you to improve your company? Specifically, did they help you in any way that you couldn't have done without them?

muglug 13y ago
Kathryn talked about the YC influence at the female founders conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoF10tFmNmY#t=360 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoF10tFmNmY#t=360
- KMinshew 13y ago
  Thanks for posting that - YC definitely helped us avoid some classic early-stage startup mistakes

acjohnson55 13y ago

I got a kick for a second imagining the band Muse as a YC company.

OoTheNigerian 13y ago

Take it easy people. If what people get after publishing their applications is divertory criticism, it would discourage others from doing same. Today is the deadline for YC. The idea is to give applicants final ideas to help in their application. That's what this thread should be about. Ladies, thanks for publishing. If there are international applicants that have been successful, please share. If you are ok sharing privately, I'd really appreciate it. My email is on my profile.

spada 13y ago

Their traffic saw a massive drop in 2014. Google algo change screw them over?

acav 13y ago
We've actually seen 30% UV growth from Jan to March - some of that growth has been search given, though there are other channels driving it as well. In Jan we merged thedailymuse.com into themuse.com (under http://themuse.com/advice http://themuse.com/advice) so all of our products would live in one place
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]

LukeWalsh 13y ago

The biggest thing that stuck out to me was how long some of your answers were. Everyone seems to always point to Drew's application with all of the short concise answers but it looks like thats not the only way to put together a winning app!

icedog 13y ago

Since today's topic on HN is usability testing. I'm a bit confused by the connection between the goal stated on the YC application and thedailymuse.com. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see anywhere that says this is a resource for women or "non-traditional candidates". How are you targeting this demographic without being discriminatory in your job applications?

acav 13y ago
When we applied to YC in 2011, we originally focused on professional women as that is where we saw the biggest need for our content, although 90% of our content was not gender-specific. Very quickly we watched our demographic grow to be 30+% men, and we made the decision to broaden our focus, while continuing to focus on our core: careers. One reason we made that decision is because one of the things we originally wanted to combat was women not feeling welcome in the workplace, so the idea of men not feeling welcome on The Muse (since they were actively using it "in secret" as they said) didn't feel in line with our principles. More info on that change here: http://www.themuse.com/advice/join-our-new-journey-updates-from-the-muse http://www.themuse.com/advice/join-our-new-journey-updates-f...