4 ms·

I like this idea. This task can also be made simplier by just focusing feedback on the company-related sections of the app. This is where having an experienced

by tvo 13y ago

I like this idea. This task can also be made simplier by just focusing feedback on the company-related sections of the app. This is where having an experienced perspective (feedback from YC) can really help smart but inexperienced founders. If you fall into the good-but-not-accepted group, chances are good that you can treat all feedback as an opinion to be considered, not a directive to be obeyed.

rdl 13y ago
The class of things I hate the most (having applied to YC, etc.) is when a bad application masks what is otherwise a good or potentially great team. That's something you can learn not to do, and which can be corrected with some coaching. 1) People fuck up videos frequiently. I've personally been studying "how to do good kickstarter videos" a lot, but "how to do a 2-3 minute Demo Day pitch" and "how to do a 1 minute YC app video" are pretty specific, and while a lot of it should be obvious, it isn't all obvious. The problem is, doing a good "how to do a YC video" is itself best communicated as video, with good/bad examples, so it's a fair bit of work -- it would probably take a couple people a week to do very well. 2) Sometimes, people "bury the lede" and hide the most salient parts of their project deep inside an application in a non-clear way. Sometimes it isn't even listed. I've talked to friends who want to apply to YC who intentionally couched their whole application in "corporate speak", focused entirely on top-down analysis, etc., rather than actually explaining why the product is good, why they're interested in it, etc. 3) There are a lot of items which are hard to verify, and which lose their predictive value as soon as they're widely known. Similar to the well-known interview questions ("what is your greatest weakness?" being a pathological example), where once they become common knowledge, the only value is knowing who prepared ahead of time vs. who didn't, or who is willing to recite something which sounds convincing vs. actually thinking about it. I'm afraid the Thiel question "what is something you believe to be true which isn't widely held" is becoming that question today. X) My personal belief is that something like a YC app should be fractal -- good on the surface if you skim it for 10-30 seconds, but then just as good when you read it closely in any area without greater context. That's a specific style, and not universal, and I don't know if the YC Partnership agrees with me. The applications get reviewed many times (with some rejected at each step), and ultimately if you're on the bubble and the application gets debated internally, you want it to help you just as much as it did when it was initially screened. (Obviously, it's better to just be so amazing that you're well in the "yes" range and not seriously debated...)

by tvo 13y ago

rdl 13y ago

The class of things I hate the most (having applied to YC, etc.) is when a bad application masks what is otherwise a good or potentially great team. That's something you can learn not to do, and which can be corrected with some coaching. 1) People fuck up videos frequiently. I've personally been studying "how to do good kickstarter videos" a lot, but "how to do a 2-3 minute Demo Day pitch" and "how to do a 1 minute YC app video" are pretty specific, and while a lot of it should be obvious, it isn't all obvious. The problem is, doing a good "how to do a YC video" is itself best communicated as video, with good/bad examples, so it's a fair bit of work -- it would probably take a couple people a week to do very well. 2) Sometimes, people "bury the lede" and hide the most salient parts of their project deep inside an application in a non-clear way. Sometimes it isn't even listed. I've talked to friends who want to apply to YC who intentionally couched their whole application in "corporate speak", focused entirely on top-down analysis, etc., rather than actually explaining why the product is good, why they're interested in it, etc. 3) There are a lot of items which are hard to verify, and which lose their predictive value as soon as they're widely known. Similar to the well-known interview questions ("what is your greatest weakness?" being a pathological example), where once they become common knowledge, the only value is knowing who prepared ahead of time vs. who didn't, or who is willing to recite something which sounds convincing vs. actually thinking about it. I'm afraid the Thiel question "what is something you believe to be true which isn't widely held" is becoming that question today. X) My personal belief is that something like a YC app should be fractal -- good on the surface if you skim it for 10-30 seconds, but then just as good when you read it closely in any area without greater context. That's a specific style, and not universal, and I don't know if the YC Partnership agrees with me. The applications get reviewed many times (with some rejected at each step), and ultimately if you're on the bubble and the application gets debated internally, you want it to help you just as much as it did when it was initially screened. (Obviously, it's better to just be so amazing that you're well in the "yes" range and not seriously debated...)