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I’ll bite and say my firm CastingWords ( http://castingwords.com http://castingwords.com ) Even though just existing 9 years after the interview would have bee

by nmcfarl 11y ago

I’ll bite and say my firm CastingWords ( http://castingwords.com http://castingwords.com ) Even though just existing 9 years after the interview would have been a failure condition for our build to flip mindset at the time - but today it’s paying the founders salaries and still providing intersting challenges - so a success as we define it. And it must be said that the advice we got in our interview (that we rejected - no doubt one of the reasons we were turned down) was dead on - not just for what it would take to make the company a successful startup, but also for seeing some of the challenges in the road ahead. Just the interview was a fantastically useful. And the fact that we rejected the advice was probably a good indicator that what we really wanted out of our company was not a startup, but rather a platform to play with interesting technology and business problems and make money doing it. Startups really aren’t for everyone. YC was part of us discovering that.

mw67 11y ago
Can I ask what was the advice that you turned down? it's very interesting that after all this time you still consider that the interview was fantastically useful. I'll consider applying for mine just to hear their thoughts.
- nmcfarl 11y ago
  It's fantastically useful as a touch point. It's a point that, retrospectively, the road forked and it changed who we are and what we do, and sort of defined our values. We compare ourselves, and our competitors, to the theoretical company we could've been fairly frequently. As for the advice even if it was shocking at the time it doesn't seem that scary these days. It does seem a little prescient. The big one was to ditch our largest supplier, Amazon Mechanical Turk, build it ourselves and compete with them, as our success would be limited by them. This wasn't something we were willing to do at the time, we viewed them handling those problems as a major leg up for us. However in the end much of this was correct and building our own (more limited version) was part of us being financially successful as a company. Most of the advice consisted of start up tropes, applied to our particular business. They basically told us to dream audacious dreams, do difficult things that don't scale to boot strap and build relationships while doing it. But they didn't use any of those words and did apply them specifically to our problems which was pretty helpful. But the real value was as a touchstone, and illustrating how far ahead people who are good at this can see
geofft 11y ago
> what we really wanted out of our company was not a startup, but rather a platform to play with interesting technology and business problems and make money doing it Yeah, the more I read about startups, the less I can imagine taking something I love to YC or some other accelerator. An idea I'm halfway enthusiastic on that will make some money, sure. Something good for the world where the technical work is not my favorite thing, definitely. But if I'm passionate about the work, I want to keep doing it, not pivot, manage, hockey-stick, and sell.

by nmcfarl 11y ago

mw67 11y ago

Can I ask what was the advice that you turned down? it's very interesting that after all this time you still consider that the interview was fantastically useful. I'll consider applying for mine just to hear their thoughts.

nmcfarl 11y ago
It's fantastically useful as a touch point. It's a point that, retrospectively, the road forked and it changed who we are and what we do, and sort of defined our values. We compare ourselves, and our competitors, to the theoretical company we could've been fairly frequently. As for the advice even if it was shocking at the time it doesn't seem that scary these days. It does seem a little prescient. The big one was to ditch our largest supplier, Amazon Mechanical Turk, build it ourselves and compete with them, as our success would be limited by them. This wasn't something we were willing to do at the time, we viewed them handling those problems as a major leg up for us. However in the end much of this was correct and building our own (more limited version) was part of us being financially successful as a company. Most of the advice consisted of start up tropes, applied to our particular business. They basically told us to dream audacious dreams, do difficult things that don't scale to boot strap and build relationships while doing it. But they didn't use any of those words and did apply them specifically to our problems which was pretty helpful. But the real value was as a touchstone, and illustrating how far ahead people who are good at this can see

geofft 11y ago

> what we really wanted out of our company was not a startup, but rather a platform to play with interesting technology and business problems and make money doing it Yeah, the more I read about startups, the less I can imagine taking something I love to YC or some other accelerator. An idea I'm halfway enthusiastic on that will make some money, sure. Something good for the world where the technical work is not my favorite thing, definitely. But if I'm passionate about the work, I want to keep doing it, not pivot, manage, hockey-stick, and sell.