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Y Combinator Fellowship 2015 Application Videos
- FormFollowsFunc 11y agoIt's interesting to see what kind of groups applied for this. I'm working on a product at the moment and was thinking of applying but without co-founders I didn't think it was a good idea. Also from the application form I get the feeling you would be "encouraged" to move to the Bay area if not during the 2 months at least after it, which I can't do.
- pkrefta 11y agoRight now I'm also unable to move to Bay Area, but I think if your idea/prototype/product is decent and you'll make great progress during Fellowship program you're chances for being accepted into YC W2015 will be much higher :)
- geekuillaume 11y agoI've just understood that you submitted TopChart for the Fellowship. Great idea to post it here on HN ;)
- I-M-S 11y agoYeah, a nice hack :) Best of luck to you from your fellow applicants, team Q4U!
- tomjacobs 11y agoAlright! This is just what I was looking for when I submitted my video to YCF2015: What other applications sounded like.
- confiscate 11y agoNice idea!
- huhtenberg 11y agoWhat's up with requiring a Facebook account for upvoting?
- masterkrang 11y agoSo that people don't easily game the system. Would you prefer Twitter or just not logging in at all?
- thecupisblue 11y agoI'd prefer twitter, and a tweet button. Twitter is less personal and reach is bigger than on facebook.
- richardbrevig 11y agoAgreed - I hesitated to sign up. Twitter is better.
- huhtenberg 11y agoNot logging in. Twitter accounts are dime a dozen, so that doesn't give you anything. You can limit by cookie/IP/browser fingerprint [1] if you'd like. That'd be as good as 3rd party authentication and far less intrusive. [1] https://github.com/Valve/fingerprintjs https://github.com/Valve/fingerprintjs
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- danr4 11y agoIt baffles me that some people put so much into the video but don't actually put effort to read or adhere to the guidelines [1] for it. They clearly ask - no script, no background music, no postproduction. Good luck to everybody though! [1] http://www.ycombinator.com/video http://www.ycombinator.com/video
- ingenieros 11y agoMaybe the are just trying to be disruptive! ba dum tss
- MathsOX 11y agoAgree with this. The best videos I've seen, and the ones listed on the page, are just the founders chatting naturally.
- tprophet 11y agoWe found out about this at the last minute, already had the video, and didn't have enough time to make new demos and videos. So, YC got the same video we submitted for TC Disrupt. Note that startups apply for a _lot_ of stuff, and we have seen a pattern that teams that look more professional are more likely to be selected (regardless of stated criteria). We're also based in Hollywood, so the kind of video stuff we just make ourselves in a weekend project tends to end up looking reasonably professional. At the end of the day, startups are rarely successful based on careful adherence to all guidelines, and we think our business is a lot more exciting than our demo and founder videos. Hopefully the YC reviewers think the same.
- rdl 11y agoNot true of YC, in my experience. A 1 minute video, done with ~5 minutes of preparation, is much better than a video from something else with high production values. Spending hours on the video is probably worse, too. The peak is maybe around 15-30 minutes, from the videos I've seen of YC teams. Talking points, decent lighting, decent audio (phone headset is fine), not a memorized script, maybe a couple takes if you really fuck up.
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- 55555 11y agoUI bug: https://www.dropbox.com/s/duue3q8brs7d467/Screenshot%202015-07-29%2017.58.34.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/duue3q8brs7d467/Screenshot%202015-... chrome 44 on os x
- richardbrevig 11y agoGreat resource, though I've noticed 2 issues: * New entries start with a vote of 0, the poster has to actually up-vote their own submission to get it to 1 (as opposed to automatically making it 1 like on reddit). * The ranking appears to be a sum of up votes, only. Links that are added later (like now), show up at the very bottom and it's unlikely will reach the top. In a situation like this, to get attention, you're creating a race to post first. Consider some type of rank deterioration similar to reddit/HN.
- pkrefta 11y agoBasic implementation of Reddit's Hot Order or something similar is pretty straightforward :) http://amix.dk/blog/post/19588 http://amix.dk/blog/post/19588
- raldi 11y agoBut what about people who arrive at the site next week, and want to see the best of what they missed?
- raldi 11y agoThis is why the ability to downvote is so often worth the you-hurt-my-feelings tradeoff. http://www.evanmiller.org/how-not-to-sort-by-average-rating.html http://www.evanmiller.org/how-not-to-sort-by-average-rating....
- danugolini 11y agoI think there is a "secret" ability to downvote... see this https://www.dropbox.com/s/u012v405bka4fas/Screenshot%202015-07-29%2014.20.03.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/u012v405bka4fas/Screenshot%202015-... I hope it's just a huge bug
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- Tinyyy 11y agoNice hack OP, reminds me of http://thehustle.co/the-linkedin-hack-that-made-me-120000 http://thehustle.co/the-linkedin-hack-that-made-me-120000
- throwaysa 11y agoThrowaway account here. I saw this on twitter and almost got a heart attack thinking for a second that YC made all the founder videos public.
- julien_c 11y agoWhat would be so bad about it? Founders already committed to other projects? Leakage of "Ideas"?
- bra-ket 11y agoit's one thing to present to an audience of a few partners and completely different thing to broadcast to the entire world
- tprophet 11y agoOne potential issue is one we're very cognizant of here in Hollywood: being typecast. We considered this carefully before deciding to make our video public. Keep in mind, we're a very early stage company. Our video reflects that, and our product video reflects the early product we have shipped (although we do hope you download and try Cuddli instead of just watching the video!). With the wide distribution and high profile that anything linked to YC is likely to attract, we may well be creating an impression with potential future partners, investors, and employees. This is likely the reason why most of the startups in this competition haven't chosen to make their video public.
- kurtybot 11y agoWhat we've found is that most people really want their video to be seen and aren't super worried about getting their ideas stolen. I think YC could get mad about this, but it's a great way to meet others who made videos and to encourage them, give feedback.
- danugolini 11y agoIs it possible to downvote? I uploaded my video (lacerba.io) and it dropped from 14 votes to -21 votes in 10 seconds... https://www.dropbox.com/s/u8s3tdqqjy7x4bn/topchart.mp4?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/u8s3tdqqjy7x4bn/topchart.mp4?dl=0
- mkagenius 11y agoThey don't have server side validation, it seems. you can give yourself a 1000 boats. I just gave 3 votes to topchart.
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- afoot 11y agoI really hope that in years to come we have a great, goofy video of a guy jumping on a bed pitching for funding that eventually went on to create a billion dollar company.
- ducuboy 11y agoCool hack you TopChart guys! Btw do they say how many teams will be accepted in YCF?
- mkagenius 11y ago20 teams.
- abetusk 11y agoThere's currently a post that has '-19' votes (as of this writing) that appears at the bottom. Since there are only up votes, I assume this is a bug. That's really too bad because it looks like that chart item would be second from the top but because it's negative it's sunk to the bottom. It would probably be a good idea to have an email displayed somewhere, a 'contact us' section and, ideally, a way to leave feedback easily (without logging in, etc.). TopChart looks good! It took me a second to realize the chart wasn't a Y-Combinator site.
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- geekuillaume 11y agoI think some of the votes are fake. Look at the names on some submissions. You should implement a way to verify each vote, right now the scores can be easily manipulated.
- kurtybot 11y agoIt's in the works. We are in a super early beta and haven't seen this much traffic and been through all of the use cases yet. This is a pretty good learning experience for us.
- chasemiller 11y agoLooks like cool product! I hope to be part of your cohort! ;) Just a heads up- your signup/login forms are unencrypted. It's fine for a demo, but if you're going to put it out there like this, you should really throw some SSL on there.
- giarc 11y agoI'm confused - I've watched the top two videos and neither really talk about the product at all. CauseSignals is more of a video resume for the team and doesn't even mention the product. I never really read the instructions but was the video to introduce the team and not the product?
- adapt_and_laugh 11y agoYeah, exactly. This was part of a larger application (the rest of which was very focused on the product) so the video was just meant to be a short (<1 minute) intro.
- nfc 11y agoI added a new list for the websites of the projects rather than the videos of the founder http://www.topchart.io/lists/ycombinator-fellowship-2015-websites http://www.topchart.io/lists/ycombinator-fellowship-2015-web...
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- richardbrevig 11y agoThe content of the video is left to the founders, they could reasonably talk about whatever they want. Restricting the video to a minute forces concentration.
- ericjang 11y agoAs of 10:30 EST, there's no server-side validation, so it's possible to vote multiple times. I guess this is an allegory of the modern financial system, huh?
- mahringer_a 11y agoAgree, great hack guys, but you need to work on your votes. Some votes disappear after refresh, then again I can submit 2-3 votes if clicking quickly...
- omouse 11y agoHeh, well that's pretty good validation for my idea; another startup is doing it; CauseSignal, hope they do well!
- nfc 11y agoI created an alternative list where you can link your project website rather than your videos since I thought that could be more interesting http://www.topchart.io/lists/ycombinator-fellowship-2015-websites http://www.topchart.io/lists/ycombinator-fellowship-2015-web...
- yangterrence 11y agoCool
- peterkaoud 11y agoThanks everyone for comments bugs have been fixed we really appreciate your tips and envolvement you guys are awesome