> Whereas if we can see obstacles to your idea that you don't seem to have considered, that's a bad sign.
If I listed the top 10 actual obstacles for a given project I'd bet half of them would seem totally unintuitive. I'm skeptical of anyone (even other hackers) trying to judge the specific technical or business obstacles of something they don't know much about.
One day in grad school my advisor unexpectedly said something along the lines of "so, are you nearly done with your dissertation?" I was nowhere near done. But, keeping calm, I replied that yes, while I had a few things to finish up, I thought I should be done in time to graduate that June. Then I went back to my office and started writing as fast as I could. I finished about a day before the deadline. The result was not particularly good, but it got me out of grad school, which was all I wanted at the time.
If anyone has any questions I didn't answer, please ask them on this thread. I still consider this essay a draft; if anything important comes up here, I'll incorporate it in the next version.
My initial goal is to figure out what kind of group I'm dealing with. Three friends about to graduate from college? Two colleagues who work together at a big company and want to jump ship? Are they all programmers? A mix of programmers and business people? There are maybe 20 or 30 different configurations of founders, most of which I've probably seen by this point.
Is there a subset of these group types that work(s) better than others in your experience? If so, founders might be able to choose cofounders that increase their chance of succeeding.
Also, having worked as a member of a couple of types of groups (startup with room mate / recruiting talented programmers with a similar outlook and goals), I have found that there seem to be problems common to each type.
Since you have a much larger dataset, you might be able to outline the common pitfalls each type of group runs into. Could you do that, at least for the common types of groups?
It might be worth discussing the "are any of these the case" (sole founder, keeping an existing job, can't move, etc.) question a bit -- the form says that these are not automatically disqualifying, but if you can give an example in each case of when they would or would not be disqualifying (and thus give people some idea of where the grey area is) it would probably help some people.
Yeah, I'm not sure if this is completely relevant, but we have a product that we're going to launch soon, and I was wondering whether you would prefer your applicants have products/demos not yet launched as that might be better for PR purposes, etc.
It seems to me that to have people make videos and then discard a lot of them without ever looking at them (which the text suggests is the case) would be a lot of wasted effort ?
All of the things discussed in this essay are problems I see with product design as well.
Lots of people ask me for advice, and the first thing I always tell them is to change the first sentence a user sees on the homepage from "Abstract technologies to help people live better." to "We make a database with a Wiki UI."
This sort of thing fascinates me because the people I talk with who are clear and concise in the beginning are the same people who tend to succeed in the end. It is an amazingly good litmus test for finding good entrepreneurs.
I remember reading about a study which showed that, at least for certain companies, judging from first-decade performance, hiring based on interviews was less intelligent than hiring based purely on GPA [1]. The reasoning was that judgment during interviews is suceptible to various human biases to which GPA's are not.
At least part of PG's reasoning seems susceptible to similar biases: for example, whether or not he recognizes a username might have a lot to do with how memorable the username is. I wonder if sorting users by a subset of their upvotes - say, those received from news.YC alumni - would make more sense in "highlighting" intelligent applicants.
1. Would appreciate if anyone who recognizes this links it for me.
We have lots of biases, but I don't think we're much influenced by how memorable usernames are. It's the comments that make a username memorable, not the name.
It would be great to see previous successful applications, if they don't mind. (Unsuccessful ones would be interesting too but that might be weird for them.)
Hopefully I won't feel stupid posting this, but I wished someone had done the same thing when I applied. (pg -- if you'd rather I not share this, feel free to delete)
I agree this would be very helpful, but I imagine they're would be a lot of effort on censoring things like personal info, other ideas. I think for example I would like to read just how the successful ones described they're accepted ideas.
great for applicants, but not for the process overall. I imagine if you told people exactly what you're looking for, you'd only just get that from applicants. In essence, you'd have just diluted the power of your discriminator.
What pg's doing here seemed mostly to tell applicants what not to do. He's trying to make his application process scale better, and to increase the signal to noise ratio on the good, but not obviously great teams.
I read this, and I like your thinking about the types of people you are looking for.
But I have to say: You're asking for clarity, want applicants to avoid unnecessary or confusing language, etc. Why not practice what you preach? Why not include some of the "read between the lines" bits in your essay ("If this wasn't already clear, we're not looking for the sort of obedient, middle-of-the-road people that big companies tend to hire. We're looking for people who like to beat the system") and copy and paste them directly into the application form? It will make your life easier, and it will make it easier for YC applicants who are struggling with the process. Judging by the fact that you had to write this essay, people obviously don't know what you want.
Would YC consider accepting founders who can't work full time on their idea? We have been working part time on our product for the last few months and will launch later this year. We don't expect to clear immigration hurdles till sometime in 2010. Does it make sense to apply?
It seems to me that there is some very useful advice here for someone trying to write a resume, even if that wasn't the intended purpose of the posting.
How about someone who needs guidance more than money. Like, someone who is currently employed and wants to do something on the side till it makes sense to go solo and maybe would need funding at that point.
Would YC be interested/willing to consider this model and engage with such founder(s) to help review ideas, business models etc.?
Check out the program run by The Funded. I think they are probably the only program out there for very early stage companies that really lets you keep your day job. http://www.founderinstitute.com/
Thanks pg! I was worried that entering too many secondary ideas would almost appear as a drawback. As if the team wasn't truly dedicated to the idea they were submitting the application for. Its nice to know the team itself is more important.
Also, I'd love to know what percentage of teams have business people, rather than 100% hackers
Off the top of my head, I'd say 10-20% of groups have someone who's a pure business person, in the sense of not being able to program. More commonly there's one programmer who's more outgoing than the rest, and he or she does sales initially.
"The first thing I notice when I look at an application is the username it was submitted under. If it's one I recognize for making thoughtful comments on Hacker News, I give the application extra attention."
I was actually surprised by this. In retrospect, it makes perfect sense, but I would never have even thought of this.
One thing that's confused me about the "Please tell us about the time you most successfully hacked some (non-computer) system to your advantage." question is the parenthesis. My guess is that they're included because you'll accept either a computer, or non-computer related example.
If it's confused me, chances are it may confuse others as well.
The reason for "(non-computer)" is that we wanted to distinguish between hacking in the sense of programming, and hacking in the sense of beating the system.
That seems to exclude hacks to computerized systems such as "Profited from eTrade being slow to patch the mutual fund market timing loopholes" or "Flipped laptops on eBay when lots of people used to spell it labtop."
Isn't this also an admission that the application process is a bit broken?
I think a lot of people would be open to submitting their application to others first, to help flesh out the weakpoints. On the menu bar, can we have "new", "threads", ..., and "YC applications"?
Yes, of course. All application processes are. But we're working hard to improve it. We tweak the process in some way almost every cycle.
The idea of having everyone look at one another's application sounds like a minefield, though. Plus I don't want to clutter up HN with YC stuff. Only a minority of the users of this site are even interested in startups.
On the other hand, maybe you don't want to help people submit better applications, because you can still only select a few of them. As the overall quality increases, it becomes more difficult to select between poor and high quality work. At least in the case of my intro bio students, essay 1 is always terrible and therefore easy to grade. I give them lots of tips, etc., for essay 2. The essays all improve, but I still have to assign the same mean grade so all their grades are the same. Basically it just makes my life harder.
I think you analogy with grading papers is flawed. Sure, it's easier to grade bad things than good things, because you don't have to look too deeply, but YC does not have to assign mean grades. They are reading in order to find useful information. If all applications become more concise and useful, that is a net gain, even if it makes the choice of who to interview less obvious.
pg himself said in his essay that they end up passing on a lot of founders who seem qualified, but didn't make themselves clear enough. I bet having to choose between too many well written applications submitted by qualified people would be a great problem for yc to have. =)
Re: describing your product matter-of-factly instead of grandiosely.
At a Startup School, Greg McAdoo of Sequoia described how they wanted each company to have a one-sentence masterplan and described how they made Cisco change their self-description from "We make boxen that do X,Y,Z" to "Cisco Systems networks networks".
If you're applying to be the next Google and most importantly if you guys look for the next Google, I think that sort of implies that the founders have some grand vision for the future of the company and that's the thing they'd want to put forward -- and that you'd want to see put forward so that you're confident they can be the next Google.
I guess what I'm asking is, would it have been better for 1976 Apple to apply saying "We sell a neat microcomputer kit for $666" or "We want usher in a technological revolution by making computers so darn pretty and easy to use that everyone will buy one"?
The former is more accurate, but it's the latter that really represents what the company is about and what its potential is.
I like how PG coralled applicants. They shouldn't puff up their idea as they are the actual investment, but they shouldn't directly puff up themselves because that they should assume the investors will do it. All that is left to do is make an objective, consise description of their idea, its flaws, and their actions.
[+] [-] staunch|16 years ago|reply
If I listed the top 10 actual obstacles for a given project I'd bet half of them would seem totally unintuitive. I'm skeptical of anyone (even other hackers) trying to judge the specific technical or business obstacles of something they don't know much about.
[+] [-] pg|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skywalker|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pg|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rms|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pg|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ajju|16 years ago|reply
You said
My initial goal is to figure out what kind of group I'm dealing with. Three friends about to graduate from college? Two colleagues who work together at a big company and want to jump ship? Are they all programmers? A mix of programmers and business people? There are maybe 20 or 30 different configurations of founders, most of which I've probably seen by this point.
Is there a subset of these group types that work(s) better than others in your experience? If so, founders might be able to choose cofounders that increase their chance of succeeding.
Also, having worked as a member of a couple of types of groups (startup with room mate / recruiting talented programmers with a similar outlook and goals), I have found that there seem to be problems common to each type.
Since you have a much larger dataset, you might be able to outline the common pitfalls each type of group runs into. Could you do that, at least for the common types of groups?
[+] [-] cperciva|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kyro|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacquesm|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dcurtis|16 years ago|reply
Lots of people ask me for advice, and the first thing I always tell them is to change the first sentence a user sees on the homepage from "Abstract technologies to help people live better." to "We make a database with a Wiki UI."
This sort of thing fascinates me because the people I talk with who are clear and concise in the beginning are the same people who tend to succeed in the end. It is an amazingly good litmus test for finding good entrepreneurs.
[+] [-] andreyf|16 years ago|reply
At least part of PG's reasoning seems susceptible to similar biases: for example, whether or not he recognizes a username might have a lot to do with how memorable the username is. I wonder if sorting users by a subset of their upvotes - say, those received from news.YC alumni - would make more sense in "highlighting" intelligent applicants.
1. Would appreciate if anyone who recognizes this links it for me.
[+] [-] pg|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kyro|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] icey|16 years ago|reply
Of course, I see this as a good thing for everyone who applies who has some clue as to what they're doing.
[+] [-] lacker|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dhouston|16 years ago|reply
Original Dropbox YC app: http://files.getdropbox.com/u/2/app.html
Had to remove some names and one sensitive thing but otherwise unedited
[+] [-] minalecs|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iamwil|16 years ago|reply
What pg's doing here seemed mostly to tell applicants what not to do. He's trying to make his application process scale better, and to increase the signal to noise ratio on the good, but not obviously great teams.
[+] [-] newsio|16 years ago|reply
But I have to say: You're asking for clarity, want applicants to avoid unnecessary or confusing language, etc. Why not practice what you preach? Why not include some of the "read between the lines" bits in your essay ("If this wasn't already clear, we're not looking for the sort of obedient, middle-of-the-road people that big companies tend to hire. We're looking for people who like to beat the system") and copy and paste them directly into the application form? It will make your life easier, and it will make it easier for YC applicants who are struggling with the process. Judging by the fact that you had to write this essay, people obviously don't know what you want.
[+] [-] mcotton|16 years ago|reply
Is this common? Does it clutter the application process to see previously rejected applications again and again?
[+] [-] pg|16 years ago|reply
It's only a problem to see an application again if it doesn't change.
[+] [-] immigrant|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pg|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] benreesman|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yumraj|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rms|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pg|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] messel|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bgnm2000|16 years ago|reply
Also, I'd love to know what percentage of teams have business people, rather than 100% hackers
[+] [-] pg|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aberman|16 years ago|reply
I was actually surprised by this. In retrospect, it makes perfect sense, but I would never have even thought of this.
[+] [-] terpua|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pg|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thedob|16 years ago|reply
If it's confused me, chances are it may confuse others as well.
[+] [-] pg|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leelin|16 years ago|reply
That seems to exclude hacks to computerized systems such as "Profited from eTrade being slow to patch the mutual fund market timing loopholes" or "Flipped laptops on eBay when lots of people used to spell it labtop."
[+] [-] david927|16 years ago|reply
I think a lot of people would be open to submitting their application to others first, to help flesh out the weakpoints. On the menu bar, can we have "new", "threads", ..., and "YC applications"?
[+] [-] pg|16 years ago|reply
The idea of having everyone look at one another's application sounds like a minefield, though. Plus I don't want to clutter up HN with YC stuff. Only a minority of the users of this site are even interested in startups.
[+] [-] araneae|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Xichekolas|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] psawaya|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pegobry|16 years ago|reply
At a Startup School, Greg McAdoo of Sequoia described how they wanted each company to have a one-sentence masterplan and described how they made Cisco change their self-description from "We make boxen that do X,Y,Z" to "Cisco Systems networks networks".
If you're applying to be the next Google and most importantly if you guys look for the next Google, I think that sort of implies that the founders have some grand vision for the future of the company and that's the thing they'd want to put forward -- and that you'd want to see put forward so that you're confident they can be the next Google.
I guess what I'm asking is, would it have been better for 1976 Apple to apply saying "We sell a neat microcomputer kit for $666" or "We want usher in a technological revolution by making computers so darn pretty and easy to use that everyone will buy one"?
The former is more accurate, but it's the latter that really represents what the company is about and what its potential is.
[+] [-] Radix|16 years ago|reply
Simple thoughts.