Paul Graham emailed YC co-founders to share their interview stories for those who were asked to interview for the W10 batch. Here’s my take.
First off, congratulations! You’re probably wondering what to do next, depending on the outcome of the interviews. I’m not going to tell you not to be nervous, because that won’t help. But keep perspective – YC’s not the end-all of the startup world. If you’re dedicated, you can make your company happen (startups did exist before YC, believe it or not). I know one team that got rejected, but decided to move to Silicon Valley anyway. They got funded by a major VC before most of the companies in the Summer 2009 batch!
That said, Y Combinator is an…intense experience and you should try your hardest to get in.
What to expect
I can’t say what to expect better than Paul, so be sure to read Y Combinator’s advice. There’s also been a number of YC alumni sharing their stories – check the bottom of that link. I’ll especially call out Michael Young’s experience because he didn’t get accepted…then joined a team that did, so he’s seen both sides.
The interview setup itself is intimidating: you and your co-founders are sitting face-to-face with the Y Combinator partners (Paul, Jessica, Trevor, and Robert) across a ridiculously narrow table. In our interview, that tension was quickly broken as everyone crowded around to see our demo. Paul thinks big, so if he likes your idea, be prepared for him to rattle off about 2 years worth of work for you to do – new features, new markets, a different direction, etc.
However, it’s not all about the idea. Some teams get roughed up in the interview and are surprised to be accepted. The Y Combinator partners are looking for teams to fund. Lots of YC startups end up doing a totally different thing before Demo Day.
After the interview, be prepared for some of the longest hours of your life as you wait for the email (rejected) or phone call (accepted).
Getting Ready
“What are you going to do?” This is the number one question to have an answer for. One sentence. Two tops. I made my co-founder repeat our answer ad nauseam for practice. You know how hard it was to boil your idea down into the 1 minute video for your application. Now it’s time to distill it even further. This is your first elevator pitch. Also be ready to talk about your competitors and how you’re going to make money.
Your demo. You are going to show your demo. You’ve got some time: polish it up! Fix rough edges, improve the UI, add the cool new feature you’ve been thinking about, test the critical paths. Could you sign up a paying customer before the interview? That’s impressive.
I was in charge of giving the demo. I decided to do it as a series of browser tabs showing different features, because then I wouldn’t have to worry about the internet connection or anything breaking. I practiced it relentlessly and got it down to about a 2 minute spiel. When I actually showed the YC partners, I got interrupted and had to explain things here and there but I knew the material and was able to carry on.
Mock interviews. We set up some mock interviews with entrepreneurs to practice. We wanted people who had run successful startups to test us and see where the weakness in our company and idea were.
Scott Wheeler of Direct Edge writes about something similar they did:
We brainstormed a big list of questions that I can’t find anymore that we thought might come up and talked through answers to all of them. We came up with a list of points that we wanted to be sure to mention and even practiced transitions from other topics to those.
All of that, however, turned out to be useless.
Our mock interviews turned out nothing like the real one. But I disagree with Scott. It wasn’t useless, because it made us more prepared.
If you’re prepared, you’ll be more relaxed, and can focus on presenting your idea.
Talk to alumni. You probably know some YC alumni. Email them and see try to set up a phone call about what to expect. I think you’ll find most will be happy to give you some time to ask questions.
Good luck
That’s it for now. Maybe someday I’ll tell the full story of our YC interview (which includes nearly missing it due to a Murphy-worthy series of screwups) but for now I wanted to get the solid advice out of the way.
Not everyone is going to get in, but if you focus on “What are you going to do?” and getting your demo down cold, you can maximize your odds.
