[stevear]

I imagine the best strategy is to be yourself, answer the questions truthfully and have a good idea and not dedicate a bunch of effort to hacking the application.

It's like reading a bunch of books on how to get a first date. The actual getting the date is not the important part...it's the overall being a person that is worth dating that is important. If you are worth dating then getting a date isn't hard.

I am curious what PG has to say about this.

[gruseom]

I am curious what PG has to say about this.

You're in luck. From the link tomblomfield supplied:

"Actually it would be better to expend that effort on your company or the application. Don't spend a lot of time spamming YC alumni trying to collect recommendations. They don't carry any weight with us unless they are very strong. We can tell the difference between a recommendation that's being made for our sake (because the alum thinks it would damaging for us to overlook the application), and one that's being made for the sake of the applicant (e.g. because the alum is benevolent and they begged him to recommend them)."

[SamHo]

I know Rene from the Forecast team and while I also had an initial negative response to the term "hack" everything they say in the application process makes sense.

Really, they just wrote a hack to find YC alumni, then see how they were connected to them to get some intros.

I think trying to meet as many YC alumni as possible makes sense and if you can get a recommendation from one of them even better.

In today's world of so many applicants and noise, I think showing your due diligence in talking to other YC alumni and then having them vouch for you is a bit like a pre-emptive interview process and valuable to the YC application review team.

It's kind of like back at my days at Google when I would interview people and they didn't really even have much understanding of how Google made money (i.e. the online advertising business) I would almost have to immediately veto the candidate.

Just my 2 cents.

[boredguy8]

This story is about what you do after you have a product. It presupposes the product then identifies ways to market to a very specific audience. In that respect, the article seems spot-on.