[monsterix]

Guess this one looks like a post enthusiasm state but here is what I think is going on lately (Disclaimer: I am an entrepreneur, I feel this, so please take it all with a pinch of salt):

It seems that the race to get into a coveted program like YC has become crowded. Almost every other startup that I met during last one year (50 odd in two cycles) had applied to the YC program [premise-A], some gotten the interview [premise-B] and some gotten into the program [premise-C].

Role of premise - A: Crowded race makes way for best YC 'applications', and I have seen PG/YC liking the way the quality of applications have gone up. Sure. However, the quality of application does not necessarily reflect the quality of technology startup.

There are several areas where these two indices are not aligned perfectly:

For example, there are people who can write and tell really high quality stories, given the amount of time at hand, but they're the ones who should probably be doing literature and not technology startup (rant?). Then there are other have-nots: The statistical bias of past YC batches seem to be away from the relatively older entrepreneurs or heterogeneous teams. This leaves out a bunch of gems.

Long story short: A crowded race forces not-so-great start-ups to focus on getting into the program successfully and the great-ones to keep out/avoid/shy away and focus on building their business instead. And sometimes lose on what could have otherwise been a great partnership.

Then the process is in two batches. Great companies were not built in batches so there seems to be a process conflict. Someone who is feeling great about their startup in June-July would be depressed by December when winter applications reopen. Perhaps a rolling-in applications model [1]?

Role of premise - B: I know a couple of really awesome guys who went for their interviews and came back with a no. While there would have been genuine reasons, or simply bad luck, for these people getting rejected but I saw at least a few of them outgrowing their 'pariah' status and deciding to go for it and build it all by themselves. Cockroaches?

How should I put this? This situation is like a river flowing across the plains. The river-bed gives shape and path to the flowing water, but flowing water too, in the long run, gives shape to the river bed and alters its course.

Role of premise - C: There is role of who gets in, how many get in and how they do it. Given that the size of batches have gone up, I do believe that number of sentences exchanged with PG/partners per startup must have gone down. Or it is skewed between the white and black swans. And that could be a huge set-back for some. Make-or-break fluctuations are so tiny and yet so important. Even though this is a scalability challenge for an accelerator program like YC, but I guess there has to be a hard limit on how many are taken in. Which is bad because there is no limit on the number of applications though.

I guess writing more on this will take a lot of time. These are some of the thoughts which I am sure are well understood at the combinator. It's just an outside-in view from where I am coming from.

[1] http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/18/how-instacart-hacked-yc/ [writing in progress]

[pg]

"Given that the size of batches have gone up, I do believe that number of sentences exchanged with PG/partners per startup must have gone down."

I didn't read this whole comment, but that part at least is false, because we've hired new partners at a higher rate than batches have grown. We now have 5 people doing for 50-startup batches what I used to do alone for 20-startup batches.

[ewoodrich]

A reasonable heuristic. In which case, what was the ratio of sentences read to ignored in this particular instance?

[crimsonzagar]

Looks like hn_id of monsterix has been banned. Didn't expect this from site admins because what he said above was within quality of discussions normally seen here, and his questions are genuine.

It's kind of sad that admins are unable to take criticism or face real questions and are overreacting to it.

[tokenadult]

There was a log-in code change on HN today that made a lot of people think they were site-banned,

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5650171

but in fact they were not. The comments of the user you mention do not appear dead to me (I have showdead turned on).

[monsterix]

I am pretty much back in. Yes, there was some problem last night and some of the lines I edited/wrote got lost when I hit submit. Couldn't login for a long time thereafter, and unfortunately misunderstood the situation.

[tptacek]

What makes you think he's banned? Doesn't look that way to me.

[crimsonzagar]

We work off the same place and that's what he said to me. Will cross check again.

[freyr]

I'm unable to log in right now via Firefox but Chrome works fine. Could be related.

[CapitalistCartr]

As freyr said, logins are messed up right now.

[sonicaa]

> I didn't read this whole comment ...

It is unbelievable to me that PG did not read the whole comment. Nevertheless, this is not a good sign for tech start-ups.

[arbuge]

This assumes the other 4 are PG quality. Not saying they're not, of course.

[argonaut]

The ability to communicate is a critical skill in any company.

If none of the founders at your startup can write at a basic, clear level - YC applications are no works of literature - and the founders cannot hold a conversation (that tjeu prepared for) in front of a camera (let alone a spontaneous real life conversation), then the founders have no business starting a company that one day might have 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, or 1000 employees.

It is a common misconception that introverts have some fear of holding conversations and give presentations. An introvert is merely someone who doesn't necessarily enjoy those things and for whom those activities are tiring.

[alexqgb]

Actually, introverts can be exceptionally comfortable on stage since they're not there to have conversations. This is often especially true of musicians, who can be very shy and retiring in daily life, and totally at ease in a spotlight with tens of thousands hanging on every note.

If you're bad at presentations, it's not because you're an introvert. It's because you don't know what you're doing. Holding a stage, as any well-practiced performer will tell you, takes attention, skill, and work. Talent helps, but that just makes it easier to develop what's essential: skill.

You wouldn't pay to hear a performer practice scales. Nor (generally speaking) would you pay to hear a performer who hasn't practiced scales. But disagreement about the cause of bad presentations aside, I fully agree; leading (as opposed to managing) an organization demands the ability to tell a story that can bring together a broad range of people and interests to make the thing work as a whole. And that's a skill so important it borders on an art.

[monsterix]

True. Not all the points I am suggesting above would be correct. However, how would you (let's say you're running YC) separate a genuine technology startup with great communication skills from a fake one with great communication skills?

[nowarninglabel]

I think experience has shown that YC is pretty good at that by focusing on the problem the startup is trying to solve as well as understanding the founders well enough to know if they can solve it and exactly how they are going to solve it. Whereas some of the more spectacular startup failures of late have been from companies (like Color) that promise a revolutionary new thing but don't really have a basic problem statement written out.

[argonaut]

Well, unless you lie on your application, your track record (whether it's your academic record, your work experience, things you've built, etc) should speak for itself.

[ridruejo]

Re: Premise A, a good application is not about "doing literature", it is about being able to describe clearly what you are building, why it is going to be a great business and why you are the right people to build it. It is harder than it looks and has to do more with how well you understand your business and less with writing skills.

Re: Premise B, there are plenty of people that get rejected at one point, keep going, and join later on. The Strikingly guys got rejected once.

[brandnewlow]

From what I've heard, the video isn't a huge part of the application. They're looking for good startups, not good video producers.

[rdouble]

Didn't pg say a while back that the video was the most important part?

[braco_alva]

I think he was talking about what the founders say in the video, not the quality of the video itself.

[jules]

I've wonder if the videos aren't a dangerous way to subject yourself to biases. It's well known for example that people judge attractive people more positively. The same probably goes for a good presentation style. Now I'm sure that being attractive or being a good presenter have some predictive value on startup success simply because everybody has these biases, also the people the startup will later make deals with or otherwise interact with. But assuming that the application judges have the same level of bias as the rest of us, since there are many other factors besides attractiveness or presentation style, the bias would be bigger than its predictive value. It would perhaps be an interesting experiment blank out the names of the applicants and to let half of the judges read a transcript of the video instead of watching the video itself, and see if the judgements are different.

[rdl]

It would be nice if people would put a tiny bit of effort into the video, specifically making sure the audio is intelligible (levels, lack of noise, etc.) on a normal computer. Just playing it back on a normal settings computer on internal speaker would probably be enough. Maybe don't shoot it in a car while driving, or outdoors with wind?

[braco_alva]

I agree with you, I'm not saying that the video can be low quality because it doesn't matter, just that the content is far more important to them, but yeah, I think is better if you have a proper camera and mic. Wouldn't leave a nice impression if someone submit a video shooted with their phone.

[rdl]

No one really cares about the video quality for this; a webcam is fine, and a phone is probably fine. And overproduced video is horrible. I'd just stick to making sure the audio can be easily understood, and making sure it is about a minute; if there is a lot of wasted time in the beginning, edit that out.

[caycep]

I think one of the whole point of YC is that it will make connections happen between those who can tell great stories, and those who can't but have great tech?