The F|R Interview: Y Combinator’s Paul Graham(gigaom.com)
gigaom.com
The F|R Interview: Y Combinator’s Paul Graham
http://gigaom.com/2008/05/03/the-fr-interview-y-combinators-paul-graham/
10 comments
Can your model be replicated?
YC's competitive advantage is their "brand", which existed before they funded their first startup.
I'd bet a huge chunk of YC applicants read PG's essays long before they even heard of YC. Applicants completely and wholeheartedly trust YC before they fill out the application.
I would not have felt comfortable submitting the most intimate details of my company (including financial) to another company but I revealed them to YC without batting an eye.
YC's competitive advantage is their "brand", which existed before they funded their first startup.
I'd bet a huge chunk of YC applicants read PG's essays long before they even heard of YC. Applicants completely and wholeheartedly trust YC before they fill out the application.
I would not have felt comfortable submitting the most intimate details of my company (including financial) to another company but I revealed them to YC without batting an eye.
Out of curiosity, how many times did you apply to YC? If more than once, were any applications with something other than fleaflicker?
Once. Fleaflicker is the only startup idea I've ever pursued.
Perhaps I'm missing something, but: did they link to a page about doing recursion in C++ to explain the concept of a Y Combinator? (http://www.cprogramming.com/tutorial/lesson16.html) .
For better explanations, this is sort of from The Little Schemer:
http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~sweirich/cse340/04/why_of_y.ps
This is also good:
http://www.dreamsongs.com/Files/WhyOfY.pdf
For better explanations, this is sort of from The Little Schemer:
http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~sweirich/cse340/04/why_of_y.ps
This is also good:
http://www.dreamsongs.com/Files/WhyOfY.pdf
"... but it is not our model that distinguishes us. It’s the people that make the difference ..."
I don't know much about YC since I am of a very different demographic but I would say the same thing about the people who comes to this discussion site (YC News or Hacker News) which I discovered by accident six months ago. I bet most people who keep coming back to YCN do so because of the quality of the discussion (i.e., people) as well. And my observation is that many are coming from all over the World, with very different startup experience, and obviously of different age group (i.e., very few are YC candadates).
And I bet it would be difficult to replicate YCN for the same reason that it would be difficult to replicate YC.
I don't know much about YC since I am of a very different demographic but I would say the same thing about the people who comes to this discussion site (YC News or Hacker News) which I discovered by accident six months ago. I bet most people who keep coming back to YCN do so because of the quality of the discussion (i.e., people) as well. And my observation is that many are coming from all over the World, with very different startup experience, and obviously of different age group (i.e., very few are YC candadates).
And I bet it would be difficult to replicate YCN for the same reason that it would be difficult to replicate YC.
is zecter (http://www.zecter.com) a misspelling?
Nice - thanks for posting.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=180299
I used their new questions when possible, but the original ones when they'd changed so much that my answer would otherwise have been mysterious.
Edit: Problem fixed. They replaced the interview with the original questions and answers.