To those who got an interview: congratulations! Keep trying to prove yourself wrong and you'll expose any of the weaknesses that they will try to find in the interview.
To those who didn't: Congratulations anyways! The YC application process itself makes you think deeply about your business and you should keep that with you and take it as a learning experience.
Best of luck to everybody!
Also, are you allowed to share any of the questions you had that you found surprising?
The questions are no secret. It's really only 3 questions: 1. what are you working on. 2. How do you grow. 3. How does this become a billion dollar company.
Articulating the problem, how it scales and is defensible is key.
Here are a few links we used
- http://henrikzillmer.com/dos-and-donts-at-the-y-combinator-i... - http://blog.trak.io/ycombinator-our-interview-experience-aft... - https://medium.com/@octal/maximizing-your-chances-of-getting... - https://medium.com/startup-lesson-learned/we-just-interviewe...
We interviewed in-person for W17 in October and got rejected because we didn't articulate a good plan for growth. - we grew 4,000% since October - launched huge features for both sides of our marketplace - received acquisition interest in < 3 months of being live - most importantly, made something that people are loving and using on a daily basis.
It's a bummer for sure but not the end of the world.
To anyone who got an interview, Figure out your biggest weakness and a plan for how you overcome it. Your interviewers will exploit it.
Here's some notes on our experience going through the interview https://paper.dropbox.com/doc/YC-Interview-Experience-L45KzT...
Good luck all