Rejected Then Recruited: Our Journey into Y Combinator

Re:Rejected Then Recruited: Our Journey into Y Combinator by adpirz on Wednesday September 26, 2018 @02:20PM (#18078789)

I used your product to help teach students AP Computer Science Principles a few years ago, and it was indispensable: absolutely zero hassle set up, and could just bit.ly a link to existing code to work off of. So happy for both of you!

> Months later, after demo-day, Michael told us that they were going to reject us for sure, but they were dissuaded by how exceptionally well we did during the interview.

What do you think contributed to doing "exceptionally well", especially since it sounds like you had a different outlook on the interview?

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Re:Rejected Then Recruited: Our Journey into Y Combinator by amasad on Wednesday September 26, 2018 @02:28PM (#18078863)

Thank you! Try it again now it got a lot better :)

I think it was the fact that we've thought through the big questions of our business, as it were, and are able to show the work: how we arrived at the answers, what clues or experiments to run the validate that we have the right answer, and how we could change course if we didn't have the right answer.

They don't expect to have figured everything out -- after all that's what early stage startups are about. However, they expect you to have thought things through. Like there shouldn't be questions at the interview that are fundamentally new.

Finally, I think keeping composure under pressure helped.

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