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A comment on Tell HN: YC Summer 2009 application is due today.. Parent comment

Re:Tell HN: YC Summer 2009 application is due today. by pg on Wednesday March 25, 2009 @07:44PM (#532649)
From the videos I've seen so far, I'd recommend ad-libbing. The point of the video is to see what you're like, and most people don't seem particularly bright when delivering (or worse still, reading) a prepared speech.

Since this was the first time we'd tried videos we didn't realize this would be a problem. Next year we'll advise everyone to ad-lib.

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Re:Tell HN: YC Summer 2009 application is due today. by tokenadult on Wednesday March 25, 2009 @09:53PM (#532820)
most people don't seem particularly bright when delivering (or worse still, reading) a prepared speech

Hear. Hear. Delivering a scripted speech well is HARD, and the people who are famous for doing that well practice a lot. Most members of the hacker community are much more practiced in engaging in conversation about the passion for technology, and thus make themselves look better in speech and in print by treating each communication opportunity as a conversation with an unseen interlocutor.

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Re:Tell HN: YC Summer 2009 application is due today. by hedgehog on Thursday March 26, 2009 @04:53AM (#533198)
+1, personally I'm pretty comfortable talking to all kinds of people in person but our team found that talking to a camera unscripted was hard (compounded by the amount of information it sounded like we needed to pack in to 60 seconds). It was still really helpful for getting our message straight though, even if we don't get in to the YC summer cycle it will be helpful for raising money.
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Re:Tell HN: YC Summer 2009 application is due today. by ealar on Wednesday March 25, 2009 @10:51PM (#532880)
Ours was prepared, and admittedly it looked terrible. I would second adding this to the recommendations.
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Re:Tell HN: YC Summer 2009 application is due today. by pg on Wednesday March 25, 2009 @10:53PM (#532883)
Most people's seem to be, so it won't hurt you much.
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Re:Tell HN: YC Summer 2009 application is due today. by unalone on Thursday March 26, 2009 @12:05AM (#532961)
Prepared how so? Like, reading openly from scripts, or just overrehearsed?
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Re:Tell HN: YC Summer 2009 application is due today. by nanexcool on Thursday March 26, 2009 @12:49AM (#533007)
Sending the email to Posterous now. My upload is less than 1 Mbps so I'm freaking out.

I had a video where I was alone talking, but my brother (co-founder) arrived at the last second and we recorded a new one. These last minute updates make it all worth while :D

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