We just interviewed at Y Combinator – here’s the full transcript

Posted by michaelcheng on Thursday May 01, 2014 @03:01PM
from the self-post dept.

Last week, we flew down to meet the partners for our YC interview:

11:45 am — 320 Pioneer Way, Mountain View

YC Partner: So you guys are making a link shortener?

Me: Yes.

YC Partner: Like Bit.ly?

Me: Let’s dive into why Bit.ly is not as good. We built the only link shortener that drives conversion. Bit.ly just shortens your link. We actually allow you to add a call to action to the page that you’re sharing.

YC Partner: So what would be an example use case?

Me: Let’s say I’m running a charity. I can share a CNN article on the Japanese earthquake, and I can actually add a message inside that says “support these victims - donate now” and include a link to my charity.

YC Partner: So you frame the article?

Me: Right.

YC Partner: They don’t do frame breakers anymore?

Of the top 1000 sites, 89% of them have no limitations around iframes. Typically the ones that block it are secured sites like banks, and those are not the typical sites that people share.

Me: Do you have customers? How far along are you?

We launched 7 weeks ago, as of today we have around 700 users, and we’ve been tracking 13% week over week growth.

(due to character limit) Read the rest at https://medium.com/p/187312cd2cf5

( 14 comments | 30 points | on HN )

Re:We just interviewed at Y Combinator – here’s the full tra... by krapp on Thursday May 01, 2014 @03:54PM (#7682325)

The remark about frame-breakers seems to be to bring up a valid concern - the sites being linked to certainly would not appreciate having their sites presented in a frameset with advertising which isn't their own.

If it were me (caveat: I have no credibility whatsoever) I would be concerned about the long-term viability of this as a moneymaker, given that the more popular snip.ly theoretically becomes, the more animosity it's likely to create from linked sites, and the more sites (particularly popular sites) are likely to just break out of the frameset entirely, rather than have their own SEO and analytics tampered with.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:We just interviewed at Y Combinator – here’s the full tra... by bpicolo on Sunday May 04, 2014 @09:59PM (#7696671)

There's no 100% perfect frame breaking strategy, last I checked.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:We just interviewed at Y Combinator – here’s the full tra... by semerda on Thursday May 01, 2014 @07:34PM (#7683315)

Cheers for sharing.

Why didn't you guys focus on a mobile product vs rehashing stuff from a decade ago? Imagine a version of Facebook's AppLinks cross linked with your Call to Action. That would have been a big problem to solve.

The mobile is where the future is at when it comes to engagement.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:We just interviewed at Y Combinator – here’s the full tra... by minimaxir on Thursday May 01, 2014 @03:19PM (#7682109)

The fact that you reconstructed this from memory might lead to a biased account of events. I'm not saying that the transcript is inaccurate, but the tone may have been different during the actual interview.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:We just interviewed at Y Combinator – here’s the full tra... by read on Saturday May 03, 2014 @09:39AM (#7690692)

We’d encourage you to think about what this is a feature of on the path to being the next Google.

If the way the next Google will win is by making the current Google irrelevant, one way to make it irrelevant is to take away its revenue from advertising on the web. And one way to do that, is to add in web browsers the feature of hiding ads. Browsers could only show snip.ly ads according to a user's preferences. This might not be as obvious or easy considering for example how after all these years Bit.ly didn't try this.

Have you considered making a browser plugin?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:We just interviewed at Y Combinator – here’s the full tra... by applecore on Thursday May 01, 2014 @05:14PM (#7682730)

Another interesting aspect of your link shortener is that it gives credit on the linked page to the person who shared it. Khoi Vinh had a very interesting idea[1] like this for the New York Times' pay wall, but Snip.ly works for any site.

[1]: http://www.subtraction.com/2014/02/12/an-idea-for-the-times-...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:We just interviewed at Y Combinator – here’s the full tra... by palidanx on Thursday May 01, 2014 @03:28PM (#7682166)

Hey thanks for going above and beyond of sharing an experience you didn't have to. Cheers to you!

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:We just interviewed at Y Combinator – here’s the full tra... by omilu on Thursday May 01, 2014 @10:13PM (#7683826)

Very generous of you, this deserves many upvotes!

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:We just interviewed at Y Combinator – here’s the full tra... by dalek2point3 on Thursday May 01, 2014 @03:41PM (#7682239)

tl;dr version:

snip.ly a startup that is building a link shortner with a call to action built-in gets rejected by YC for not being the "next Google" (example shortlink: http://snip.ly/as6)

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:We just interviewed at Y Combinator – here’s the full tra... by swanify on Thursday May 01, 2014 @03:47PM (#7682277)

Woah, that site react's badly to that banner being placed on it.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:We just interviewed at Y Combinator – here’s the full tra... by cmacpher on Friday May 02, 2014 @04:17PM (#7687878)

totally broke when i tried to snip.ly the medium post

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:We just interviewed at Y Combinator – here’s the full tra... by chauzer on Tuesday May 06, 2014 @06:40PM (#7707579)

thanks for sharing

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:We just interviewed at Y Combinator – here’s the full tra... by fuj on Friday May 02, 2014 @03:51AM (#7684543)

So... your "startup" is something that bit.ly (and similar) could do in a few hours of work with an already established userbase.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:We just interviewed at Y Combinator – here’s the full tra... by SuperDuperTango on Friday May 02, 2014 @04:59PM (#7688109)

Aren't many startups like that?

[ Parent | on HN ]