"Ultimately, the point of these videos is not for you to sell them on your idea. It's another opportunity for YC to get to know you and your team as people, in a way that words on an application form can't convey."
Yes! We're not looking at the video as a way to understand your idea. That's what the written application is for. And yet so many people sit there in the video reading some prepared text in a monotone, which is not something that makes anyone look smart. Far better not to script the video. I'm not saying you should talk about random personal stuff like your favorite bands. You can talk about the startup. Just don't read a prepared statement. The best thing to talk about might be the background for the startup: how you met and how you got interested in this idea.
Yeah, that bugged me about the video portion of the application too. It was weird; everything else about the application was fairly straightforward, and then there was this video part which was really vague with this really arbitrary 1 minute requirement.
We ended up wasting a couple of hours of one night on it, and by the end of it I was totally fed up with the whole idea of putting in a video (and, by extension, YC). We ended up submitting something really lame and shrugging our shoulders about it.
A "one minute unrehearsed video" is an oxymoron IMO.
There's a difference between preparing for and scripting a video. My cofounder and I prepared for our video in that we talked about what we wanted to convey and (roughly) who'd say what parts, but we didn't have any sort of a script.
Our video was about 90 seconds, and we did it in four or five takes, which means we spent way more time agonizing over how to cut down any one of our written answers than we did recording our video. Think of it as talking to a friend rather than "making a movie."
When people ask about your startup you should have the confidence of a Noble Prize-winning economist being interviewed by an 11th-grade economics student.
I think we had 3 or 4 retakes, almost all because we end up laughing. (We have almost an half hour bloopers besides that with random rambling though :p). We did prepare some general subjects, mainly cause my friend had a hard time getting out of his words. He really didn't like doing it but realized it was a necessary evil to being even remotely considered for YC.
In hindsight it's far from perfect and our idea has somewhat progressed, but I'm not really going to make him suffer through a re-take so our video stands. It's not perfect but hey, it puts a face on the words, and hopefully it conveys some of our passion, which is the most important about it anyway.
I think resisting the urge to perfect the video is part of the same mindset as not using marketing lingo and buzzwords in the application. The entire YC application is about cutting the bullshit and being genuine. PG and the others don't want to see perfection, in the app or the video, they want to see who we really are.
Me and my cofounder did our video Tuesday night. We didn't do any preparing, messed up the first take, took maybe five minutes to get an outline set up, and were happy with what we got in the second take (51 seconds). It certainly wasn't perfect, but life goes on.
I understand the video is important - but what if we can't get round to making it in time?
My cofounder currently lives the other side of the country (we're currently studying in different colleges) and so a video together would be kinda hard at the moment, not to mention expensive to meet up.
Do you have any suggestions - we've looked into recording Skype video calls but it's hard to make it feel natural.
Skype works. Sometimes the sound is hard to deal with. However, consider that there are probably 20 other people in your same situation who will hack out a quick skype video.
hi pg, I'm curious about applying for yc (in the summer), but we're not completely sure if our idea is the kind of thing yc is looking to fund. I know you don't advise startups, but would it be possible to get some quick feedback on our demo by e-mail?
Wow, you see from Drew's application is that he's a good writer and a great communicator. I've been using dropbox happily so I'm sure he's a great coder too, but I wonder if 90% your application conveys is how well you'll sell users on your product down the road.
(also there seem to be a fair number of concrete examples)
An excellent set of tips from a YC startup that we've been using for our product. The only thing I didn't see was Aaron's opinion on whether or not comments on Hacker News had helped anyone in his group stand out. I always check the karma score of co-founders to try and figure that one out.
No one looks at actual karma numbers. It's more that if I see a name I recognize from HN, I pay special attention. E.g. if patio11 applied, I'd definitely notice, just like a lot of HN readers probably would.
Thanks, that means a lot to me. I won't be applying this time because I don't think that I could promise YC a decent shot at getting as much value from me as I got from y'all, but who knows what the future holds.
I don't think a community has ever had a man-crush on a member, like we all do on Patrick. They should teach him as an example in future "Personal Branding" courses.
Harj touched on it briefly last night at the NYC meetup, but I think that HN karma points are looked at as a bonus, rather than part of the criteria. Like all other aspects of the application process, it's just another chance for YC to get to know more about you.
When we applied, we had (and still have by most measures) low karma scores. But we also had a working product with actual users, so that worked in our favor.
Makes me have a good feeling about the app I submitted ... I know single founders are harder to get funding usually, but I'm confident I can find a co-founder in SV :)
"I hope PG doesn't read this, but I tell people all the time that in hindsight I would've done YC for zero dollars and still given them the equity percentage. You will leave YC on the "inside" of the SV bubble. You will have personal relationships with founders and investors that you read about on TechCrunch. How can you put a price on that?"
Is it just me, or is anyone else getting really tired of this type of fanboy, love-fest dribble? I have no doubt about the validity of YC as an accelerator, but it's just tiresome to read this type of stuff what feels like so often.
This is someone who went through the program, and is commenting on the value extracted from it. For the author, the value of going through the YC program and getting the 'SV insider' connections was worth more than the equity share given to YC. I don't see how this is fanboyism in the slightest.
Yes! We're not looking at the video as a way to understand your idea. That's what the written application is for. And yet so many people sit there in the video reading some prepared text in a monotone, which is not something that makes anyone look smart. Far better not to script the video. I'm not saying you should talk about random personal stuff like your favorite bands. You can talk about the startup. Just don't read a prepared statement. The best thing to talk about might be the background for the startup: how you met and how you got interested in this idea.