I can't imagine what it would have felt like for those guys. I'm wondering, was it an interview for the following two as well but they didn't get selected?
From what I've read elsewhere, sometimes they decide and tell you on the spot, other times you won't hear back for maybe a day or two. Personally, I wasn't feeling it for that 2nd interview group, but the 3rd guy with the customs brokerage business. I want a piece of that action :) That seems like a big money maker. My money is on him getting in.
Correct, the customs brokerage business reminds me of Asseta (YCS13) in that there's less competition, and is an industry that people do not naturally enter for lack of knowledge or sex appeal. Recipe for a money maker.
CodeCombat's novel, and given YC's history with Codecademy and One Month Rails, along with the founder's previous business venture - getting picked up wasn't a surprise.
Yeah; I think the CodeCombat app is actually pretty cool. As a father of 3 I immediately checked it out. I'm always interested in ways to get my kids interested in programming.
PG has already shown an interest in programming education; add to that these guys have a live product it is a bit of a no brainer to "incubate" it a little. Curious to see an actual profit model though; I'm not sold on the weak "recruiter" angle. From what I see it is more of a kid's educational app.
The brokerage business though; whether he gets accepted by YC or not, I expect he is going to make some serious bank on that.
And as pg said in the interview with Mark Zuckerberg, when he talks to people, he always has a process running somewhere in his mind that judges them as he would do in an interview and might shout at any moment "accept him, accept him!". Probably that's what happened :)
I thought the third was extremely solid, and I was surprised he wasn't accepted on the spot. The other 2 were underwhelming imo; I was confused by the first one getting accepted on the spot, but I'm sure pg and sama have info on them that we do not.
I suspect they will do more diligence for ideas in regulatuon-heavy industries. When a single law can destroy your business, you need to be sure that what you are doing is 100% kosher and also that the proper connections are in place to work out issues.
I'm surprised they didn't grill him more on that subject.
