The Road to Y Combinator - Part 1 | Hacker News Reader

The Road to Y Combinator - Part 1

adriancunanan.com

2 pointsThinkADRIAN5 comments

Just read your blog post. Thanks for the link and good luck. I may write a blog post about a few changes to the YC application. If your startup has a working prototype and you want some press, post or email me the link. I will mention it in a blog post.

My one comment for every applicant: Realize the "3% chance" is often misunderstood. It's in one of PG's essays, but I can't find which one specifically. The 3% chance doesn't mean that all applicants have a 3% chance. It means that 3% of applicants have a really great chance and 97% have no chance. So your odds of getting an interview are either really good or non-existent.

Thanks for the creating YC Universe. It was a great resource for us to reference. Our startup has a clickable prototype that we are sharing with investors. But we would appreciate a link to http://thrivestreams.com. Our private beta is on the cusp and we would love to have more people sign up. Thanks in advance!

Our team is in the same boat and I think you're entirely right regarding how beneficial the application process has been.

The concision required of some of the questions was cleansing: Even if I couldn't hit 120, I know I took a scalpel to the ideas we were tossing around in order to pull out those few nuggets of gold.

Best of luck, Adrian. Maybe we'll meet over the summer!

Thanks Lucas! Best of luck to you too. Did our tips line up with your own process? I'd be interested to here what other resources and references other use.

I suggest using iPG (http://www.jamescun.com/ycs12/) to prep for an invitation for interview for your team.

Sorry about the long delay!

Your tips certainly did line up with our process. Most of our resources were drawn from friends and colleagues who are working in the venture capital firm. In retrospect, those tips were more industry specific and funding-level specific than we had expected.

Oh well! We've learned a lot regardless of the outcome. I've tried the above tool and its helped cut down our pitch duration by nearly half. Thanks!

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