Arthur and I arrived in Mountain View bright and early to interview with Y Combinator. We grabbed a filling American breakfast in a diner nearby and were pumped to interview at 10am. Twelve hours later we would get an email from Paul Graham explaining that YC would not accept us for the Winter 2010 round.
We felt deflated to hear the news, but the feedback was helpful, and our inner optimists continue to drive us towards helping our fellow web consultants. On top of the aggregated YC interview advice, here are a few pointers we picked up ourselves:
Prepare as many questions as you can think of
It’s unlikely that you’ll get an exact question that will be in your document, but the process of brainstorming questions and answering them will clarify your message. If anyone is interested in the questions we came up with, shoot us an email and we’ll send them to you.
Practice with friends and YC alumni
Even though you won’t get an exact phrasing of the list of questions you came up with, there’ll be a lot of overlap in the type of questions and you’ll learn to piece together your answers from your initial list of questions.
Thanks to Jude from Heyzap, Alex from Snipd, Mark from YumDots, and Tim & Suhail from Mixpanel for helping us prepare!
Ignore the timer
There’ll be a 10 minute timer when you walk into the interview. It won’t help to pay attention to it, so you might as well forget it exists. It’s good to practice with a timer so you get a feel for how incredibly short 10 minutes really is.
Don’t bother elaborating
We had short paragraph answers to our questions list. When we practiced with people, they always let us finish our sentences. This is not the case with the real interview. PG will have a question ready before you can finish your current thought and sentence. If you don’t answer the question, he’s already moved on to the next topic. If your answer is interesting, he’ll drill deeper. Don’t expect to drive the conversation in any other way.
Answer as many questions as possible
The questions will appear all at once from multiple people. Queue them up and answer them clearly and quickly.
Assume nothing
Even if something about your product or plan is completely obvious to you and everyone you know, your interviewing audience won’t know about it. If you want to convey it, say it.
Most importantly of all, go in with confidence and enthusiasm. It’s your ten minutes, and while you’re there, your startup is all that matters. Make sure you convince the four behind behind the table that you’re as amazing as you believe yourself to be.
Best of luck!
-Jerry
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