As we did not go to Y Combinator, “... the profit plan is simple - here the drugs are legal, $ 70 cant ...”
The fact is that in about a month in Y Combinator there will be another round of selection of S2017 companies. This is the most famous and popular accelerator of Silicon Valley. Participation in itself makes sense, even if you do not think of yourself as a startup. This is also an opportunity to go on a team in San Francisco for free.
In this article - our experience from the past competition W2016 and decoding audio recordings with full-time selection.
It all started by chance. Applied on Friday evening, a week later than the deadline announced on the site. The application is simple, filled in a couple of hours, the most difficult thing for us was to record a video for 1 minute explaining what we were doing. It turned out so crookedly that the partner asked to remove the link from the article. But this turned out to be enough to go through a contest of 500 out of 10,000 applications and be invited to an on-site tour.
')
After sending the application there was another Skype interview, very short, 5-10 minutes. We were asked what we were doing, and after the answer they said: “But this is so complete and nobody needs another such system!” To this we told each other 5 minutes that we were not doing everything differently and we would be the best . We were told: “OK” and after 5 days an invitation came: “Fly over”, and a day later we flew out .
Y Combinator, exclusively in my understanding, is the most widely promoted accelerator of it-projects in the world, twice a year they submit an application for 10 thousand companies. The main task of YC is to select projects that have a chance to start growing sharply in the very near future. If you have passed, you automatically get the “AAA +” trust index (very high) and all tasks related to external communications (raising money) become much easier. The YC tag changes a lot. There is no real education for three acceleration months. Small tips, answers to any questions and the ability to communicate with anyone. Zuckerberg will call if you are from YC. And personally, in my opinion it is worth it.
Arrived 4 days before the appointed time. They took time for acclimatization, getting used to the difference of 11 hours and preparing for the interview. And it turned out to be a very useful solution for the project. For four days, our small team was in a cheap Mexican area of the town of San Jose and many times formulated what we do. It was like a long hackathon of a small, well-run team. We discussed a lot, the time of day was absolutely not important, the body still does not understand at first where it is day and where it is night. Compress all our ideas about your own project to 10 minutes was difficult. Considering that before this, we practically didn’t tell anyone, and for about half a year we developed a product for internal use at RedHelper.
At the preparation stage, two solutions were correct:
After one of the pitches, the Wakie team (former Buddhist social alarm clock), which a couple of years ago went to YC, greatly helped. Thanks guys!
Brought YouGile project management system . There is no super innovation. For almost 10 years of my own experience, there is an understanding that project management systems are very poorly integrated into the business processes of companies and even worse in the daily work of people ( reviewed this topic ). As a rule, an ordinary employee does not look into the planning system once again and does not know in detail what the company does and why it works at all. If you take a team of more than 50 people, then this problem becomes the main one.
The task seemed to be solved with long-term system work. The point is not about any particular function, but about the general construction of the application, with the emphasis on the fact that it should drag out the user. If using YouGile in the company will be 10% more people who understand how business processes are arranged, then our goal is achieved.
If more detailed about YouGile then:
Time in YC in all places is compressed as much as possible. Everything is very fast everywhere - the point is that you have to accurately and briefly present what you are doing and why people need it. The interview itself takes only 10 minutes. For them, you flew 10 thousand kilometers, and they paid a couple of thousand dollars.
The questions were asked in vain, without any sense of tact or politeness. Two questions were asked at the same time, questions were asked to different team members, questions were asked during the answer, the jury asked something from each other, part of the jury got up and went to watch the system on the laptop, the second part discussed with me how we would earn. There was chaos. We still have an audio recording from the phone in our pocket, which was then very useful in the analysis.
We started almost without greeting. There were 5 people on the jury; on the second, handshakes began to explain what we were doing:
Following the results at the end of the day, a letter arrived with a refusal and a rather detailed description of what the jury thinks about the draft.
“You have a set of interesting chips. But so far it does not look like a new potential leader in this market. A big plus is an experienced team, we are waiting for you next year with the confirmation of the usefulness of the customers "
The most valuable thing we got is the question - “How are you going to be Asana Killer?” . Not “Where is your competitive advantage?” (We could name a lot of them), but in such a rigid formulation. Asking ourselves the question in this form, we have been developing differently for the last 5 months.
Calling someone local is very difficult. There are 500 thousand companies looking for happiness, every second recently arrived.
- Open a club for 1000 people is not a problem at all.
- And how much is the project budget?
- $ 1.2 million
- How much time and money did it take to get all the permissions?
- 2 months, but I just went on vacation here and did not hurry. Money - 1.5 thousand paid to lawyers for filling out forms.
- What are your plans to make money or is it just an expensive hobby for a musician?
- Here the grass is legal, the joint is $ 70 , from the party is $ 10 thousand.
- And what, is a license for the grass !?
- Yes, it was easier to get than for construction, 3 days
A lot more asked about who builds, how much does a Mexican working day, but it's almost all like ours, only the amount must be multiplied by 5.
We are driving in Uber, a cheerful Mexican slowly erupts among three cars on a four-lane road and tells us that here in San Francisco there is completely overcrowd, 10 years ago it was completely different - better, calmer, and now everything is not right ... I ask him question:
- And how much do you earn per month?
- Approximately $ 8 thousand, wife - tester - $ 7 thousand , enough for life.
After the interview, we spent another week in the Valley. Communicated with investors, startups, looking for users for testing YouGile , trying to understand why half the world here stretches. Perhaps I will write a separate article about it.
PS Here, just well, very beautiful nature. She moved here! I post a couple of photos of the San-Francisco neighborhoods.
In this article - our experience from the past competition W2016 and decoding audio recordings with full-time selection.
It all started by chance. Applied on Friday evening, a week later than the deadline announced on the site. The application is simple, filled in a couple of hours, the most difficult thing for us was to record a video for 1 minute explaining what we were doing. It turned out so crookedly that the partner asked to remove the link from the article. But this turned out to be enough to go through a contest of 500 out of 10,000 applications and be invited to an on-site tour.
')
After sending the application there was another Skype interview, very short, 5-10 minutes. We were asked what we were doing, and after the answer they said: “But this is so complete and nobody needs another such system!” To this we told each other 5 minutes that we were not doing everything differently and we would be the best . We were told: “OK” and after 5 days an invitation came: “Fly over”, and a day later we flew out .
Y Combinator, exclusively in my understanding, is the most widely promoted accelerator of it-projects in the world, twice a year they submit an application for 10 thousand companies. The main task of YC is to select projects that have a chance to start growing sharply in the very near future. If you have passed, you automatically get the “AAA +” trust index (very high) and all tasks related to external communications (raising money) become much easier. The YC tag changes a lot. There is no real education for three acceleration months. Small tips, answers to any questions and the ability to communicate with anyone. Zuckerberg will call if you are from YC. And personally, in my opinion it is worth it.
Conclusions from the correspondence tour:
- Submit an application regardless of the situation in the project. As YC themselves wrote somewhere - they are submitting an application to 10 thousand teams, but not submitting, but they think about it, another 100 thousand. The largest drop-out rate is here.
- The application must be concise. We didn’t try hard and wrote 1-2 sentences at each point. Those who strongly want to go there, write essays that no one reads.
- Formulate exactly. Despite the brevity, the wording was very precise. We answered the questions on the case without any marketing.
- Do not hesitate to say that what you are doing is really Cool! Your attitude to your own business is of fundamental importance. In our case, this was the main reason for going on a full-time tour. The dampness level of the project at that time is difficult to even describe, but we spoke confidently!
Training
Arrived 4 days before the appointed time. They took time for acclimatization, getting used to the difference of 11 hours and preparing for the interview. And it turned out to be a very useful solution for the project. For four days, our small team was in a cheap Mexican area of the town of San Jose and many times formulated what we do. It was like a long hackathon of a small, well-run team. We discussed a lot, the time of day was absolutely not important, the body still does not understand at first where it is day and where it is night. Compress all our ideas about your own project to 10 minutes was difficult. Considering that before this, we practically didn’t tell anyone, and for about half a year we developed a product for internal use at RedHelper.
At the preparation stage, two solutions were correct:
- record yourself on camera and watch
- pitch on skype everyone we can find
After one of the pitches, the Wakie team (former Buddhist social alarm clock), which a couple of years ago went to YC, greatly helped. Thanks guys!
Key tips given by past teams:
- Formulate in 30 seconds what you do, very high quality and interesting. Memorize it (although recommendations from the YC say that it is not necessary to memorize anything). In the first 3 weeks after the pass, you change your wording, but it is still very important. Here in the Valley this may be the most important.
- You should know exactly all the numbers of your project, competitors and the market as a whole. The relation to the figures is fundamental, the business model should be built from the first day.
- Be happy with what you do. The jury decides whether to work with you in the near future or not. If you are gloomy - it is not very interesting, regardless of the project.
What we come from
Brought YouGile project management system . There is no super innovation. For almost 10 years of my own experience, there is an understanding that project management systems are very poorly integrated into the business processes of companies and even worse in the daily work of people ( reviewed this topic ). As a rule, an ordinary employee does not look into the planning system once again and does not know in detail what the company does and why it works at all. If you take a team of more than 50 people, then this problem becomes the main one.
The task seemed to be solved with long-term system work. The point is not about any particular function, but about the general construction of the application, with the emphasis on the fact that it should drag out the user. If using YouGile in the company will be 10% more people who understand how business processes are arranged, then our goal is achieved.
If more detailed about YouGile then:
- We make so that Agile boards of one system could be used by any department. The whole company must plan and communicate in one place, according to the same rules. And not in five different systems, as now many. There is a rumor that 83 different CRMs are used in Rostelecom.
- We combine communications and planning processes. Each task in YouGile is a chat. On the phone, the workflow is similar to whatsapp correspondence. Now we can already say for sure that it is convenient, the first 500 active users liked it.
- Based on the data of communication and viewing of tasks, we build real pictures on what the team was focused on. Not a special report for the head, but we show the team where her time really went.
- We do powerful API. Do you want the task to fall into the first column, turn red and tell Vasya that it is time to do it urgently, if there is number 13 there, we can do that. Any fantasy about how the process should be implemented in the information system is realizable here. But at the same time there are several fundamental principles that leave uniformity.
Transcript of a 10-minute meeting where everything is decided
Time in YC in all places is compressed as much as possible. Everything is very fast everywhere - the point is that you have to accurately and briefly present what you are doing and why people need it. The interview itself takes only 10 minutes. For them, you flew 10 thousand kilometers, and they paid a couple of thousand dollars.
The questions were asked in vain, without any sense of tact or politeness. Two questions were asked at the same time, questions were asked to different team members, questions were asked during the answer, the jury asked something from each other, part of the jury got up and went to watch the system on the laptop, the second part discussed with me how we would earn. There was chaos. We still have an audio recording from the phone in our pocket, which was then very useful in the analysis.
We started almost without greeting. There were 5 people on the jury; on the second, handshakes began to explain what we were doing:
00:00 Our prepared pitch for 30 seconds
00:40 YC: “What problem are you solving?”
00: 45-01: 20 For a long time we say that we are solving the problem of employee involvement in business processes.
01:20 YC: “Whose problem are you solving?”
01: 30-02: 20 We discuss that this is a problem for an entrepreneur who wanted to organize something.
02:20 YC: “Do you solve this problem as well as a manager? setting clear goals? ”
02: 30-03: 20 We tell that we design the system, ensuring that users are as active as possible. For example, we tell about the successful solution to make each task a chat.
03:27 YC: “Why do you think that current market players won't add chat to their products?”
03: 30-03: 50 We tell that to make a product with a focus on the involvement of people is not the same as adding Slack to Asana. It just won't work, many little things are important.
03:50 YC: “Does it work for you? why are you sure about that? ”
03: 55-04: 30 We are talking about the first users.
4:40 YC: “What did you find out at the first tests? What convinced you of the correct direction? ”
4: 40-5: 05 We give an example that in our previous company, after switching from BaseCamp to YouGile, all employees began to view their tasks more often by 25% and were interested in the tasks of their colleagues, which was not there before. Departments began to communicate via chat and simultaneously find out how the processes are going.
5:10 YC: “It's not bad, but it’s not at all obvious that you created something that would kill Asana . Maybe there is some special information from users or rapid growth of users? ”
5:15 YC: “What did you use before?”
5: 15-6: 00 We talk about the experience in a variety of systems and that they are not built to tighten the average user, as we say Facebook.
6: 00-6: 30 The main reason why we can replace Asana is that if a team is 10% more involved every day, then over the years it will be 10 times more effective.
6:30 YC: “Is this what you believe or what has been confirmed on users?”
6: 30-6: 50: “This is what we believe in and confirmed on a small number of first users.”
7:00 YC: “Can we see the product?”
7:05 YC: “How did you find the first 10 companies?”
7: 00-8: 30 We show the product, answer many small questions on it, answer all the comparisons with Trello Asana Slack. We give a little digging in the product to one of the jury members. We tell that the first 10 companies are the closest circle of contacts.
Then it became quite hot, questions were asked at once somewhat in parallel, questions about the product continued.
YC: “What size company?”
YC: “How often do companies use the system?”
YC: “Is there really such a big difference between the comments in Trello and the chat you have?”
YC: “What percentage of people in companies does it use? what was up to yougile? ”
YC: “What price do you plan to deliver? and how to distribute? ”
10:10 YC: “Ok, guys our time is up, Bye-bye ”
Following the results at the end of the day, a letter arrived with a refusal and a rather detailed description of what the jury thinks about the draft.
“You have a set of interesting chips. But so far it does not look like a new potential leader in this market. A big plus is an experienced team, we are waiting for you next year with the confirmation of the usefulness of the customers "
The most valuable thing we got is the question - “How are you going to be Asana Killer?” . Not “Where is your competitive advantage?” (We could name a lot of them), but in such a rigid formulation. Asking ourselves the question in this form, we have been developing differently for the last 5 months.
A couple of specific tips if you are going to have an interview at YCombinator:
- Train 100 times with the whole team, it will stay with you regardless of the result. On the net you can find a complete list of questions that may be asked. Only a few really important matters matter: what are you doing ?, why is it for people ?, why will it grow to a billion-dollar company?
- Try to be completely honest, open and very clear. You can embellish artistically, but there are very insightful guys sitting on the jury. Each of them has raised a company for $ 100 million and they understand a little more than you expect.
- No marketing. Everything should be short and easy to understand. With this approach, it is easier to get to the bottom of it and it is very much appreciated.
What else is cool in the valley is the inhabitants
Calling someone local is very difficult. There are 500 thousand companies looking for happiness, every second recently arrived.
Dialogue of communication with the local:
- Open a club for 1000 people is not a problem at all.
- And how much is the project budget?
- $ 1.2 million
- How much time and money did it take to get all the permissions?
- 2 months, but I just went on vacation here and did not hurry. Money - 1.5 thousand paid to lawyers for filling out forms.
- What are your plans to make money or is it just an expensive hobby for a musician?
- Here the grass is legal, the joint is $ 70 , from the party is $ 10 thousand.
- And what, is a license for the grass !?
- Yes, it was easier to get than for construction, 3 days
A lot more asked about who builds, how much does a Mexican working day, but it's almost all like ours, only the amount must be multiplied by 5.
Another story from a taxi driver:
We are driving in Uber, a cheerful Mexican slowly erupts among three cars on a four-lane road and tells us that here in San Francisco there is completely overcrowd, 10 years ago it was completely different - better, calmer, and now everything is not right ... I ask him question:
- And how much do you earn per month?
- Approximately $ 8 thousand, wife - tester - $ 7 thousand , enough for life.
After the interview, we spent another week in the Valley. Communicated with investors, startups, looking for users for testing YouGile , trying to understand why half the world here stretches. Perhaps I will write a separate article about it.
PS Here, just well, very beautiful nature. She moved here! I post a couple of photos of the San-Francisco neighborhoods.
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Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/321276/
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