Top 10 Pieces of Advice for YC – via Michael Seibel
Good morning, hope everyone had a wonderful weekend/Halloween. Can’t believe it’s November already. I wanted to start off a fresh post based off an amazing Tweet I saw a few days ago, from Michael Seibel, partner at YC. For those who don’t know or have never heard of YC, Y Combinator is an incubator/accelerator for startups, where YC invests in a seed amount to help kick start startups as well as help mentor and nurture them. If you’d like to know more about them, I wrote a previous piece on them, which you can read by clicking here.
OK – so back to the purpose of this post. Twitter is a great resource for entrepreneurs and startup founders to gain a wealth of knowledge on startups, tech, funding, and VCs. It’s also a great place to find solid advice from VCs, angels, and Partners of various incubators/accelerators. No different, Michael Seibel is an advocate in supporting founders and entrepreneurs. As a partner at YC, he posts great solid advice on his Twitter account (linked above). His latest Tweet that caught my attention was titled “My Top Ten Pieces of Advice for Prepping for an YC Interview.” I thought his Tweet was great as it gave some solid advice for those who were applying to YC to get into their next batch.
My top ten pieces of advice for preparing for a YC Interview, good luck! – Michael Seibel, Partner at YC
I decided to take the liberty of summarizing his advice below. For those who are motivated and are thinking of applying to YC, I suggest to heed his words.
- Interview is 10 minutes long and goes fast – practice and time yourself
- The focus will be on Team, Market, and Traction
- Most answers should be no longer than 20-30 seconds – follow up questions will come
- Don’t try to demo first thing – demos are usually in the second half of the interview
- Founders shouldn’t talk over each other or contradict each other
- The first question is “what do you do” – have a great 30 second answer that covers what you do with an example. This is the hardest and most impactful question – AVOID JARGON – your mom and dad should be able to understand what you do from this answer
- There are websites with sample interview questions – google them and practice
- Questions will be rapid fire – you won’t be able to control the direction of the interview – just roll with it 🙂
- When you intro yourselves in the beginning – be clear about which founders does business and which does tech
- If there are any red flags/weak points for your startup – be ready to answer a question about them with clear 15 second answers. Be prepared but don’t dwell on the bad
Below is his actual Tweet which you can view (suggest you follow him as well)
My top ten pieces of advice for preparing for a YC Interview, good luck! pic.twitter.com/V6wUDnl960
— Michael Seibel (@mwseibel) October 31, 2015
I felt compelled to blog about this as what better way to start off your Monday than with some entrepreneurial wisdom and advice ;). Also, if you’re interested in applying to YC, you can check out their website here.
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