we'll give people an extra minute or two to join us but welcome thanks for coming we're super excited to be with you today we've got a lot of great folks waiting backstage to join us so I just want to go over a little bit of the housekeeping for today's event you're going to see a chat uh feel free to let us know right now kind of where you're tuning in from or a little bit about the company You're Building we'd love to know more information about you and um what you're looking to get out of today and hopefully we can tailor the event um as fitting I see we've got some folks in from New York and San Francisco classic locations but I'm sure there's some others London awesome let's keep it coming um and then you'll have the ability to ask questions throughout the event so feel free to drop questions in the Q&A tool um for our speakers and those will get answered toward the end there I think it's pretty straightforward um for folks but I do want to give people just an extra minute or two to jump in before we get things going Tony's asking if it will be recorded yes it will be recorded Tony and you can get a copy um probably later this afternoon sent into your inbox got Walnut Creek sweet we've got some people from Dubai amazing so it's quite the international crowd as well as some local Bay Area folks always good to see so one more time I'll let you know the chat um which you all seem to be using wonderfully over there is where you can kind of shout things out chat with fellow um audience members let us know kind of your thoughts on the event and then if you want to ask specific questions to the speakers today we recommend you put those in the Q&A tool and we'll get to those toward the end of uh this session so I don't want to hold things back um my name is Lauren I run the event program here at Pilot um but more importantly I'm really thrilled to welcome you all to this event today with Mercury and um introduce you to Pilot CEO and co-founder Wasim um for those of you who don't know about pilot we're the largest startup focused accounting firm in the US so we do things like bookkeeping tax prep CFO services for thousands of high growth startups you know we've worked with companies like open Ai and scale Ai and air table and other people from the very beginning all the way up to that point that they really want to transition that function to their in-house team um so we're definitely used to the startup space if you're interested in anything like that you can chat with us but without further hesitation I want to introduce you to Pilot CEO and co-founder Wasim daher Wasim is a three-time Founder he's had two successful exits his first company K spice was acquired by Oracle in 2011 and his second zulip was acquired by Dropbox in 2014 and now he's building pilot all with the same founding team so he's definitely well versed in the startup space so welcome to the stage with and I will let you take it from here thanks Lauren and thank you all for joining we've got a great audience here coming from all over the place so thanks for tuning in we have a really amazing panel for you I'm like kind of a big Fanboy TBH so I'm excited to tell you about who we've got joining we've got ah mod Ahad is the co-founder and CEO of mercury the fintech that more than 200,000 startups use for Banking and all their financial workflows it is Far and Away the most popular banking provider among pilot customers so very cool to see fortime founder a mod went through y combinator with haap and was also a YC partner for a year prior to starting Mercury so mod very excited to have you here thanks for thanks for doing this with us uh next up we've got Eric Eric is the CEO and co-founder of beeper a universal chat app that lets you chat with anyone on any chat Network like WhatsApp or iMessage you've probably seen all the news excitement around the cool things he and the team have been doing there it was just recently acquired by automatic from 2018 to 2021 Eric was a partner at YC combinator prior to YC combinator he founded Pebble where he helped invent the Smartwatch Erica was actually a backer of the original Kickstarter so it's very exciting to have you here uh Pebble generated revenues of more than $200 million before it was acquired by Fitbit in 2016 and we're joined as well by Adora Adora is the co-founder of instalab which delivers Advanced blood testing to your doorstep prior to instalab Adora was the co-founder and CEO of homejoy and a YC partner for five years so we've got a really exciting mix on this panel of folks who've seen it from the YC side who seen it from the founder side and I'm excited to get to it Amad I'm gonna turn it over you to kind of guide us on our session here thanks vasim uh really excited to have this group together um you know I think one thing that's it's hard to get when you're a kind of early founder and you're kind of thinking about pitching investors or pitching YC is kind of the other perspective on like what is going through the partners head what are they looking for you know uh maybe you can describe a little bit on like what is that day like as a YC partner when you have like yeah I guess it's a week of hundreds of pictures and you're like kind of preparing yourself and thinking about the application and all these things so can you paint that picture a little bit uh I guess either of you can take the question sure um I think I would distinguish there's three different SE uh in a year there's three different parts of the Year basically for a YC partner there is a batch of course in which your days are filled with organizing events and helping doing office hours and helping them um get to the final stage of demo day and then there is usually you get a quick break and then after that you have a period of reading applications for a few weeks um and then you get get another little break and then you go through the interview process and that's hundreds of interviews of course um and so that's how the year kind of spread out between there's two cycles of course um for for those things um and then all the partners usually have an operating role of some sort so for me it was working on Startup school and managing that and um others have different roles uh and then I guess in terms of the context of here of application and reading and interviews during the reading period every partner is different for me it would be just 12 13 14 hours of just straight intense reading of applications you got to really you know Focus because those are very important decisions you're making um and so for me I usually would um actually travel somewhere where no one could disturb me for a couple weeks at a time and just focus on that and then during the interview period it's um it's usually like around H trying to remember like eight hours of interviews um and again straight intense Focus um so you can't do 12 14 hours of interviews in a day would just be you would you would start making bad decisions um but yeah during that period you're interviewing throughout the day you're making decisions calling Founders up saying whether they got telling them they got into the the program um uh sometimes we have to do some follow-up work do um do some diligence especially if if a company that is growing very fast or has lots of users you're making big claims and we'll do our diligence process but usually we are able to make a decision on that same day um so that's sort of a summary of of a YC partner Eric you might have many things to add I think one thing to keep in mind is that uh during the application reading process it's a very solitary activity you know you've written these applications and the partners are reading you know spending time reading each and every single application the interview process in some ways is the actual like fun part we've read all the partners have read all the applications they have a general sense of who they want to talk to and now during the interview it's a moment where you get to or the partner gets to understand whether the expectations that were set are actually uh kind of delivered on and I think the partners come in with an open mind they're generally very excited to hear what every company has to say like when you think about it the partners read all these applications and they picked 5% I I can't remember the exact percentage but or maybe it was 10% of the applications get selected for an interview like they're the partners are generally like on your side uh want to see you succeed they want to hear the best part of your startup and that's the that's the table so when you walk into the interview that's how the table is set yeah I was I was kind of surprised when I was doing the interview that like I feel like the partners actually want to get to a yes right like I always thought they're like trying to get to a no but I my impression was more like hey everyone wants to get to a yes they just want to like make sure that like there's enough you know there aren't obvious red flags and like they can get excited enough about it uh I think the the process is set up so that the person doing the the partner doing the YC interview at least like two of them or something have read the application uh right I think that's roughly what the what they try uh I guess when someone walks in like how how fresh is the application in in your heads uh like should the founder assume that like you know what's in there uh or like assume that you don't know anything and they should like uh kind of start from like the like a fresh slate I think you have to start from a fresh slate because you're not sure exactly who's going to be in the room you'll most likely be in the room with at least one partner who read your application and voted to invite you to an interview so you you you most assuredly have at least one Advocate someone who's you know on your side from the get-go um the other people probably have not read the application in as much detail as the who voted to bring you in for an interview but everyone's generally familiar with you know the space and and what you're working on the key is starting with Clarity like the the thing that I looked for when I was you know doing interviews is I wanted to understand whether the founders could clearly and concisely explain what their company was doing that's kind of the Baseline do you think Adora that like answer to a question should be like pretty long and complete or like very short and concise definitely the latter I mean you've got 10 minutes to pack in as much as you can to convince this panel um to accept you and so you want to be able to get a good breath of questions in um and so staying concise is is key and I think you know the first the first question is always the same every single time and so you got to really nail it um but if you're you know it's the first question is usually what are so what are you working on um so to the extent that you can practice that record yourself make sure you sound good and and every everyone can understand you that's super important because that just sets you off on a good tone and you know uh puts you on a positive track with with the panel you didn't think it comes across like a little inauthentic if like the answers are like practiced uh there are people who are over rehearse and so yeah there's a fine line between giving a speech and having a conversation and so you gotta you got to figure out what what that is for you uh what are things that like you know if someone says x uh like that gets the partners like really excited and wanting to lean in like is there like a set of things you're like okay these are like amazing attributes and Founders and we should lean in H I think ultimately I mean every partner is very different and how well I would say a lot of we all have overlapping things that get us excited um but perhaps maybe the common things that get gets everyone excited is if you can show if you can show you can sell I mean you basically you want a Founder who can sell and who can build and those are the two things you got to get across and so to the extent that you can you know on the selling point how many customers have you already talked to what have you learned show like a good growth rate in learning um on what you're on learning about your product and what you're building in the problem space um and then on the building part is do you have a demo some Partners will love demos I was one of them some Partners don't need to see a demo um but if the extent that you can show you can build if you don't if you're not an engineer maybe you were ahead of product of somewhere and you can you showed you can get a product out the door then these are kind of attributes you want to get across but actually like wh out your laptop and saying here's the demo that's like a bad idea right no yeah usually it's asked um and uh it usually you have a link in the application so people have looked at it already occasionally if something is just like you got to see it to believe it then yeah um I've asked a couple times for a demo right at the interview yeah how about you ER just just to extend extend what Adora was saying around like can you sell and can you ship basically I'm I'm a Canadian and I went to school in Canada and I was you know doing my first startup uh kind of in the very nent startup ecosystem in uh waterl and I think that oftentimes when I met Founders that were outside of the US they weren't as well let's just say they were more humble than maybe people here in the Bay Area and I think my advice to people who are generally humble and are not as likely to toot their own horn toot your own horn in a in a in a in a very you know respectful manner but you have you have a short period of time to impress a set of people that you've never met before don't hide the best don't hide the lead don't don't bury the lead don't don't um just be proud of what you've accomplished like if you have built something interesting or exciting or if you've discovered something doesn't even have to necessarily apply to your startup though it would obviously be be a bit better uh feel free to share that because one of the things that kind of like if I was already sold on the idea and I thought that there was a good Market the thing that would really close the deal for me is do I believe that this person is going to accomplish something amazing and one of the ways that you could demonstrate that is by sharing something amazing that you have accomplished in your life there's also like a bad kind of to your horn right like what like what do you think is like a bad way of doing it versus a good way of doing it I I think the YC partners are curious and they're always interested in learning something new and if in the course of your research or work or you know life you have kind of pushed the envelope and discovered something new or novel or build something new or novel that's that's the kind of thing that i' like I'd like to hear during the interview yeah uh neither of you mentioned things like Market sizing and like I guess more abstract IDE is is that something that like people you know your you/ partners are looking for or it's much more kind of practical things yes I I do think partners are looking for that um but I also think one of the strengths and one of the cool parts of YC is bringing in Founders who might be working in a on something small and helping them believe in the bigger Market in the opportunity and so I don't think we do we don't um how do I say it we don't I don't think Put negative points on you if you come in with something that you know might be $200 million in Tam um because if we can imagine a path for you on something bigger then um we'll that's the thing we'll want to work with you on that being said if you come in with the vision of a big huge market then less work for us and um we can move on to other things uh to discuss with you yeah I remember Sam sharing something interesting and it was like an idea that is what you're working on going to be important to a lot of people in the world and this is not a calculation of exactly how much money you're going to make but it's kind of like you sharing this vision for the future where you you and your compan are playing a major role I don't think you need to spend a lot of time on this during the interview because it is a bit more handwavy but if there's something that you can explain some something that you can leave them with that gives them a taste for the future that you see it could be worthwhile yeah um sometimes I talk to very uh young Founders and uh they don't always have like a you know maybe straight out of college they don't necessarily have like a oh I built this big thing at this startup or I I did this thing so you know what advice would you give them in terms of like where to point to to show their accomplishments uh and you know when they don't necessarily have like super concrete [Music] things things you've hacked on on the side in in if you're if you're still in college that's that's the most common way I think to show um pull up your if you have a GitHub account pull that up show what you've contributed if if you do that kind of stuff um and it doesn't have to be related to business or coding perhaps you built something in school like an organization or something that got big and was in front of lot of people uh yeah there's there's plenty of ways I think to show your you know you you've got what it takes to work hard and build something big yeah and it doesn't have to be big in absolute terms right it could be something that had an impact on your community or you know your class even like that that's meaningful right especially if you can clearly explain why you worked on it and what you know the benefit of working on it was yeah what do you think about like when people try to Pivot answers like you ask them something but they really want to get something else across and they like you know they either don't answer the thing that you ask them and answer something else so they answer the thing and then try to bring in an extra point is that is that an okay thing to do or something to avoid I think you want to answer the questions that the partners are asking and like they've got a set of questions you want to get through them and if you leave them um unfulfilled that's it's not not a good place to be in um I I think it's if there's a really important you got to you got to bring up um I think that's fine you can always just email also the partners at afterwards um if if you if you really think something super important is going to change the decision but usually usually the application has all that information already and it's just about clearly communicating the important parts of the application to us um but yeah I I think changing the topics of conversation is not a particularly good um way to navigate the interview yeah uh what US like really big red flags that that you've seen where people have done assis Behavior which is like almost disqualifying straight away sometimes after 10 minutes I still don't know what it's it's they're not very this not very tactical advice per perhaps but um there are founders who get way too nervous or whatever the case after 10 minutes you still don't know what they're doing and it's just a very confusing thing um you're talking about the interview yeah yeah yeah yeah I think like this doesn't happen too much but sometimes Founders get a bit too defensive I think you know as a partner well I see Partners ask a lot of tough questions that's just how things work right like I remember you know meeting with PG and I would have 20 minutes and he would just ask the one question that I did not want to be asked consistently and he would ask it right off the bat like I would come in trying to talk about one thing and then he's like well what about your burn rate like the one thing you know you're you're scared of talking about I think that comes through in the interview sometimes like the partners are more likely to ask a question that kind of puts your startup on point like you know is the business model going to work um do you how are you going to get customers and if you're too defensive about that then or or if you kind of dismiss the question I think that that could lead to the Partners kind of like it's not a positive like you you have to you have to kind of participate in those hard questions as well I also think if someone is kind of lying or saying untruths you know they're like oh we made a sale to X and then you ask them okay what have you actually done with X and it's like they've had one conversation or something yeah I think that actually leaves a pretty pretty bad taste um when you're I guess like talking do you try to as a Founder kind of split your conversation 5050 between like two co-founders if there are two co-founders or three uh how do you think about like sharing time or like uh you know what's your general take on that um well I think usually I think this is not just interviews it's all interviews you do with investors or conversations you have is the CEO is usually the one lead I think the only and then and one their technical questions especially with YC Partners there are some YC partners that are very very technical um if you're the CEO but not the CTO then you probably want to let the technical person lead in those questions the only instance where I I've not seen the CEO lead and answer most of the questions is um language barrier you're international team and someone else on the team can speak English much better or more fluently than you probably want to let them chat because again you have 10 minutes and so you don't waste it on translation and you know thinking things too much in your head and stuff like that anything to add to that Eric no I think uh the only thing I would say is like if you have a really good rapport between the co-founders like if you've you know worked together known each other for a you know a decade that's actually a really big positive sign and sometimes that comes through in just being able to finish each other's sentences uh and um if you if you got that you know it doesn't hurt to to share that a bit especially through you know being able to like have you know equal weigh in but definitely like 90% of the time it would be one person yeah um you know most pitures have like some sort of weakness uh you know maybe you're a solo found or like it's just very early or there's a big technical risk uh is it better to to talk about the weakness headon uh and try to like identify it and say how you're going to mitigate it or is it better to like focus on your strengths in a pitch uh and like try to avoid talking about the weakness I think in the Y interview I think the partner is going to bring up the weakness if they see it so I don't think you have to bring it up yourself sometimes there's like an elephant in the room like this is obviously a weak point and maybe you want to address it head on but in a y interview I don't think that's that's something to worry too much about agree is there a set of set of standard questions I know you said like you know what are you working on is don't me the first one is there a I know 10 questions and like you pick six out of the 10 or is it quite bized and customized I think it's I mean obvious it's it's customized though if I had to extract out common questions um I think a lot of partners are probably interested in what you're going to accomplish in the next three to four like if you get into YC what are you what are you going to do and how far can you get and what is this going to look like on demo day um that so some version of that question is sometimes asked um again I think all the questions are really trying to get trying to see like can you sell and can you build the thing that you're trying to build and those are those are probably the main questions and also um how many customers how many users have you talked to where are you in that front and then if you're kind of later stage you've got a bunch of Revenue or users and stuff like that you got to really know I mean that's like a really proper investor meaning basically you got to know your numbers and be on top of it and you got to be prepar for diligence afterwards as well yeah like a pretty common follow-up would be an email after saying hey can you share you know the the top three customers that you mentioned or can you share some evidence that you've earned this money or can you give us access or can you give access to your analytics dashboard so we could see you know what a little bit of evidence to support the numbers that you shared even if you're an international company and you're you should expect us to try to use your product as well even if it means we have to go find our friend to in that country to go use it like that should be table Stakes like um we will we will try our best to to uh to use it I think I remember a good one of uh bread fast which is the bread delivery startup in Egypt I think Adora you had to get I don't know how you found someone I hired yes the yeah I hired um so yeah they're in Egypt and they were uh growing extremely fast um and delivering bread fresh bread among other things and I hired a person on Magic I think magic another YC company um in Egypt to go to purchase some bread essentially and get it delivered I just want I just wanted to see the whole process um and they passed with fly it worked yeah yeah it worked and I didn't feel any unease in like oh is this do this company actually exists and it's doing they're say I think the the magic person sent you a text of the sent you a photo of like the bread after it got delivered yes said it was very uh presumably you're only doing that if you're like reasonbly excited about the company like you're only into I mean pretty much we're pretty much at a yes and it's just like one final confirmation uh what percentage of the time do you like do the diligence part and then find out actually like it doesn't doesn't work or the stats don't live up to it like is it a high percentage or kind of a rare thing uh it's not a high for me it wasn't a high percentage but you do find um it's memorable when it happens it it's very memorable yeah unfortunately and I guess disappoin like I think the thing is all the all these YC Partners have started companies all of them have seen companies fail it's just like we understand happened and like the bad parts of it and you don't need to hide that from last week like we get it yeah uh you mentioned that like you know you want to see what can you accomplish by demo day is that is that partly to like judge whether the company will be fundable at demo day is that like part of the factors or it's yeah that's not really a factor I think that's a that that I think that's a factor um but I think it also shows what kind of um acceleration path you're on um and that's the main thing we want it we want to see so like we I mean some some companies don't um fundraise on demo day um but what we really want them to do is all of them to be growing as quickly as possible um uh while they're in De while they're in while they're in YC and set them up you know for further um for further success after they leave YC yeah uh what about companies that are you know either hard tech or like some other reason why it's just going to take a long time to build it like would you say not a good fit for YC or is there like some other Milestones that you would look for in those kind of hard tech companies one of the interesting things about YC is that regardless of which industry you're in there's advice and benefit and like a huge Advantage for being part of YC we had companies that were doing biotech projects where the time frames ranged in years uh space companies that you know will take I mean relativity for example that took six years to to launch their first rocket um and in order to demonstrate progress there are ways you can break down these milestones and and provide validation that you're on you know a great track and that's relatively like there's there's always there's always something that can be uh can be demonstrated yeah I guess this also relates to like those types of companies coming to the interview like you want to see some demonstration that they're making progress uh what are what are particular uh progress Milestones things like that that you that companies like that can can bring to the interview um sometimes it's a first customer someone who's pledged to to be um or interested in being that first customer um we've seen people build prototypes that may appear kind of hacky like the uh you know the the cruise founder built a 3D printed um mount for his car and drove it on the 101 to collect data um there's it's not even necessarily something that's going to be your product or or the the first piece of your product but it's it's a uh validation demonstration that you can accomplish something that you can build something and potentially you know use that to get other people excited customers or investors yeah anything else you add Ador nope that's pretty On Target yeah um a lot of these questions are around uh you know that particular idea and that particular business uh but I've heard YC really cares about Founders and picking great Founders like how do you think about that kind of I guess dichotomy between like you're spending 10 minutes on like the idea in business but like you're trying to also judge the founder outside that I think it's hard to ask specific questions to it's almost I wish it was a science because that would make our job so much easier but it's a bit of an art form where you've got to ask the tough questions because you got to see how the Founders respond it kind of gives an insight into how resilient they are um and are they are they are they the type of person that's is going to like go through walls and never stop um are they formidable these are things that in which there isn't a question for it's just a feeling and a Vibe you get from from that 10-minute rapid fire um interview process uh you said you do these for eight hours I guess there like 10 minutes on five minutes off maybe so it's pretty intense like by the end of the day are you you kind of getting a little cranky you how do how how do the fs kind of keep up the energy levels ah well we I mean the so the team does a pretty good job at spacing things out and giving us break so we're not um or we're not overwhelmed by the by the process um so I think I think I think the setup is quite perfect um where we can really focus 10 to 15 minutes at a time for each for each team um but yeah is that answer your question I don't think it's eight hours straight of actual 10-minute interviews it's it's shorter than that but it does I think like Ador was talking about these three different phases of being a partner at YC the application reading interviews and then actually helping people during the batch uh I think one of the beautiful Parts about YC is that it's a cycle it's not the same thing 247 for the whole year and that allows Partners to really be curious and feel excited about this you know process um it's not like you know I've met other other VCS that spend you know tons and tons of time doing reach out and and um meetings and stuff like that and it happens continuously through the whole year uh with YC this is only a concentrated three two week three week period um and it allows the partners to kind of get out of the pitch mode you know when like an as as an as an entrepreneur you've you know probably experienced that that feeling of talking to an investor and just knowing that you are the you know 100th person that you that that's pitched them with this idea in the last three months and they're you know in the the classic elevator right they're they're they're going to some other meeting and you just get that brief hot second the difference here with YC Partners is that this is their dedicated time to hear from new companies like you practically don't even hear pitches the rest of the year uh because that's the way things are set up and again like I said like when you're coming into that interview everyone's starting from from the perspective of trying to see you succeed trying to get the best out of that and I think that's a really positive part of this process what was the by the way in 10 minutes we're going to do Q&A so I already see a bunch of questions on the left here uh but keep submitting questions uh and we'll kick that off soon uh when you became uh YC partner and I think both of you did YC companies before then what was the most surprising thing about being on the other side like what was the thing that you were like oh wow I didn't know it work like that I'd say that you know I I remember preparing for my YC interview and I spent days hours you know thinking about the questions and um Imagining the responses and you know prepping myself to walk through that door and you know see who was you know sitting there across the table um and I think many people like all the people who you know go through the interview process probably feel that way and they feel the stress and the kind of everything's boiling down to this one moment type of feeling and that's true like it is your time to shine but at the same time like the the partners they're not they don't view it as like a uh like a trapo or something like this is how do how best describe it it's like it's a day-to-day job like this is this is the partner's job and it's not they're they're not trying to make it this high stress scenario where like one one you know misstep or something like that and you're at the door um and I think it's kind of hard to recognize that when you are preparing and you think that this is like you know one of the most important you know meetings you might have in in you know in that year um it's just important to recognize that on the other side of the table like they're uh not like not trying to make it that stressful yeah how about you Adora um yeah I agree with Eric uh I think another thing to add is I guess as a when you come in as a Founder you sort of just have your company and you go and you'll meet people in your batch for us Eric and I were in various the first why time we did YC we were in very small batches um and now it's gotten bigger but on on the flip side of that coming in as a partner I think just seeing the enormity of the platform of the YC as a platform um and the impact it has had on the startups and the startups not just those who go with their YC but also those who do startup school and who just read the content and consume consume everything um it's that perspective just I think gave me much more appreciation of what YC is um and it's not just about helping Founders in the batch I guess what I'm getting at it's about you know helping the whole entire ecosystem move forward and level up um and so it's just that it's a I thought my responsibility was one thing and then sort of just became this much what I think a much bigger responsibility no that's interesting how does that show up in the interview process like you even if you're not accepting people you're trying to encourage them to kind of keep pursuing their startup and things like that oh yeah I mean it comes in the form of when we especially for people really on the edge like we spend a lot of time on those on the what we call the Rejection emails and trying to give useful feedback because we do want to see many people come back and apply again and you know try again and um I mean this shows up also in startup school where we're trying to help people prepare help people in their startups and hopefully at some point come to interview and be well prepared for that this kind of a meme uh to ignore invest rejection reasons uh you would say that the YY ones try to be like a little more genuine and people should take them seriously uh always always take it with a grain of salt yeah um so we we we OB you know your startup the best and we do not and so our our reasons may may be um not what's best for you but we we do genuinely try to give you an actual one versus some flippant one just to make you go away yeah I think one thing that's tricky about rejecting someone is like sometimes it is personal like and you can't talk about the personal reason like you have to like if it's like hey just seemed like you were unethical like it's hard to kind of say that you know what I mean well don't don't be unethical it's good first first step yeah uh I did say I won't start on the questions for another four minutes but there's there's a few good ones so I'm going to pick on uh one of these uh there's two questions around being a solo founder uh like a yeah I think solo Founders get a little paranoid because YC sounds like it's quite like anti- solo founder uh it should you know is there a specific way that you review an app or do an interview that's different for a solo founder uh is there like more a higher expectation or something like that Eric did you interview as a solo founder I forgot or uh for the first time no I had a I had a co-founder but uh co-founder quit during the batch oh um I I I sorry go ahead you were gonna say something I was just going to say like I think one of the one of the questions that may come up is why don't you have a co-founder MH and I think having a solid answer to this is is an important you know thing to prep for because if you don't have a good answer you know like what's a good answer and what's a bad onet to the well it it really depends on the like I just read something today that 90% of the top YC companies have co-founders or head co-founders during the um the application process so like the data is not on your side in this case and so in order to support your argument as to why you will be successful despite you know the data not being uh not supporting that you have to come up with some like either you know you have great Engineers great employees who you've worked with for multiple years and it just didn't make sense for them to be co-founders and you can you know explain that in some way or you're looking for one a good answer is like you are looking for one um and you know that you there's a particular set of deficiencies that you're looking to uh looking to fill with a co-founder um it's you know it's happened before we've accepted people I'm trying to think if there's been a specific example I could remember it's almost like contingent on you finding a co-founder you know that that that could happen I mean Dropbox was the famous uh contingent application I think uh yeah and obviously that worked out um yeah vasim do you want to come come back on and we can we can go through the questions back let's do it we got a bunch of questions here so we'll go through and I'm looking at the ones that are most uploaded uh the first one here is how the application deadline do YC start sending out right away or weeks later and long after Bim it's really hard to make you out I don't know something about your mic yeah uh the question was uh how soon after the YC application deadline does YC respond uh with invites so YC is now on a rolling missions basis um so it can be I mean by definition it can be before same day and after um so I don't think there's an actual answer for that and the follow-up question if folks can hear me now is how long does it typically take to hear back like after the application and does it mean anything if it takes a while to get an interview invite is that like they were on the fence or is that there's there not really signal there no so again if you if um because it's a rolling admissions you can get an interview at any point in time but there is like a set period where there's a deadline and so a bunch of interviews do get set within C certain um certain period And I think it changes every year but when I was there it was a couple weeks before the interviews and would everything would be sent out and you would schedule yourself in cool and do recommendations from existing YC Founders help uh depends yes and no um generally yes and what we don't like to see is um we find a little you sometimes um people try to find 50 YC Founders and try to all get them to put in recommendation but that founder that YC founder generally doesn't know anything about that person and we can see that very quickly and you basically you want to avoid that because that's it just appears to be waste of time but if you if you ask a bunch of people to send you a recommendation or post a recommendation they may actually put you you can add a negative recommendation in the system yeah and that that shows up as well like if there's a wall of people saying this person reach shared on Twitter for a recommendation that's not a good sign it is much better to get one or two extremely strong recommendations of someone you actually know who is a customer or is an investor or some some sort of person that's strongly tied to you to um put the recommendation in because also sometimes the partner will see the recommendation and reach out to that founder who gave the recommendation and ask for more information and it's obviously in your best interest that they can actually answer the questions about you and this is just good life advice generally like I get frequently Asked hey can you introduce me to investor XYZ and like the strength of yes the the prominence of the person making the recommendation of course is helpful but how well they know you and how well they can vouch you matters a lot like if someone sends me a cold email and I've never met them and they say hey can you please for this to so and so like I may but the first question they're going to ask me is like how well do you know this person and I will say I don't they sent me a cold email and like I don't know I thought I'd hit Bo because I was feeling nice that day or whatever so very plus one not just for YC just in general as you think about kind of networking and intros to investors like this the the quality of the intro and the strength of that signal really matters um another question for the three of you what are things why I see for in terms of progress or traction between applying and interviewing or is that even a something that folks look at oh yeah if something I mean again what you want to show is acceleration and growth and so um remember on mod actually I should have brought this up but if mod said are the things you should mention um during your interview and you really bring bring it up and if the headline is you just got you signed a huge million dollar signed a huge contract or a huge Loi then you definitely should be bringing that up um because again it shows your trajectory makes sense another question from our group and I think this is probably similar to the the thing you mentioned about countu present the question specifically is you know what if one founder has Aspergers and struggles to communicate in stressful situations I mean I assume here your answer is going to be like along the lines of your C CEO CTO answer but curious if you have any thoughts about kind of how to to divy up speak or whether it is important I mean you're going to have to speak if you're founding a like you're going to have to sell to customers you're going to have to sell to employees you're going to have to sell to other investors so someone's got to be amazing at it uh like yeah that's I think you just have to get over it and learn I mean if it's at least one of you needs to be amazing at it it's hard to imagine how you will succeed as a startup founder otherwise and like these nerve-wracking situations come up a as when you're doing a startup like you're going to be you know this isn't the most nerve-wracking situation even uh so I think you can't this is one of those things you can't have excuses over probably I mean every sales call is is is a situation like that so yes to to your point someone on the team has to be good about putting themselves out there and telling the story in a crisp and compelling way to investors to customers to employees like it just will not work unless there is someone on the team who has that ability um okay one other question do the you were part of the top 10 of Founders emails from Dalton mean much in terms of your application or is it just marketing those um there is that is a real thing I mean the the missions team um is highly analytical and they do rank the application so if you got one of those emails I would take it seriously and apply again and then for folks who applied to early interviews and got pushed to regular interviews are they at a disadvantage because they applied early I don't know if this is actually a new development since you all have been in the game on this one sorry say that again if something came up since they app yeah the question is they applied for the early interviews and they did not get the early interviews they got moved to the regular interview here's here's an important Point like you could get into your head a lot here but like I said like I kind of reiterated like when you walk into the interview you have 10 minutes to put your best foot forward no amount of kind of worrying about timing or this or that or recommendations like if you get an interview this is your chance to to share the best possible things about your company and you know your yourself and if you can do that in 10 minutes it washes away like literally anything that happened before like nothing really matters people the partners who are sitting in the room will evaluate what they see and make a decision how do application updates work if you make an update on your application after it's been reviewed say made more progress does that trigger the team to re-review it or is that not not something that exists I remember yeah the i in general I would say if there is a huge update from your end um I think there's a way to email the missions team application team and inform them about it and they can make good decision off of that if and if there's an update system I'm sure there someone's reading a feed of dates as well but generally speaking I I um I haven't seen updates to applications to be a major deciding factor in in a decision to interview or not there's a couple of questions around kind of raising money uh like I guess question one is if you have raised money is that a good sign and question number two is you know between applying and getting accepted uh or interviewing like should you try to raise money you know how do how does YC and the YC application process think about like external money I mean I guess it depends on who the external money is from um but um I I think in general if you're raising money that's obviously fine and you should just update the application or the interview community of of what you've raised if it's significant if it's just $50,000 um that's one thing but if you've raised like I don't know close to a million you probably want to update your application in the NYC on it and what's the best way to do that just tactically I don't think we know I don't think yeah we've been we've been away for three years so there's probably a than what we are but uh when I was there you would just email email um there's an email yeah sure yeah sure and and then for companies that have applied multiple times with tons of progress and still haven't gotten an interview any tips or advice you'd give them for their next application and I think probably the the question that folks have here is like H how can I tell if I should actually take another swing at it or if just like it is not worth my time to continue doing I um it's if you fill the application once um it might be a little bit work to do it once but to do it a second time I don't think it's that much effort so I I don't I don't see what the disadvantage is I guess of not applying again um and especially if you've made improvements in the business somehow or you know you've made a ton of progress like we I forgot what the stat is but stat is but essentially there's a high percentage of people who get in the second third fourth maybe even sixth or seventh time and generally what you're looking at is the appc you're looking at all the applications as as the person reading it you're looking at all the applications and you're kind of looking at what the founder has been learning and what they've been doing and how they've been growing um and if you can show a good Trend then that's in your favor um so to the extent that each application you're building on top of the previous one then there's a huge advant AG of of applying I people get in after I forgot what the record is but it's some insane number like nine times or something or or pivoting like i' I've seen good applications where a Founder acknowledges the last application and says look you know here's what I learned and I stopped doing that because the first time that YC read your application they may have read it and said this is inevitably going to happen to the founder you know to you after working on this idea and if you acknowledge that and say we figured it out like it took a little bit longer than expected and we figured it out and now we're working on this that's really good signal okay we're almost at time here so I want to ask one more question for this group and it's it's a little bit of a two-p Parker one person writes my technical co-founder works for a tech firm in India I'm in California if we get accepted he'll join full-time how will Partners view this Arrangement what's the do we do folks have VI on this kind of like conditional I'll do it if I get into YC life like that happens in life but like maybe this is one of those things where you don't like just share the positive part like assume that you're going to get in assume that the startup's going to work paint that picture you don't have to specifically I think adore mentioned you don't have to bring up like negative things without being prompted and then a kind of related question how does YC feel about adding a third founder during the batch if only two Founders interviewed and got in or more generally like are folks freaked out about kind of founding team changes during YC color for audience yeah it happens I think what we did back then was we just interviewed kind of like reined the team or the new founder it's pretty fun well folks we're basically at time here I really appreciate you all joining any parting thoughts to to our webinar attendees here maybe each of you can kind of like give give give a little last little piece of advice or last little pep talk or something to our uh to our audience maybe a mod you can kick it off for us I think the main thing I would say is like try to relax a little bit be yourself uh I think like that really uh I think the bit that we didn't touch on is you know the YC partner is going to spend a lot of time with you so they want to you know they'll kind of want to see that human and that you're like a easy person to just spend time with uh so I think that's like probably like this hidden Factor that's that is actually quite Fortune all you want to go next I don't have too much to add uh good luck I mean if you got an interview you're you know you're you're in a really good spot if you don't there's next batch and then at the same time you know one of the things that always makes YC kind of G is when someone succeeds You know despite having getting rejected like that just makes everyone feel you know really embarrassed so go and go and embarrass YC if you feel like you know you still got something and they didn't spot it I don't think I have anything to add I just good luck and um keep going that's all I can say uh you know YC is one Community there's plenty of other communities elsewhere that you can find and and grow indeed well look thank you all again for the time really amazing panel today thank you all for joining it's been a pleasure to kind of host and have you all and best of luck with the applications thanks everyone thanks thanks