So I have to wonder if this application would have gotten anywhere if pg hadn't personally met these guys previously?

ie. is this really a sample of a "winning" YC application?

> We are going to build an infrastructure that will allow consumers to order food from their cell phones (via a text-interface, rather than voice), drive to the restaurant and pick up their order.

That sounds like a much more promising business than "a site where users submit news and sites, vote them up and write comments about them". I don't mean this is in a snarky way, I'm a reddit user too. Am I missing something?

I like Steve's answer: "Steve: Ten years from now I hope that we would have either sold the company for gazillions of dollars, or realized we could not do so and tried to come up with something new."

The application content seems remarkably normal. Even the Restaurant idea. Nothing stands out other than the 'Animal' question. Like, within the realm of most of us at HN (even if the quantity of YC applications has raised the bar since Summer 2005). Thanks for posting this.

PG, when you read this did you remember them as the guys who met you after your talk in Cambridge?

I just realized that Alexis = Reddit founder = kn0thing = the author of this -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Isk88nT0sRY

That is one of my favourite youtubes. Big kudos! I couldn't stop laughing the first time I watched it. It's amazing how most of it still applies after ~5 years

It's interesting to see how the application form has evolved.

So how on earth did it get from that to what is currently reddit?

Made me laugh: "animals? were a freaking zoo!"

this is actually pretty close to an already existing service in Denmark called just-eat.dk, except it focuses mostly on fast-food, and you order over the internet.

So pg missed the boat on this one. Fortunately I haven't seen this anywhere in the us and it will take some times before these guys will branch out of the country, if at all.

This supports that investors invest in the founders and not the idea. This isn't the most compelling application/idea however the founders made an impression and that got them a slot.

I actually have been planning to send an application in with this exact idea. I came to the site today to check in case the next application round is open, and to conceivably fill an application out with this information in it.

I'm not sure what to do, at this point. We still think this would be a success but, good god.

Edit: In the opinion of anyone reading this; do you think it's a better idea to put our application in as planned (using this exact idea...), or to try to differentiate ourselves somehow?

I find the number of poeople who end up not working on the startup interesting. We also saw that on a few of the other yc posted apps recently. As a college senior I try to put myself in their shoes. I think a good barometer for startup success could be how good the offers they are willing to turn down to start it. If nothing else, the need to validate their decision could add extra motivation

This is totally a service I've discussed building recently. With 3rd party payment aggregation, you could totally take payment and dispurse funds to restaurants fairly easily.

Could do native iOS/droid apps or even SMS ordering with twilio

Interesting idea for the time. God aweful business plan though. I hope that they had a thorough document with much more market reaserch before courting investors.