Show HN: iPG - YC Interview Simulator
To prepare for demo day, I've decided to use iPG with M-x doctor (she's from a small, not widely known country that has some native naming eccentricites and is in constant war with their two lettered neighbors), the CEO at my new health startup Psychologr. Obviously I'm the technical cofounder and she's the ideas person, so I let her do the talking.
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iPG: Who might become competitors?
M-x doctor: What do you think?
iPG: How big an opportunity is there?
M-x doctor: I'll ask the questions, if you don't mind!
iPG: What do you understand that others don't?
M-x doctor: Can you elaborate on that?
iPG: Why will you succeed?
M-x doctor: I could ask the same thing myself.
iPG: Who would be your next hire?
M-x doctor: I would appreciate it if you would allow me to do the questioning.
iPG: Would you relocate to Silicon Valley?
M-x doctor: Why do you say?
iPG: How much does customer acquisition cost?
M-x doctor: I have asked myself that question many times.
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So, the tactic seems to be stay firm, and let him know who's asking the questions.
Can we have our money now?
The person who is perhaps the brightest [1] person I've ever met would - if this is a fair simulation - be rejected by YC. When answering a question he often won't even have begun to reply after fifteen seconds. I wonder how often YC rejects people such as that.
[1] I mean this in a particular way: capable of extraordinarily deep insight very, very rapidly. Just not 15 seconds rapid.
When talking to PG and the other YC partners, be substantive, and get straight to the point.
DO NOT BEAT AROUND THE BUSH. Do not hem and haw. "Uhm"s and "uh"s don't lend an aura of intelligence.
Use precise and concise language. You aren't pitching a VC that will ask you what your "secret sauce" is.
He talks quickly, and so do the other YC partners. Try to match their tempo (as you should when talking to anyone).
Heh, I thought my team was the only one that made this kind of thing before interviews. This one's got much better content than ours though; thanks for sharing!
For those like me who are curious what the RNG missed, here's the data list:
Are you guys affiliated with http://www.backblaze.com?
If not, you should change your logo and website design fast. Possibly your name too.
Holy macro! This is like a never-ending interrogation! But one hell of a good one, nonetheless. Great piece of stuff James and iPG! Should help out a ton of interviewees.
Given the nature of this conversation, I'll throw in a gratuitous plug for "pgbot" a half-baked "AIML implementation of pg" that I cooked up one night in response to something somebody said here (or on #startups).
https://github.com/mindcrime/pgbot
It might be fun to get some other people to fork that and start making it "smarter."
Press N
Are questions such as "How will you make money?" answerable in 15 seconds? I tried it with my personal concept, and even with trying to remain concise and to the point, I can't answer that question without it becoming a string of words that would not pass as a sentence.
Wow! This is exactly what we have been playing around with. The tool looks really good.
Is this something you are looking to take further?
What has been the feedback in terms of usefulness? Do users this this type of mock interview works?
Have you done any research or analysis on the effectiveness?
Take a look at this great list of questions too by Francis Dierick who created an iPhone app too. http://fr.anc.is/2012/01/21/top-100-startup-questions/
The speed of question makes it more like RPG than iPG
Clever and fun!
Please fix the misspelling though... "quick, consice [sic] answers"
Love it! It helped me a lot before my interview ;)
Any way to make this a generic tool? Would love to be able to use this with my own questions for other purposes.
This is both stimulating and depressing at the same time. As if there's only one correct way of thinking and communicating. Why conform yourself to someone else's nature? You're not Steve Jobs, and you're not pg, you are yourself -- forget the pro-tip and be yourself.
...however, there is also a “separate application track for groups that don't have an idea yet”
I don't like the timing effect, but I believe that those are super important questions to ask yourself before attending an interview (be it for/at YC or somewhere else)
Record the person's response!
Would be great if you could replay each of your responses at the end to see if you sounded horrible (or good).
I have some good engrish for you today: What resistance will they have to trying you and how will you overcome it?
This is pretty clever. Well done guys.
Well done.
I'd like to see some more pro tips!
We're using this right now to prepare for our interview. Nice work guys!
Seems to require a keyboard so not usable on iPad.
Link seems to be down. Anyone got a mirror?
it would be nice if sample answers could be recorded and votes recorded, pushing higher score responses up..
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Love it, good luck guys!
Brilliant!
Nice nyan cat lol.
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