MattMaroon.com

The TechCrunch party was fun. I had taken out a stack of what I thought was at least 1 billion business cards, plus another 10 or so in my wallet, and managed to give them all away and get a few dozen in return. I plan on following up on pretty much all of them.

It was nice meeting some of the TechCrunchers. Michael was, of course, the man of the hour, so I didn’t really get to talk to him much, but I did chat a little more with some of the other crew members. They apparently have a number of interns who all seem to really enjoy working there. I’ll have to figure out how to get us a few of those pretty soon.

I met people from every sort of startup imaginable. It was almost entirely Web 2.0 stuff (no big surprise) with social networks devoted to niche after niche, from fantasy sports to food lovers. There were a couple guys who run a social network for dog owners (and have a sister site for crazy cat ladies too) called dogster. When I told them what I’m doing (and here’s the first public hint) they asked me what I thought about Michael Vick. Their users are more or less ready to tie him to a stake.

I talked a bit with Robert Scoble, asking him if he felt like an enemy combatant, but the recent feud appears to be all in good fun. He’d invited me to talk about my startup on camera (I assume for Podtech) but I wasn’t sure we were ready for it yet so I declined.

Y Combinator startups were there in full force. The guys I’d previously met from Xobni were around, as well as Justin TV (minus Justin), Weebly, and a couple others. Trevor was the only founder in the house. I was asked a ton of questions about the program from pretty much everyone I met. It was nice finally being in a crowd where everyone knew of Paul Graham and not LeBron James. They’ve definitely built up a massive amount of interest and good will in the tech community, and I hadn’t really known about it until then.

I met with a couple investors, and someone who promised to connect me with a firm that’s very interested in our field. I also met a ton of PR and marketing people, who I pestered for as many free tips as I could. That’s going to be a considerable part of our success I think.

I was too busy handing out business cards to take many photos. I did take one with Michael Arrington but haven’t seen yet if it came out well. I’ll Flickr it later.

 

 

 

I’m out in San Francisco today for the Tech Crunch Party at August Capital. I’ve been instructed to take copious pictures. I’ll try to get them Flickred in a short time period and report back. I’m staying in Palo Alto and leaving Saturday night, should anyone else be interested in meeting up at some point.

A friend said it shows my dedication to my startup that I’m willing to spend something like 18 hours in travel time in 2 days just to pass out some business cards. I think it shows, more than anything, my optimism. As we move toward demo day, which is now in 2 short weeks, I’m feeling pretty good about the progress we’ve made in the last two months.

I’m not really worrying too much about demoing. I’m not exactly sure what we’re going to show off yet. I might actually end up using Power Point, if I can get them to lift the YCombinator ban on those. I’m not really a fan of slideshows, but I think I have a really good idea as to how to use it effectively in this instance.

In fact, I’m not really worried about anything. That’s one area in which my poker experience has truly helped me. I’m able to deal with uncertainty. That is, quite possibly, the hardest thing about a startup. Everything is up in the air. Right now, we don’t know for sure if massive amounts of people will like our product. We don’t know where the money necessary to pay the company’s bills will come from in a few months. We don’t know where we will be headquartered after August. We don’t know, even if we figure those things out, how many employees we’ll need or where we’ll get them from. If we catch on, we don’t know how we’ll deal with scaling. We have nothing but educated guesses and thousands of lines of code at this point.

But I’m used to making a living from a game that, even if played perfectly, can return zero income for months, so none of the above really bothers me. I feel like our idea, or at least some permutation of it, will catch on, and when that happens the rest will fall into place. If people want what we’re making the other problems are all solvable. And if they don’t, that too is a problem that, with effort, can be fixed.

My poker career has also given me financial stability, which I think is a huge asset. I remember asking Greg McAdoo from Sequoia what he thought about founders cashing out a little during financing rounds and he seemed pretty against it. His logic was that if someone was confident in their company, why would they want to sell more of it?

I think the answer is financial stability. A large part of the reason I’m so positive about my company is the fact that I don’t have to worry about where the rent check will come from. I don’t have to worry about how I’ll put gas in my car or food on my table. I could even pay the company’s bills and my considerable rent out of pocket if I had to for quite some time. I’m far from wealthy, so I’m still definitely motivated, but I’m not overly concerned about money. And that lets me worry more about building something people want.

I personally don’t want to cash out any of my company because I don’t need the money. Any founder who is financially stable and still wants to cash out I’d be leery of as an investor. But for your average broke MIT grad trying to start the next Facebook, I think a little financial stability would be a huge benefit. But then, I only have a slight amount of experience, and only on one side of the investor/founder relationship, so take that for what it’s worth.

Anyway, I look forward to this evening. I’ve been reading Tech Crunch for quite some time, it will be nice to meet some of the people behind it. There’s a news.ycombinator.com meetup at the same exact time, that I’ll unfortunately miss, but it’s my backup plan in case something goes wrong with the party I flew out here for.

Anyone else going?

 

YCombinator’s winter applications are now open. I thought I’d write a few tips for those who were considering applying. I’ll give you the old top ten list that you crazy netizens seem to love.

1. Apply early. I’m guessing something like 75% of their applications are submitted in the last few days. That’s usually how those sorts of things work. Doing it earlier can only help get you a little more consideration time.
2. Spend a good amount of time on your application, preferably spread out over a few days. Be clear and concise. People by nature equate communication skills to intelligence, especially when they’ve never seen you before. If the wording in your application is great, you’re going to create a favorable impression right off the bat. If it’s poor you’re highly likely to get round-filed instantly. This of course applies to much more in life than YCombinator applications. Take a day away from your writing and go back to it, look it over again. Do this with your cofounders. Make it as good as you possibly can.
3. Show a strong working knowledge of your industry. Are you doing a live music site? Tell them how big the industry is, how big you think it could be, why, and what you plan to do to get it there. This will all function as research for when you interview anyway, and even if you don’t get an interview, it’s just good business practice to know your industry.
4. Make a business, not a feature. This isn’t necessary, as they’ve funded a lot of groups I consider to be making a feature. For instance Zenter, which is obviously much more suited for integration with an online office suite like Google’s than as a standalone business. But I think a company like Reddit or Loopt, which has the potential to be a free-standing smash hit, is more likely to be funded. If you’re trying to do something I consider a feature, it better be damned good one (like theirs is) and you should have a seriously impressive prototype to show.
   My personal test is to ask “could this company eventually IPO?” In the current batch, I’d say roughly half are businesses and half are features. (I’d also guess that 4 have billion dollar plus market cap potential if they work out well.) That doesn’t seem like much, but I’d guess the ratio among overall applicants to be much, much smaller.
5. Have 2-3 founders. This is ridiculously important. Unless you’ve already built Photoshop in Flex or something else amazing, you’re not going to get accepted as a single founder. Seriously, if you haven’t been Tech Crunched, just don’t even try. You probably want a second person anyway, regardless of YCombinator. I don’t know if they’ve ever funded groups larger than 3, but I would guess that it’s more likely they’d pick a 4 man team than a solo founder. Either way if you’re over 3, you might want to pare it down.
6. Plan on proceeding even if you don’t get the interview. As Paul says, the trick to getting people to invest in you is to make them think that if they don’t, they’re going to miss out. And there’s no better way to make them think that than for it to be true. If you think your idea and team of founders are good enough for their serious consideration, then you also think it’s good enough to try on your own. We were definitely planning to go ahead with ours (though probably at a slower pace) even if we weren’t funded by them.
7. Start building your prototype now. Regardless of how great you or your idea might be, a good prototype is probably worth a lot in the interview. (I’m actually speaking more from other people’s experiences, as we didn’t even get to show ours.) And if you don’t get the interview, it’s good for your business anyway since it starts the evolutionary process in motion.You’re only going to get a couple weeks between when you find out they want to meet you and when you have to interview, so if you spend the preceding month or two building your product, you’ll be way ahead of the curve.
8. Make yourself easy to research. Contribute to news.ycombinator.com. Write a blog and make sure Google has it as the top link for your name (chances are that’s not going to be hard for you to do). Toss any past projects you’ve done up online if they’re no longer live and include them in your application. I have a strong suspicion that if they find your idea at all enticing, they take a look at the links you submit to them.
9. Read all of Paul Graham’s essays. He likes people who already know everything he’s said there. For one, it means he has to repeat himself less. And for another, it means you’ve already got a solid foundation from which to work. Jessica Livingston’s Founders at Work is also a great resource.
10. Be honest with them and yourself. There was a section in the application that asked founders something like “why would your project be hard for one of your competitors to clone.” Our answer was that technologically it wouldn’t. And unless you’re building something like Zenter or maybe Loopt, that’s going to be largely true for you too. There isn’t much Yahoo or Google programmers couldn’t pump out in a relatively short period of time, and anyone who says otherwise is either lying or delusional.
    And that’s fine, because we can all name ten times they’ve made a technologically equal (or even superior) clone of some popular website only to watch it flounder. So explain why, even if they did clone you, you really wouldn’t be hurt by it.

Bonus tip:

11. Suck up to Jessica. She’s the organization’s full-time member. I’ll ask her if she’s into flowers or candy or anything of the like (I know she likes wine) and report back to you. I don’t know if bribery will help, but hey, it can’t hurt. (And yes Jessica, I want a cut of anything tasty that is sent to you because of this.)

If there’s a common theme in the above tips, it’s that they are all things you should be doing anyway if you want to succeed in the startup space (especially sucking up to Jessica). That’s not a coincidence. People want to invest in companies that they think will succeed. Build a company that seems likely to thrive and YCombinator will probably want you. Don’t and they won’t.

And as a last and final note, I should mention that you can safely ignore the myriad of “YCombinator rips off founders” posts you read around the tech blogosphere. They don’t. I’ve heard numerous stories from alumni of them putting their founders’ interests before their own, and not one of the opposite.

They’re truly good people who want, more than anything, to help young entrepreneurs and, I think, test some of Paul Graham’s theories. They do so much for their founders that those outside don’t see, and they bring far more value to the table than the small percentage of the company they purchase. They’re not a charity by any means, and I suspect that they will make plenty of money over time, but they don’t steal it. They earn it. So I don’t mean to evangelize or sound cultish, and anyone who knows me will tell you that I’m not one for drinking the Kool-Aid, but anyone who thinks YCombinator rips people off is probably either jealous or ignorant.

Later I’ll give a few tips for those who get to the interview stage, and then some for those who get accepted. I’m still learning a lot about the last one, but I have a few pretty good ideas already.