Hi everyone! Interview season is upon us. For those who are applying, I thought I'd share my experiences doing an interview 2 years ago (and not getting in) + the questions they asked me. I wrote a substack post with the full details, but here's the summarized version:
Timeline of events:
> we worry that Slack is now so deeply embedded into every company, it’s incredibly hard to get users to pay attention to a new tool. We’ve no doubt it will happen eventually but we suspect it will require a product that creates a completely new paradigm and no one saw coming. Similar to how Facebook eventually became the biggest threat to Google’s ad business. So while we think you have a great set of ideas to make incremental improvements to Slack's product, we worry that won't be enough for you to get customers and scale this.
Hope this has been helpul! Good luck everyone!
Timeline of events:
- March 24: YC application deadline (although they mention May 19 as the date you'll know by if they’ll be inviting you for an interview)
- May 15: I submitted my YC application
- May 20: I receive an email inviting me for an interview
- May 23:
- 7pm UK time: Interview with YC partner and associate
- Midnight: I receive an email for a “Reinterview” (as opposed to a “follow up” interview).
- May 24
- 10pm UK time: Second interview with a different YC partner and associate
- Midnight: I receive an email that YC have decided not to fund me this batch.
- What are you building?
- Why doesn’t slack scale? (I was building an slack alternative)
- Go to market strategy?
- Would this be a replacement for slack or work in addition to it?
- You’re a solo founder. How are you thinking about a cofounder?
- What profile are you thinking about for a cofounder?
- What will you do if this idea doesn’t work out?
- What are you building?
- Do you have any prototypes or designs? What progress have you made?
- Why is it different?
- How will you acquire users?
- Have you worked on a growth team before? What did you learn from that?
> we worry that Slack is now so deeply embedded into every company, it’s incredibly hard to get users to pay attention to a new tool. We’ve no doubt it will happen eventually but we suspect it will require a product that creates a completely new paradigm and no one saw coming. Similar to how Facebook eventually became the biggest threat to Google’s ad business. So while we think you have a great set of ideas to make incremental improvements to Slack's product, we worry that won't be enough for you to get customers and scale this.
Hope this has been helpul! Good luck everyone!