How to Hack the YC Application

For the past two weeks my co-founder Eric and I have been hacking the YC application for our company Forecast. What follows is a brief account of our key takeaways. It goes without saying that until we actually make it into YC, these hacks, ideas, and suggestions are totally worthless.

Get all the recommendations!!!

According to everyone we talked to, one of the of the most important parts of the application process is getting a bunch of strong recommendations from YC alumni. When we started applying, we were only friends with one YC alum, so we put our network to use. Eric hacked together a script that took the list of all YC company names and got the names of founders via the CrunchBase API. We then combed through Facebook to see who in our network was connected to YC alumni. We were very surprised by the results: our 1,300 facebook friends were connected to 83 YC alums, which we were able to convert into 24 great introductions. Ultimately, we got lots of amazing, candid feedback on our application and more than half of the alums we connected with said they’d write us a recommendation.

A/B test that sh*t

Apply the build / measure / learn loops from the Lean Startup process to your application. Every day, we would write answers, collect suggestions from friends and YC alums, and incorporate their ideas. When we started, we got lots of conflicting positive and negative feedback. However, we kept iterating until the responses from new reviewers became reliably positive.

Use Olark

Dan Siroker from Optimizely suggested we add Olark chat to our demo video page, with a welcome message “chat with the founders!” This is a fun way to give props to a previous YC company while simultaneously tricking the YC partners into talking to you.

Do your homework, duh

Read everything by Paul Graham, the YC partners, and any YC alums. Basically read everything YC-related that you can get your dirty little startup mitts on. One totally dope resource we discovered is Jason Shen’s Guide to YC. Not only does Jason give insights on the application and interview process from an alum’s perspective, he also highlights especially important points from Paul’s essays.

Get noticed

As long as it’s not annoying or likely to cause bodily harm, you should do whatever you can to get noticed by the YC partners. This blog post is our long shot attempt at getting noticed.

We have no idea if any of these antics will actually work, but if we’re lucky enough to get an interview or if we get rejected we’ll post an update. Regardless, we’ve learned a ton about YC and met some amazing people.

Rob Woodbridge melts René Pinnell’s face on UNTETHER.tv

The always engaging Rob Woodridge interviewed me on UNTETHER.tv.

Half way through the interview Rob and I got into a shouting match about the efficacy of hyperlocal LBS personalization marketing. He pulled a knife but I deftly disarmed him with my bandana. Somehow that all got cut from the video. Too bad. Made for good drama.

Time Bandits: The Next Revolution in Social

We’ve submitted a panel to the SXSW panelpicker!

Check it out: http://frc.st/sxsw

Description: In the last decade, Facebook and other social networks have focused on mapping and documenting our existing relationships. The recent rise of Twitter and foursquare has transitioned the emphasis to what is happening right now in our lives and the lives of those around us. With the past and present of our lives established online, the next frontier is future-tense social networking. Learn from both established players as well as new startups exploring ways for users to share plans and facilitate real-world connections. Will these new location services enable intent-based marketing? Can they disrupt the advertising and marketing industries in tangible, long-lasting ways? We have brought together the brightest minds in mobile social networking to debate how future-tense social networking will revolutionize the way we live, shop, and play.

We would very much appreciate your vote! You can vote for our panel at http://frc.st/sxsw

Back to you Jenn: The Weather Channel interviews René Pinnell about Forecast

Jenn and Steph of the Weather Channel interviewed René Pinnell (CEO & Designer) about Forecast. When they asked René on the show we thought they were confused. We explained that Forecast has NOTHING to do with weather but they could not be deterred. See if you can spot Jenn’s hilarious eye-roll at the end. Not sure if she’s rolling her eyes at René or the infinite absurdity of TV “News.”

Check out our totally ridiculous debute on national TV:

Also thank you to Lexie Kier for her awesome post on Zeitgeist on Ice. Check it out here.

Forecast Growth @ 1 Month

Since launching our private beta a month ago, we’ve seen our user base double every week. On average, every user invites 25 of their friends to join Forecast and more than one friend signs up per user. We’re sticky too; 10% of our users forecast every day!

Here’s a cool snap shot of people forecasting around the world.

Forecast in The Next Web

Courtney Boyd Myers is the East Coast editor of The Next Web. She began her career writing about robots. She loves magnets + reading on a Kindle and now she can add one more laurel to her career — writing a great post about Forecast. This is probably my favorite post so far about Forecast. Great use case.

Check it out here.

“Last night I had plans to attend a movie premiere followed by drinks at an after party. I wasn’t sure who else was going to the after party and I wanted to make sure at least a few of my media savvy friends were in. So I opened the Forecast app, tapped the Forecast button and made it known to my Foursquare friends that I was hitting up Drinks at Denton’s at 10pm. Immediately, everyone using Forecast who’s also my Foursquare friend received a push notification of my plan. 5 minutes later, my friend Jenna shared that she was planning on going too. Sweet.” – Courtney Boyd Myers

AppScout gets Forecast

Our friend Terrance Gaines from AppScout wrote an awesome post on Forecast.

Check it out here.

AboutFoursquare blogs AboutForecast

The About Foursquare blog wrote a great post about Forecast.

“Forecast is easy to use and makes it fun to plan meetups with your friends, in a way that us less-spontaneous users can handle. Out in the suburbs, it’s hard to meet up with someone based purely on their foursquare checkin. They’ll likely be gone by the time you get in the car and get there. When I’ve got a little warning, I can make plans and be there at the same time they are.” – AboutFoursqaure

Check it out here.

AppAdvice recommends Forecast

Bryan Wolfe of AppAdvice wrote a nice post about Forecast. My favorite quote is: “The end-result could be a game-changer in the world of social networking.” Thanks Bryan.

Check it out here.

Forecast in the NYTimes

Jenna Wortham wrote a great post in the NYTimes Bits Blog about Forecast. Check it out here.