1. I find your app's design distracting. It is outdated and it gives me waaay too much info. Both the colors and the blurred background bug my eyes.
2. Your website shows testimonials first, then has a short banner, yadayada, then I have to watch a short video on how it works which is just a video of app in use. I'd love to know what it is first, then read testimonials, then see a demo.
3. Looking at your instagram and you should definitely hire a designer. Instagram is where your audience is and where you should be targeting with ads and growing your userbase.
4. Your "Chat" tab has some nice view numbers! That's great - maybe organise it a bit more? This could be a potential goldmine. Here's an idea. Take quotes from those essays, put them on a blank colored canvas and post on IG. Example:
"NYU is fucking amazing when you get here because it's free, interesting, the teachers are hella cool" and hashtag it with proper tags. You'll probably get some attention and when user arrives to your profile he should see what you are and how you can help him.
BTW - today I tried your idea of posting the text on IG. Thanks for the idea :-) I also changed the website based on your suggestions. Hopefully its better than before
These are some awesome feedback. Thanks for taking time.
1. Very good feedback. The app is designed by me, I am no designer, but we could not afford a designer as we are bootstrapped. So I took the lead and designed it. Given a chance, I would definitely hire the best designer but need to live with it until I can raise funds
2. Makes sense. I will work on it
3. Great thought. Currently we leverage some college students to manage the Instagram account. They are not designers, but very enthusiastic about social media. Point well taken!
4. Thats awesome idea. I will implement it for sure.
Thank you so much for your time. Loved the feedback
With all due respect, someone who got accepted to Yale would not write:
"I was accepted at Yale.
Julia of Mentr was amazingly helpful and guided me all along the way. I'm so thankful her who helped me with my essays and got me to this point."
Obviously fake testimonials and stock photos are major red flags. If you have to use fake testimonials, for the love of all that is holy, find a good writer.
Maybe not perfect English, but I'd expect a significantly higher level of English than that quote demonstrates. Add in a stock photo and why would anyone think that that is real?
I volunteer with two organizations--one group serves mostly privileged high achievers (kids on track to be lawyers, architects, etc.) while the other is made up of kids who are probably only 50/50 to graduate high school. In both groups, most of the kids are TERRIBLE writers. Their vocabulary is usually fairly limited and their writing is stilted and repetitive.
Being a good writer generally doesn't matter in high school. Most classes don't require much writing and for those that do, they just require students to convey the right number of facts and avoid most grammar mistakes.
Kids also engage in far more code-switching than adults, I think. When asked for a recommendation, It's possible that this particular kid just dashed off a quick email rather than really sit down to write something engaging.
Wel thats entirely your opinion. Yale has loads of students who do not know perfect english. There are international students as well. Is your point really about "proper English"? Really?
You're kind of right - my point isn't so much about proper English (whatever that is) as it is about clarity of expression. Essentially, I wonder if you would have a better chance of getting into Y Combinator if you had a good editor proofread your Y Combinator application and your website.
It's way more likely that somebody lets you use their words, and that they get published unedited, than that they let you use their likeness on your website. So I don't find it dubious at all. I guess I'm naive or something.
I might be wrong, so thanks for engaging. You might be naive, but I might be an asshole. :)
But seriously, if I were doing a Y Combinator application, I would make sure that my testimonials were spot on. I would do so because one of Y Combinators' most enduring bits of advice is 'build something people want.'
I'd even equate that to grammatical errors in a website. You're competing for an interview against thousands of the best minds around. Proofread your copy!
I'm definitely not saying that. Y Combinator accepts companies from a diverse number of backgrounds/countries of origin.
Rather, I'm saying that when you apply to Y Combinator, you are competing against the best entrepreneurs around for a very limited number of seats. Since Y Combinator is so competitive, your chances of getting in would be better if you started working with a good writer or editor.
Genuine question: What value proposition does your company offer? Can't I get these same questions answered from a variety of different sources?
Additionally, some of the mentor responses lack a certain level of professionalism to be called a mentor. Example: "Question: Hi I am applying to NYU this fall. I have never visited NYU before because I live all the way in California. I was wondering if you could share your experience starting at NYU? Also any background info like where you came from, how was the transition, did you have to move far, etc.? Any extra information you want to add would be rlly helpful. Thanks in advance!
Answer: Absolutely! I'm from Chicago, Originally. (not the actual city, the suburbs. Fucking Suburbia, man.) I hope it makes you feel better to know that I'd never visited NYU before actually ..."
Sorry, I should have replied here--
@kifler - Mentr is a peer to peer mentoring platform for college and career advice. It lets high schoolers, who are unable to find any help related to college (except for factual info available on google), with real college students to get college advice. It fosters peer to peer communication, which is exactly whats happening right now. It does not mandate someone should have a degree in "mentorship" (if there is anything like that) but allows free information to be served. In the example below, the NYU student just felt like "fucking suburbia" and thats what she wrote. Moreover, as a company, we love when such "open" discussions happen and not afraid to hide it. Thats why you see this is as the top thread. If anyone feels all the communication between peers should be professional or highly intellectual, they need to hire professional college counselors. Was I able to answer your question satisfactorily?
So what's stopping me from checking into r/nyu and asking a multitude people to respond?
Where is the money to be made?
What makes a freshman mentor qualified to actually talk about the breadth of a program or a career when they have little to no exposure of a full 4 year program or job-track?
There are a number of questions that aren't answered succinctly on your site (at least that 'pop-out' at me) or within your post.
These are good questions. Thanks for asking them.
1. Why not go to r/nyu - I never said Mentr is the only place to get into but Mentr makes sure the students are real, and we verify their identities. Not sure if reddit does that?
2. Money is made when mentor renders a service like reviewing someone's college essay, or hosting someone for a campus tour. They make 70% of the transaction
3. They are qualified because they made it to their school. Also as I mentioned, the platform is for peer to peer communication. As long as the mentors have relevant experience to share, and are willing to help someone we will accept them as mentors. We also personally interview every mentor to make sure they are a good fit.
4. Thanks for the input on the website. We are struggling for resources to make a top notch site and that's one of the reasons we really wanted to be in YC so we can fix these loose ends.
Really appreciate you asking me these questions!
Edit: I was wrong. The testimonials are real. Only the first picture is a stock photo.
I just quickly checked out Mentr, the company listed on your profile.
The very first picture is obviously a stock photo[1], which I confirmed with a Google search.
Lying to customers and misrepresenting prior success might be a common tactic in Silicon Valley, but it also shows a lack of integrity (and lack of users) that would worry me as an investor.
If you can't find 5-10 real people to use your service and talk about it, you should move to the next idea.
These are no made up quotes, they sent it to me. The only conflict is that I had to use one stock image because that student did not send me her profile pic.
I was wrong in assuming any of the testimonials were fake. They're real.
That said, fake accounts on social media are legal. Fake testimonials aren't.
Reddit is one random success story and not indicative of whether something is ethical, where it concerns investors, or whether it's a good idea for a SaaS (a completely different model from Reddit).
Thats not true. All the students are real, except the one who did not send her profile picture. I could have left it alone, but she is one of the best student success stories. I did not lie, I can share their emails. Also not sure if you ever ran a company, but many times in business you need to take these risks. You need to work with whatever you have.
It sounds like OP's feedback is not that you shouldn't take risks, but that they think the risks you took may backfire with investors. (Or rather would backfire with OP, an investor, or someone taking that perspective).
You may want to proof read your testimonials again. The testimonial from Leah has two different surnames. She is called "Leah Smith" and then "Leah Remini".
Your goal should be to build a sustainable business, ideally one that is cash-flow positive very early on. If you can't do that, a secondary goal might be to try to prove your concept with some paying customers.
When you reach those goals, you'll get investors (if you need them). They may be YC or they may not. YC isn't the only source of money, and there's no evidence that it's the best one, either.
If you can't reach those goals, badgering investors into giving you some money isn't a solution. It'll just prolong the life of a business that's doomed to fail.
> So why don’t we tell people why we didn’t invite them to interview? Because, paradoxical as it sounds, there often is no reason. The median application is usually pretty good. The reason it gets rejected is not that it seems particularly bad, but that there are a sufficient number of others that seem particularly good.
Well thats stock statement written by a lawyer. YC should spend time letting founders know where they failed, and what can they do to improve. We spent days to write the perfect application, why cant they spend few minutes for the feedback? StartX does it. They called me for a 15 min feedback and told me where I was wrong. I loved it because I came to know my blindspots.
@kifler - Mentr is a peer to peer mentoring platform for college and career advice. It lets high schoolers, who are unable to find any help related to college (except for factual info available on google), with real college students to get college advice. It fosters peer to peer communication, which is exactly whats happening right now. It does not mandate someone should have a degree in "mentorship" (if there is anything like that) but allows free information to be served. In the example below, the NYU student just felt like "fucking suburbia" and thats what she wrote. Moreover, as a company, we love when such "open" discussions happen and not afraid to hide it. Thats why you see this is as the top thread. If anyone feels all the communication between peers should be professional or highly intellectual, they need to hire professional college counselors. Was I able to answer your question satisfactorily?
My feedback would be to work on making your business successful, regardless of getting into an accelerator program. If you can succeed, the act of doing that will resolve any concerns any accelerator program may have.
And if you're wondering why you'd need YC if you are succeeding on your own - sometimes you don't. But the benefit of an accelerator, or even investors, is that they can take your existing growth path and increase it's speed tremendously.
@hluska if Y Combinator cannot deal with the speed that a startup needs to move, which means things cannot be perfect, then my startup is not a good fit for them really. But as far as I know YC, they love scrappy people who put together things people love. My company is already changing people's lives by helping them get to college and thats all what matters. Screw "good english"
@everyone - If you cannot help, I dont need your sarcasm.
@smt88 - well said and every entrepreneur knows this goal. However in order to make a sustainable business, it needs initial capital and marketing investment to be able to reach a critical mass. Without that, the product will not have enough usage to go beyond its current state.
I did not apply to YC for investment, it was for the network they brought with them. They could connect me with growth hackers who can get the marketing done with smaller budget. Their mentorship would have been beneficial to take the business to next level.
I can get loan from the bank, but that does not mean its valuable.
YC will not help you with "growth hacking" or "marketing". I worked at a YC company (Magic YC'S15) while they were in YC before Demo Day. The one thing YC helped us with was to help build the best product for our users. Our service had gone viral and the focus was to focus on a specific KPI and grow it 10% week over week before demo day. YC doesn't help you with your first users, YC helps you know what to focus on for the best organic growth and building a product your users love.
My advice for you to get into YC is build a product that small group of users love. Then when you apply to YC you'll have traction. Also your team plays a big role, you'll need a technical cofounder & sales cofounder. Then the last thing is DOMAIN EXPERTISE. Someone on your team has to be an expert in their field. If you don't have these three things (traction, team and domain expertise) then the chance of you getting into YC are 0%.
Thanks. These are very useful comments. Thanks for taking time to respond. I agree there is lot of things we can improve in the product. The product has not gone viral so I am experimenting with few ideas. I am the technical founder and CEO. My co-founder handles product. Domain expertise is certainly lacking because we are not in college or high school. Had this idea been done by a college student, I agree this would have had better possibilities of making through.
I feel this statement could carry a lot of meaning about the original question as well. It was obviously not the feedback they desired, but one needs to be able to accept opinion once they as for it. Hopefully, they will pick it up this time.
I accept all opinions - but not the ones that are not useful. For example someone said something about roulette. How is that useful? Why did they even spend time to write that statement? I love critical comments, I really love them. I have replied to each comment above. What I can't take is sarcasm. That's it.
You quite frankly appear to have somewhat of an attitude. You come off as defensive and carrying a chip on your shoulder. Why on earth would you get yourself involved in a petty fight over people writing comments that aren't "useful" on your post? Have you never used this site before[1]?
People try to give you feedback that your site feels fake to them. You're not internalising it, you launch straight into a hurt defence. Someone quoted from YC policy, presumably to shed some light on the situation, and you dismiss it as a stock response written by a lawyer, lecture them on what they should be doing and start praising a competitor.
In short, if you already have all the answers, what do you need YC for?
1: Frankly, your apparent confusion as to how commenting works is a bit jarring - it befits someone asking for help to acquaint himself a bit with how things work, but that's the least of your problems.
Ok this I feel is super useful for me. You gave me actionable feedback and I am super thankful. I will definitely improve upon this. Yep I get defensive, thats something I am working on. I took all the feedback to heart. The person who commented on the "fake testimonial" did change his statement (check it out). I tried to find a real user image but I felt I cannot use any user's image without asking them. So I am trying to internalize all comments. I also replied to everyone who took time to help me. I have not used this site much. I have been active since the YC application days.
> Why on earth would you get yourself involved in a petty fight over people writing comments that aren't "useful" on your post? - Yep I should not have. It was not worth. My bad.
> Have you never used this site before - Only sometime
> You're not internalising it, you launch straight into a hurt defence - I will improve
> Someone quoted from YC policy, presumably to shed some light on the situation, and you dismiss it as a stock response written by a lawyer - I still think its a stock response. YC should do what it should. I don't expect everyone to agree with me (hope this is not attitudish, i am simply narrating my stand on it without being influenced by anyone)
>start praising a competitor - Whats wrong in praising a better service? Isnt that the freedom of such forums that people can express their opinions?
> if you already have all the answers, what do you need YC for? - I don't have all the answers. I still need to find out the answer to my original question - why did YC reject me twice. Some folks have helped me by telling me that its combination of team/domain expertise and traction. But would have been nice if YC could have told me that themselves.
>1: Frankly, your apparent confusion as to how commenting works is a bit jarring - it befits someone asking for help to acquaint himself a bit with how things work, but that's the least of your problems - I am not sure if I understand.
> The person who commented on the "fake testimonial" did change his statement (check it out).
It doesn't matter. That person almost certainly isn't a potential customer. I'm not either. Changing our minds is a waste of your time. You won't get a chance to debate the people who come to your site and turn away because it looks fake.
> I still think its a stock response. YC should do what it should. I don't expect everyone to agree with me (hope this is not attitudish, i am simply narrating my stand on it without being influenced by anyone)
The attitude is that it seems like it's very important for you to be right about things that doesn't matter (or you have very poor judgment in seeing what matters). That's a very unpleasant trait, and if the YC interviewers caught even a little bit of that, I suspect they'd fail you flat out on that alone.
> Whats wrong in praising a better service? Isnt that the freedom of such forums that people can express their opinions?
What's wrong is that it's off-topic (and also has a bit of the "important to be right" thing above). People came to your thread to help you find out why you didn't get accepted, not to debate whether YC is stupid.
> I don't have all the answers. I still need to find out the answer to my original question - why did YC reject me twice. Some folks have helped me by telling me that its combination of team/domain expertise and traction. But would have been nice if YC could have told me that themselves
"Having all the answers" is a figure of speech. It means "not listening when people are trying to answer your questions". Nobody here can tell you why you were rejected, but they can offer ideas. And it looks a lot like you're not listening to any ideas that doesn't fit your preconceived notion of why you were rejected. How do you know that the people telling you it's because of "team/domain expertise and traction", are right and not the ones that think your website looks fake? Hence, having all the answers.
> I am not sure if I understand.
Your style of commenting is all over the place, and suggests that you have not spend some time acquainting yourself with the way comments are done here. That's a bit impolite, but obviously can't be the reason you were rejected. On the other hand, if it's indicative of poor communication skills, then that could be a big problem.
I disagree. An answer such as "Ask them not us" is not productive either specially when I am talking about a serious matter. There are so many people who answered in a useful manner. I accept critical comments but can't handle sarcasm. Sorry.
2. Your website shows testimonials first, then has a short banner, yadayada, then I have to watch a short video on how it works which is just a video of app in use. I'd love to know what it is first, then read testimonials, then see a demo.
3. Looking at your instagram and you should definitely hire a designer. Instagram is where your audience is and where you should be targeting with ads and growing your userbase.
4. Your "Chat" tab has some nice view numbers! That's great - maybe organise it a bit more? This could be a potential goldmine. Here's an idea. Take quotes from those essays, put them on a blank colored canvas and post on IG. Example:
"NYU is fucking amazing when you get here because it's free, interesting, the teachers are hella cool" and hashtag it with proper tags. You'll probably get some attention and when user arrives to your profile he should see what you are and how you can help him.
Also, kifler asked legit questions.