What I learned about startups from: Getting run over by a car

Is your startup too focused on keeping “your eye on the ball?”

Two weeks ago my co-founder George and I applied to Y Combinator (YC) with our startup. On Monday we got an invitation to interview. If you don't live in Silicon Valley, you might not know that YC is a very big deal. No kidding. Companies like Reddit, Loopt and Dropbox got their start there.

After getting the interview request and reading online advice about YC interviews, my first thought was about when I got run over by a car.

Back in the 70s child safety was way more relaxed (some might say non-existent). We never wore seatbelts, we blew toys up with dangerous fireworks like M80s and we walked to school alone. And all kinds of other things I would never let my own 7 year old son do now.

The culprit

I was 5 years old and my mom and I were tossing one of those big red rubber balls in our front yard. We lived in Melrose, a quiet suburb of Boston, on a street that didn't get much traffic. I had to concentrate on the ball to catch it.

My mom threw the ball at me.I remember it as a pretty crappy throw — too fast and high; she remembers it as me being a wuss and trying to toughen me up. The ball made a few bounces in the yard and rolled into the street. As I ran after it, I kept my eye on the ball following every bounce.

When I woke up in the hospital a few days later, my mom was crying. “Who’s the wuss now?” I thought. [NOTE: This story like all my articles about startups is true, although this line isn’t].

Not even cool looking scars.

A station wagon had run me over and had it been moving a bit faster it would have killed me. After a few months I recovered but my mom and I never played ball again.

Recently I started shaving my head and a couple minor scars are the only remains of the accident.

The articles I read from YC alum written about preparing for the interview all include variations on the same idea: Be flexible without being a wimp.

“Good entrepreneurs learn, are open-minded to feedback and can adjust.”
-Sumon Sadhu

http://sharpshoot.blogspot.com/2009/04/so-you-got-y-combinator-interview-now.html

“… you want to strike a balance between being open to suggestion, and defending your opinions — just be sure to defend the right ones.”
-David Rusenko

http://david.weebly.com/1/post/2008/11/y-combinator-interview-advice.html

“Be open minded but not a push over. This is just good business practice in general.”

and

“let it [your idea] evolve and improve.”
- Matt Maroon

http://mattmaroon.com/2007/10/19/advice-for-y-combinator-interviewees/

“You should be as excited about your idea as possible without being violently attached to it. If you’re passionate about a bad idea it’s probably because there’s some really good morsels in there.”
- Robby Walker

http://drraw.blogspot.com/2007/04/ycombinator-advice-interview-tips.html

And from YC themselves:

“Your idea is almost certain to change as you work on your startup, and while it’s not necessarily going to change into something that comes up in the interview (though it has happened), we’re very interested to see how good you are at traversing idea space.”
- YCcombinator

Startup Lesson Learned:

1. We've been working on our startup for the past 6 months and our business has certainly evolved so I think the above advice is good for startups in general.
2. Often your startup will iterate based on customer feedback. Sometimes you’ll pivot to something completely different.
3. So I advise against keeping “your eye on the ball” without looking around pretty often. Otherwise your startup might get run over by a station wagon.

Scott Wheeler described his YC interview this way:

“[They YC interview] is more like a brainstorming session with the volume turned up to 11.”
-Scott Wheeler

http://blog.directededge.com/2009/11/05/the-interview-with-y-combinator-thats-not/

So whatever the outcome of the interview, we are looking forward to our 10 minutes. At the very least, we will likely get some really good advice.

Wish us luck!