From Florida to Silicon Valley — My In-Person Interview at the Y Combinator
Silicon Valley, Y Combinator, and Venture Capital were all somewhat far-fetched to me until recently. I had only read about the successful companies from the San Francisco Bay area in the press, in movies and on Netflix. Even though I started my entrepreneurship journey at the age 14 in Yakama, WA, I never guessed that one day I would relocate to the Bay area and submerge myself in the startup tech world.
Jiten Chandiramani and I have been running a product design and manufacturing company in Florida for 6 years. We have helped hundreds of hardware projects come to life and have been the backbone to 20+ Kickstarter projects. By being pioneers in the hardware development industry in our small world in Melbourne, FL, we ended up getting a lot of local recognition — that allowed us to get well connected with big folks in the entrepreneurship community. In that process, we made friends with local investors and got great feedback regarding our business model.
The investors pointed out that we were running a service company, and a service company doesn’t have a large valuation multiplier. So, naturally, we began brainstorming on how to either transition our current company into a scalable company or start a new company. A scaleable company would need to have recurring revenue, a subscription model, or be a type of a SaaS (Software as a Service). After Design Sprints, lots of research, and lots of brainstorming, we came up with a concept that would make it easier for customers with hardware products to get to market faster. Makerpro Molds was born — a platform that levels the playing field for hardware startups by automatically reviewing 3D files for injection molding ability and outputting a quote to start production right away. Customers are also able to submit their project to our network of highly vetted manufacturers in a reverse auction where they compete for best pricing and manufacturing scenario (such as certifications, timeframe, etc).
I reached out to David Smith, a former client. I knew he had experience in raising money from angel investors and venture capital. He suggested that we go to the Bay area to network, and apply for the Y Combinator. I have heard about the YC but had never put much thought into the tech accelerator because it was on the other side of the US.
I figured we didn’t have anything to lose, so I applied. I found the application process extremely straightforward and rather easy to complete. The most challenging part of the application was the 1-minute video introducing the founders, which you can see below:
A few weeks later we received a request for a video interview. Eric (unknown last name) asked Jay and I a few questions via their web portal. The questions were made available only until a couple hours before the online interview. I quickly answered the question prior to the 10-minute video interview.
Kat Manalac was our interviewer. She double checked that we had answered all the questions from the online portal prior to starting the interview. Then it started — we were more excited than nervous because video interviews don’t usually scare us. The 10 minutes passed so quickly — and here are some of the questions she asked us:
- Can you please explain your platform?
- Would it be ready for the demo day in March?
- What is your 5-year plan?
We answered them as best as we could while keeping in mind the 10-minute timeframe we had for the entire interview. The interview was over in no time, and she mentioned they were going to contact us by email.
A few weeks later we received an email inviting us to interview in person at the Y Combinator. Jay and I were both really excited and couldn’t believe they selected us to interview in person. We flew to San Francisco, stayed at a hotel in Mountain View and rented a car to get around the Bay.
The day we reserved our interview spot was the last day of the 4-day period YC blocks to interview companies. We checked in at the YC Mountain View location, printed our badges, and waited in a large room with lots of tables in chairs. Since we arrived early, we saw several people come and go — everybody we saw was there interviewing. The space was very clean and modern with refreshments like snacks, water, and — but both Jay and I agreed that it felt a bit intimidating, as it had no music and all the investor rooms had acoustic proofing.
Then the time arrived. We were called by the username, in which we used to apply online, and made our way into a fairly small and room. We shook hands with our interviewers — Kat, Paul, Diego, and (if I remember correctly) Dalton — and sat directly across from (and fairly close to) them. Other than 2 questions, all questions came from Paul. The questions they asked were mostly focused on our software idea, which was contradictory to what we found on the internet, which mentioned that the interview would be mostly based around the team and previous experiences. Here is a summary of the questions they asked:
- Tell me about your project.
- What sales do you have?
- Wow many users do you have?
- Who is the technical founder?
- What experience do you have?
- What does your 5-year plan look like?
- When will your software be ready to be demoed?
We rapidly answered the questions. At one point during the interview, I also mentioned that we had just received a purchase order from Disney for $30K briefly before our meeting. Again, the meeting flew by — someone came to knock on the door to let us know that our 10 minutes was up.
We exited the interview room and sat outside while they decided if they wanted to ask us any follow-up questions. As we sat there waiting, Jay took the time to make a video about our experience — he felt that we did a pretty good job and was excited about it. On the other hand, I didn’t feel so good and thought we could have done better.
Amy, the timekeeper, dismissed us since the panel didn’t have any additional questions and told us that we would receive a call if we were accepted or an email if we were rejected. Either way, we would receive the news later in the evening — note it was around 3pm when we left the YC.
After about 6 hours we received an email — bad sign already since they would call us if we were accepted. We were very sad to have received a rejection email. We thought that as experienced entrepreneurs and with the revenue growth we had over the past years, that they would certainly accept us into the program. The rejection was polite and professional and the main suggestion was that we showed more traction and focused on scaling our sales.
Well, of course we were bummed, but that didn’t stop us. We decided to stay in the Bay Area to continue networking and perhaps find other accelerators and/or investors willing to bring Makerpro Molds to the next level with our team.
And here we are, exactly a month later, much more experienced and equipped with knowledge just by going to meetups + pitch events and getting feedback from Bay Area investors. We continue to work on our platform with the hopes of making hardware less hard to our fellow hardware startups across the world.
About the Author
Hi, I’m Derek. I have been an entrepreneur in Tech for the last 10 years. In my blog I share with you what it’s like to keep up with the ever-changing world of technology; the highs and the lows of being an entrepreneur; what it’s like to do business in China; and how to simply be successful at managing work-life balance. If you like what you read, give it a nice round of applause and add me on LinkedIn — I love connecting with my readers.
