12 Tips to Nail the Y Combinator Interview

Y Combinator (YC) is the most prestigious accelerator in the world. Coinbase, Stripe, Brex, AirBnB, DoorDash, Twitch and Instacart are just a few examples of widely successful Unicorns among YC alumni. If you have applied for YC and have an upcoming interview, you want to be prepared.

Here are some YC interview tips from my perspective as a YC graduate. I'm co-founder of SenpAI.GG, a personal gaming coach for PC gamers. I went through the YC interview in April 2021 and joined the Summer 2021 Batch of Y Combinator.

1. Prepare for Unexpected Delays

Before heading into your interview, be prepared for things to run not exactly according to the schedule. Our interview was scheduled for 4:00 pm ET on Zoom and we joined 10 minutes before, as instructed. The interview started slightly later than planned at around 4:15 pm ET, so we were waiting for around half an hour. The longer the clock ticks, the more you tend to get stressed and anxious. But just keep in mind that it's normal for the interview to start a little late; just relax and be patient.

2. No Icebreaking and a Brief Introduction If Any

You only have 20 minutes to describe your startup and successfully answer plenty of very tough questions. Unlike what you might be used to in other meetings or job interviews, don't expect to have proper introductions or any icebreakers at the beginning of your interview. One of the group partners will probably skip the formalities and jump straight into the questions.

3. Nail Your Tagline

The first YC interview question you will presumably be asked is: "What do you do?" Surprisingly, this could be the most important and difficult question you need to answer during your interview.

It's incredibly important that you describe exactly what you do in a short and snappy sentence that anyone can easily understand (yes, including your mom!). As tactical advice, you can take a look at the taglines of previous YC companies (preferably a few batches before yours). This should give you better insights into how YC companies created their one-sentence taglines (and with just a few words).

4. Be Familiar with Your Application Form and Metrics

It's a good idea to go over your answers from your YC application before the interview. However, you could be asked questions that go beyond your application answers. These questions might center around the metrics you haven't shared in your application, including your traction numbers (such as the breakdown of your revenue streams or weekly active users, etc.).

Know your most important metrics and try to memorize them, prioritizing the most important ones. You can also create a written, hard-copy cheat sheet of key information, to give you a prompt during the interview. (A digital copy would be inconvenient, as it would look weird trying to flip between browser tabs.)

5. Distribute the Workload Across Co-Founders

Before the interview, you need to decide who is best suited to each category of questions (business, marketing, technical, etc.). It's very important that co-founders don't interrupt each other or paraphrase the response of another co-founder. You may have an unavoidable urge to explain how cool your startup is, and by doing so, you tend to reiterate the things already mentioned by your co-founder. For this reason, it's OK if one co-founder replies to all of the questions.

One tip, though: if one co-founder gets asked a relentless stream of difficult questions, they might lose some of their cognitive energy. In this case, you can dive in and support your fellow co-founder and give them some needed recovery time.

6. Keep It Simple and Be Mindful of the Time

You should keep all of your answers to YC interview questions short and sweet. Try to make sure that your answers focus only on important details, keeping them to about 20-30 seconds. Over-supporting your answers will just eat into your interview time. You want to avoid over-explaining things or paraphrasing your sentences over and over again.

This especially can happen when you get a challenging question, prompting you to defend yourself and prove the validity of your answer. You can deep-dive into your answer if you get follow-up questions.

7. Avoid Jargon or Complicated Technical Explanations

YC interviewers may have dozens of interviews, with startups from a varied spectrum, prior to yours. Thus, you can assume their minds are not as fresh as when they are sipping their first cup of coffee in the morning. Furthermore, although they have vast experience in many sectors and startups, they might not fall into the customer category of your startup.

For these reasons, don't use jargon, technical terms, or abbreviations specific to your field. Try to curb your enthusiasm to explain your technology and product in a complicated manner (although it actually is).

8. Don't Oversell and Avoid Buzzwords

It's important to show your confidence and passion for your startup that you're building (or plan to build). However, you need to keep in mind that you're not pitching to investors (even though they technically are, this is not a typical investor pitch); don't try to over-impress them. You also want to avoid buzzwords to describe your product and technology, such as metaverse, AI, extended reality, everything as a service, etc.

9. Know Your Weaknesses and Plan How to Eliminate Them

Prior to the interview, write a list of weaknesses of your startup and application. For example, you might not have considerable traction or haven't launched the product yet. Once you have your list of weaknesses, draft a set of solutions to eliminate them. It's OK if you don't have solutions to some of your weaknesses, but try to come up with actionable roadmaps for each of them. You'll probably get questions about your startup's weaknesses in your interview.

10. Be Mentally Ready for Tough Questions and Directness

My YC interview was a completely different experience than previous pitches to investors or job interviews. YC interviewers will try to understand if you have the potential to be one of the next unicorns, if not decacorns, in just a few minutes. They will manage their time very efficiently and be very direct during the interview.

They may interrupt you, drill down with multiple follow-up questions on one of your answers, or clearly indicate their disapproval as you speak. Don't lose your temper or become too defensive, nor be submissive; keep your cool and try to patiently answer all of their questions.

11. Schedule a Mock Interview with a Former YC Founder

You can arrange a YC mock interview to prepare for the real thing, preferably with a former YC founder. One solid example is OrangeDAO, a community of 1200+ YC alumni furthering web3 by supporting existing and new founders in the space. OrangeDAO members offer a mock YC interview without expecting anything in return. This is a great opportunity for you to get used to the interview style and typical questions of YC.

12. Be Reachable for the Good News

You will probably hear back about YC interview results during PT evening time. The good news is usually given by phone call from a YC partner. Thus, it's very important to keep your phone with you (even if it's nighttime for you). If you're not accepted, you will probably get an email with a short explanation behind their decision.

In our case, we kept our phones with us day and night waiting for a decision. We got an email one night and immediately thought that we hadn't been accepted... only to read that they couldn't reach us by phone because the phone was in "do not disturb" mode which automatically enabled after 11 pm ET! The moral of the story: make sure that you disable do not disturb mode.

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YC was definitely the most transforming period in my entrepreneurial journey. I've learned so much from YC partners and being part of the wider YC community. I hope these suggestions help you nail your YC interview!