Everything you need to know to ace the YC interview

This post is part of a series talking about my experience applying to and taking part in the Summer 2020 batch of Y Combinator with my company, Basedash. Other posts in the series dive deeper into the YC application, and whether YC is worth it.

If you want to try a mock interview, I created a GPT that replicates the YC interview experience. You can try it here: YC Mock Interviewer

My experience

I went through YC as a solo founder in summer 2020 with my company Basedash.

I’ve had 2 YC interviews: one for my first startup, Scholarly, and the other for my current company, Basedash. Both were in-person at the YC office in Mountain View.

The exact questions I was asked during my second interview are included below in the Questions section.

😅 Fun side note: Sam Altman was one of our assigned interviewers when we were interviewing with Scholarly. He took a break right before our interview started, and got back immediately afterwards. Open tweet->.

Interview format

The interview is 10 minutes long and involves 3-4 YC partners asking rapid fire questions about your company. In my experience, there’s a sense of urgency to absorb as much information within the 10-minute period as possible, but the interviewers are respectful and will not interrupt you (assuming you give concise answers).

Generally, one or two of the partners will lead the interview with the majority of questions, while the others sit back and listen. Depending on your product, they may ask to see a demo.

You’ll hear back from one of your interviewers within the day with a decision. If you get accepted, you’ll get a phone call. If not, you’ll get an email with brief feedback.

These days most interviews are remote, but I’ll leave tips for both in-person and remote interviews in case things change in the future.

General advice

• Be as clear and concise as possible. The more questions you get through, the more they’ll understand your business.
• Speak slowly and clearly.
• Other than the first question (”What are you building?”), don’t memorize prepared answers.
• Have a short (1-2 minute) demo prepared in case they ask to see your product.
• Know all your relevant metrics.
• Don’t lie or exaggerate your metrics. YC cares more about founders and ideas than progress.
• Assume that the interviewers have no prior context about your company or your specific space.
• Be friendly! YC wants to accept founders who can contribute to the amazing community. If you can, try to make your interviewers laugh.
• If you have cofounders, come up with a system to decide who will answer which questions.

In-person tips

• When checking in at the front desk, you’ll be told which interview room you’ll be in. There will be a sign on the door of that room with a list of names of your interviewers. Look them up and know who they are.
• When you walk in, shake all of the interviewers’ hands, introduce yourself, and show that you know them (e.g. ”Hey Adora, great to meet you. Loved your latest video on KPIs.”)
• Before the end of the interview, there will be a knock on the door as a 1-minute warning. Make sure to mention any final points that you think are important.
• After the interview, you’ll be asked to stick around for a few minutes before leaving the office. In rare cases where the interviewers need more information, they may set up a second interview later in the day to ask more questions.

Remote tips

• Start a timer at the beginning of the interview so you know how much time you have left.
• Create a doc of all your metrics for reference.
• Have a demo open and ready to share in case you’re asked.
• Make sure your video call setup is solid. Good internet, quiet environment, decent microphone and camera, non-distracting background.

Questions

Every interview starts with the same question: What are you building?

This is the most important question because it provides a foundational understanding of your company that the interviewers will base the rest of their questions around. This is the one question where I would recommend drafting a prepared answer. In a few sentences, you need to clearly explain both the problem you’re solving, and the way you’re approaching the solution.

Each interviewer goes through hundreds of applications and interviews, so you should go into your interview assuming that they have little-to-no context about your company and space. Start from first principles and guide them through a straightforward explanation of what you’re working on.

After the first question, the interview can go anywhere from product vision, to user feedback, to growth strategy, to metrics. Instead of preparing for specific questions, the best way to prep for your interview is to think deeply about the problem you’re solving and talk to users (read The Mom Test to learn how to do this).

Here are the exact questions that I was asked when interviewing with Basedash, and roughly how I answered them:

What are you building?

Basedash is a collaborative database interface built for startups. It lets everyone on your team view and edit data directly from your production database.

This is something that I really needed at my last startup. There are lots of existing database editors, but first of all they’re all built for engineers, and second they’re not collaborative. I’m building Basedash to be like Airtable for your production data.

How do you make money?

I’m charging teams $10 per user per month. Planning to charge more for bigger teams.

How many seats have you sold?

I just turned on billing last week and hit 3 paid seats. I also have around 100 free users, including 3 YC companies.

Who is your target demographic?

I’m currently focusing on smaller startups who have recurring edit use cases. Mostly founders, engineering, support, ops.

What’s a specific use case?

A common use case is around simple support requests for editing user data. For example, a user might reach out and ask to update their email address, upgrade their subscription, or delete their account. You can do all that in Basedash in a couple clicks.

Why edit a database when you can just edit data from your CRM?

CRMs usually just contain marketing data, like blog posts. Basedash hooks into your actual production SQL database, which stores things like user data.

Aren’t there already a lot of tools for visualizing data?

Yes. I’m not too focused on data viz right now, mostly the editing use cases.

How is this different from Airtable?

Airtable forces you to use them for hosting and storing your data. Basedash connects to your existing database—it doesn’t care where it’s hosted, or what kind of database you’re using.

Could Airtable build this into their product?

It probably wouldn’t be too technically difficult, but I doubt they will. They currently have full control over the data storage and probably don’t want to give that up.

Can we see a demo?

I gave a quick 2-3 minute demo which included a few product-specific questions from the interviewers.

Here’s an example of how to approach a demo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN7gepXr_Xg

You applied for early decision, what are you going to do until then?

I’m finishing my undergrad in software engineering—I graduate right before the summer batch starts.

Since you’re still in school, how much time can you spend working on this?

I managed to convince my professor to let me work on Basedash as my final project, so school pretty much is work.

If this post was helpful, consider following me on Twitter for more content on YC, startups, engineering, and design: Open tweet->

If you want to try a mock interview, I created a GPT that replicates the YC interview experience. You can try it here: YC Mock Interviewer

If you’re running a company with a SQL database, Basedash would probably make your life easier. Check it out here: https://www.basedash.com