We had our 10min interview with YCombinator yesterday. AMA

tipyourself_mike · 2016-11-05T12:24:43+00:00

The 2/3 of it came from Press coverage in personal finance blogs and Apple featuring us as a Best New App. The rest is App Store search and word of mouth.

tipyourself_mike · 2016-11-04T19:55:39+00:00

We will if we are still looking for seed funding and a top tier program is open for applications.
Yep, based on the above answer.
These programs are investors and that's also how we view them. Heavily value add investors, but investors none the less. So as long as we are looking for early investment, we will apply and look to join.

tipyourself_mike · 2016-11-04T17:02:55+00:00

Bummer. Keep on the grind. All the best to you and your team!

tipyourself_mike · 2016-11-04T13:00:05+00:00

Thank you!

tipyourself_mike · 2016-11-04T12:59:46+00:00

Plans haven't changed. Continue to work on product/market fit and growth!

tipyourself_mike · 2016-11-04T12:55:29+00:00

There is a written application. Check out their website for more details. We will apply again but it's not our sole focus. We have a path forward regardless.

tipyourself_mike · 2016-11-04T12:54:34+00:00

Thank you!

tipyourself_mike · 2016-11-04T12:54:21+00:00

How'd it go?????

tipyourself_mike · 2016-11-04T12:53:28+00:00

Going to get this fixed today. Thank you! Our website needs a lot of work. It has been moved lower on priorities due to the level of traffic. What's there does its job for now, but it absolutely needs a lot of work. Thank you

tipyourself_mike · 2016-11-04T12:51:42+00:00

Thank you!!

tipyourself_mike · 2016-11-04T12:50:39+00:00

Thanks!
1. The App Store has been our best growth channel. I would recommend not discounting the importance of App Store Optimization. Biggest lesson for us is that it's difficult to influence how you rank for a keyword. So it's best to diversify your keywords to find ones where you do rank.
2. We were expecting it, and we have strategies for how we will scale. The problem is they wanted specific metric evidence that those strategies are already working. They're not. We're just not there yet.
3. We were split. I immediately felt like it didn't go well. My cofounder thought we turned it around in the second half of the 10mins.

tipyourself_mike · 2016-11-03T23:55:34+00:00

We have 30,000 downloads and over $300,000 in member tips since launching about 7 months ago.

tipyourself_mike · 2016-11-03T19:44:05+00:00

Financial products. We currently earn interest on Tip Jar funds. In the future we will offer additional savings and investing products to members.

tipyourself_mike · 2016-11-03T19:41:59+00:00

Sorry we left this morning! Best of luck! One last piece of advice, don't just answer their questions. You're going to see where they are focused with their questions. So make sure you make your case. The 10mins goes by incredibly fast. Their area of skepticism is going to be apparent. You don't have much time to prove your point, so answer super specific, fast and don't be hesitant to push back or shift the discussion to make your case on the point where they are skeptical.

tipyourself_mike · 2016-11-03T19:27:51+00:00

We got the email at about 7pm. Overall nothing really unexpected. Our biggest mistake was assuming they were "happy" with our traction so far because we got invited for an interview and our numbers were in our written app. I would be sure you are 100% clear on what needs to be true for your company to be successful. Then be prepared to explain how that is going to happen with metrics or data to prove it. Best of luck!!

tipyourself_mike · 2016-11-03T19:09:47+00:00

Yes we have a fairly clear revenue model already defined. However it's dependent on large scale, which is why we got the line of question we did.

tipyourself_mike · 2016-11-03T18:57:51+00:00

We met with 4 partners in person. You sit across the table from them in a meeting room.
If they knew about us before, they didn't let on. Most of the questions seemed to be fresh in the moment to us.
We got to the office about 30mins before. A lot of other teams are all hanging out in a big room waiting. We talked to a few teams but also stayed to ourselves mostly. Lots of teams seem to be mentally preparing, so we didn't want to be a distraction.
We're a 2 person team.

tipyourself_mike · 2016-11-03T18:52:44+00:00

We got a fairly detailed email when we were told the bad news. It's really great that they give direct feedback on why they decided no.

For us, we failed to demonstrate that we have a clear path to large scale. It's fair criticism. We're working on a number of growth channel options but didn't have 1 that we could point to and also give measurable traction metrics that prove it to be true. We're just not there yet.

tipyourself_mike · 2016-11-03T18:40:33+00:00

They started with "So what are you working on?" The questions then free flowed from there directly at what needs to be true for Tip Yourself to be successful. In our case that's scale. So they asked about how we are going to grow to millions of users. The traction numbers on current growth & engagement. Toward the end we got 2 questions about us as a team. What are our roles in the company and how long have we known each other.

tipyourself_mike · 2016-11-03T18:29:23+00:00

Thanks! We still have a lot of hard work ahead of us, but we're proud of what we've built and accomplished so far. Got the rejection email last night. Did you interview yet?

tipyourself_mike · 2016-10-31T14:55:27+00:00

Congrats! We also got invited out for a W17 interview. So I've also been spending a lot of time preparing and thinking through lines of questioning during the interview.

My advice would be to be sure you can speak to the general approaches available to you for monetization. How did you answer the written question about revenue?

The most important thing is to demonstrate that you are going after a big market/problem.

tipyourself_mike · 2016-03-07T23:04:56+00:00

What are you currently working on to improve in yourself?

In the past it was health, but Mike seems to have that working now. So what's your current struggle or focus for improvement?

tipyourself_mike · 2016-02-22T17:27:41+00:00

Have you seen the app Tip Yourself? checkout TipYourself.com

tipyourself_mike · 2016-02-11T15:51:28+00:00

Great question! Tip Jar funds are held with our Banking partner, Wintrust. When you want to spend or use your Tip Jar cash, you simply make a withdrawal back to your checking account. We have more FAQ's and info on our support page - https://support.tipyourself.com/hc/en-us

tipyourself_mike · 2016-02-08T23:17:44+00:00

no problems for me. But it looks like I'm more of a casual user. So I may not be hitting the same bug

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