We’ve been asked by enough people how we got into Y Combinator that we thought why not blog about it to make it public knowledge (now that’s it, well, public).

One of the more difficult parts about getting into Y Combinator is getting your application read and into the pile of interesting applications they want to interview. The sheer number of applicants every batch is staggering (over 4,000 when we applied) and growing. To cut through the noise, crisp, clear, and concise answers containing substance over style will grab the attention of the partner reviewing your application.

My guess is that ‘over-optimizing’ the process too much leads to convoluted thinking and writing. That is likely negatively viewed, indicating lack of clarity in thought.

To avoid this problem we applied without worrying about “getting in”. That’s not to say we half-assed the process, on the contrary. We just didn’t put much stock into ‘perfecting the process’. Other guides on the web recommend reaching out to YC alums and asking them to review your application. We did not.

In fact, we completed the application and hit submit four minutes past the deadline, 11pm ET.

We had been working the whole day, with Itay up from 6am dispatching drivers and making sure morning deliveries were happening on schedule. We had tons of work throughout the day and a backlog of items we wanted to complete for the week. By the time we got a chance to settle down and think about our application it was well past 10pm.

Itay and I took a subway to Chen’s apartment, on the Upper East Side, and stepped into his apartment at a 10:45pm, drenched in sweat, hair a mess, and eyes bloodshot. Now we just had to film our application video.

Unlike the first time we applied to YC, where we asked a videographer friend to film a high quality video with crisp audio, this time we filmed on my macbook’s camera, with the 3 of us on Chen’s couch, squeezing together to make sure we were all in the frame. Chen wore a brilliant Cookie Monster t-shirt.

Our video was pretty bad, objectively, and I think Itay may have nodded out during the shoot. But the content was clear. Growth, scrappiness, and execution. That’s what we’re about and we wanted to be candid about where we were and how we got there.

Our answers on the application followed the same pattern. Concise, clear, and objective.

Side note: this part is very difficult to grasp from other applications I’ve read. After years of being taught in school to write long essays, writing short clear sentences that are objective is tough. It feels awkward and cold, but it’s exactly the way to write for the YC application.

A few weeks later we received an email inviting us out to Mountain View for the interview with the YC Partners, to be part of the Winter 2015 Batch.

We spent the next few weeks hustling, growing our customer base, and only spent the 2 days prior to our flight preparing for the interview. Our interview was on a Monday morning with Tuesday being Orientation Day for companies chosen.

Our first interview was with Paul Buchheit, Dalton Caldwell, and Kirsty Nathoo. It was over before I had a chance to process what happened. Paul asked us if we were the “Uber for Laundry” which was amusing since we usually refrain from making the X for Y comparison.

We waited for a few minutes outside the office before one of them came over to tell us we needed to come back later in the day for a re-interview. Great.

From there we went to a Cheesecake Factory for lunch, barely touched any of our food, and basically killed time until our second interview.

Our second interview was with Garry Tan, Kat Manalac, Alexis Ohanian, and Justin Kan. This time we were much more in control of the flow of the conversation, we hit all of our talking points, and left after 12 minutes feeling like we truly left everything on the floor.

We decided to drive down to SF to go out for the night. Y Combinator decides the day of your interview and they email you if it’s a NO and call you if it’s a YES. After checking our phones the entire drive down to SF for a call, an email, anything, we finally let it go and just tried to enjoy being in San Francisco for the first time. When we got back to the car we saw a missed call, a voicemail, and an email from Garry Tan – oops!

We called him back and he notified us, ever nonchalantly, that YC wanted to fund us. To say we were ecstatic would not be doing that moment justice.

The whole interview experience was exciting and slightly nerve-wracking, but it taught us the most important lesson of all: nothing is more important than having a great business with customers that love your product. That alone speaks for itself, and is ultimately more important than getting into any accelerator – even Y Combinator.

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In a follow up to this post, we’ll share about our experience during Y Combinator.

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