Definitely something YC encourages (.com domains), but definitely NOT something they would encourage you spend YC money on. They would tell you to pick another domain, like getsolve.com or something.
Yea, it was mostly clarifying questions about our application. And a chance for them to talk to us live via video. I'm assuming a lot of the pre-interview video calls were teams on the cusp of getting an invite and they were filtering teams out.
We submitted on March 23rd, the day before the deadline. The invite came today (as the 18th is the day they were supposed to send invites/rejection emails).
We're based in San Jose and had a pre-interview this morning (invite was on Sat). Mostly questions clarifying things from our application and further understanding of the product. Not sure if that means we will get a real interview invite or not...