Looking to build our own skills (apps) for Alexa, my good friend and I started playing with AWS. We are excited about vocal interfaces but Amazon's way of building one was too complex. After hacking 3 skills we'd had it. Too many manual steps, too much code copy-pasting and that redundant boilerplate config?! Arg!
We think that "building the future" in 2016 should be easier, so we started working on a tool that helps developers to deploy Alexa skills in no time. Curious to hear your thoughts. What else would you improve on skill-building for Alexa?
Practice interviews on Pramp are bi-directional. Every user is both an interviewee and an interviewer on each interview. We oversee the process by matching between likeminded peers with similar skills, background and abilities and by providing prep material before interviews.
We're not a fit for beginners yet, as our interview questions take solid understanding of CS & coding just like real technical interview at tech companies. However, we plan to add this later.
Peer practice isn't professional coaching, but we think you don't really need a pro to prep well. You just need the right practice buddy and good prep materials.
We pair you up against someone similar to you and provide full prep material (problems, solutions and specific tips and guidance) ahead of time. Both you and your peer with interview the other after you know how a right solution should look like and how to judge other solutions.
You can also access the problems & solutions after your interview and learn about it.
Hey HN, one of the co-founders of Pramp here.
We're a free peer-2-peer practice platform for coding interviews. It's like online dating for technical interviews.
After a few years of coding interviews, my friend and I noticed we always have a hard time finding good practice buddies. The web is full or great interview prep resources for self-learning: books, blogs, coding challenges and Q&A sites. Yet, there's no free place to practice live interviews. Interviewing is not something you can learn from a book or from coding by yourself. This is because interviewing and coding are 2 different skills.
Pramp pairs you to other hackers at your level to practice interviews together.
On each interview both your and your peer will interview the other. We take care of everything you need to prep well: scheduling, interview problems & solutions, video chat, collaborative code editor and peer written feedback.
We're a free peer-2-peer practice platform for coding interviews.
From our own interviews we realized how important live practice is, while good practice buddies are hard to find.
Our system pairs you to other hackers at your level to practice interviews together. On each interview both your and your peer will interview the other. We take care of everything you need to prep well: scheduling, interview problems & solutions, HD video chat, collaborative code editor and peer feedback.
Would love to get your feedback and thoughts and answer any question.
We're a free peer-2-peer practice platform for coding interviews.
From our own interviews we realized how important live practice is, while good practice buddies are hard to find.
Our system pairs you to other hackers at your level to practice interviews together.
On each interview both your and your peer will interview the other. We take care of everything you need to prep well: scheduling, interview problems & solutions, HD video chat, collaborative code editor and peer feedback.
Would love get get your feedback and thoughts and answer any questions.
Well written!
Thank you Jessica for sharing your thoughts.
My personal note on rejections:
When I decided to step up and found, I've made a decision to stop asking for permission from others and build something by myself. I remind myself of that on every rejection.
No rejection will define what I'm going to be. Rejection only define how better I'm going to become next time, until no investor/partner/person will wanna miss-out.
First of all, get an upvote for taking the effort to try and make it better for those whom you lay off.
I've never been laid off from a real job, just from a temp one where the owner was a jerk. Few things I can think of:
1) Try, with you best efforts, to help the folks you lay off to get other jobs. Recommend & refer them to those you see relevant. Make sure they get advice from their direct boss about what the should/better/could do next, and try to get your company waling their hand thro.
2) Clarify the situation quickly. People hate to get these news but rumors running around are much worse.
3) Some managers afraid try to detach their compassion to cut this awful mission fast. This is not the time to pull the authoritative boss too much. You're already sending them, try to show warmth.
4) Keep in touch with the best employees you have to let go. Try to hire some of the in the future if you can. If will be a great closure.
5) Can you send them away with something?
A course to develop their skills towards the next job? a gift? few meetings with career coach for each laid off employee? (you can but that at bulk)
I'm not related to YC in any way, just an applicant like you. I'm a US applicant, even-though I'm an immigrant and wasn't born here. I'll try to answer some of your questions from common knowledge + my understanding:
1. Getting a US visa may sometime be difficult or take time. My best advice is to get the visa anyway when you can. This way you're ready to come to the interview if and when you're invited.
Visa is just a way of getting here.
Serious candidates are up for promoting their startup in any possible way. Many of these ways go through the US and especially SV (angels, VCs, acceleration programs, the big US market, tech giants, etc). Get it anyway if you can, regardless of YC.
2. I think you actually have a huge advantage as an Indian founder - you have a native access to a huge talent pool and a huge market. Since the ease of doing business in India is at the bottom of the global rank, this advantage is even bigger.
3. No Stripe in India?
Difficult place to do business?
Difficult place to start a startup?
These are real problems. It sounds like a source of many GREAT startup ideas. And Indian founders are, again, in advantage here.
3. As for incorporation, I think it's about what makes sense to your company.
Every place has it's advantages - many big US VC firms fund only companies with a US office while having an R&D and support site in India is cheaper than in most other places.
I'm sure the that folks in YC have good advice about what's right for your company. If you must incorporate already - I don't think that getting incorporated in India will disqualify good candidates from YC.
4. From what I know and read on YC's formal posts, they can't get you a visa. Tourist visa should be enough to get here (it gives you the equivalent of what EU visa-on-arrival gives you, but for 6 months instead of 3). When your company will get US funding over some threshold you should be able to get a working visa. I used to have a tourist visa in the past (wasn't born in a visa-by-arrival country). My co-founder will soon be on a tourist visa, so I know what you're facing.
One of the HackerRank (YC S11) founders didn't get a visa eventually. So his co-founder attended YC in SV and he stayed in India. They kept working hard & on remote during YC. They are very successful today.
DONT let any visa stop you.
5. About your difference from a guy from Boston - you and I are not that different at all. Each of us will leave his place and life if accepted to YC. For you the opportunity may just be bigger and more important, because it gives you full access to the best place in the world to start a startup.
7. Forget about a 'Typical YC applicant'. Be the best applicant and founder you can be, regardless of YC. Their application is built to find great hackers. Graduating from a top US school/IIT can help to demonstrate your abilities, but it's ONLY one way and doesn't necessarily mean you're a successful applicant. Get a founding experience, keep hacking, contribute to open-source projects - all of these help and matter.
Read this blog post by a recent YC grad: https://medium.com/theli-st-medium/hi-im-a-mom-and-a-start-u....
Forget about typical applicant. She made it while having two little girls in LA.
Read her words: Grits, Perseverance, Passion. Not visa, IIT or anything like that.
Msg me if I can be helpfull in anything else.
Best of luck with your YC application!