YC Office Hours with PG and Harj

The first guy was doing K-6th iPad stuff, and Paul didn't have much advice. Anyone interested in this space should checkout ixl.com. Most people haven't heard of it, but they are crushing it when it comes to K-6 math skills. By my estimation, they do something like $100M rev/year. As far as I can tell, they actively avoid the press as they don't want competitors.

Anytime someone asks you what makes you better than an established competitor please don't ever, ever say something along the lines of "because &#60;competitor&#62; sucks". It's better to acknowledge your competitor's legitimacy and respond with how your product is better.<p>Chauvinism has a place, but I think you have to be careful with it.

PG and Harj's pace is amazing - not a moment wasted. It's unfortunate to see that the lucky founders up there aren't really listening to their opinions. It seems like they're more interested in defending their product, rather than take suggestions.

Key takeaways or at least the main ideas behind PG and Harj's questions &#38; comments- What pain point are you solving? Is it something you dealt with (or the market deals with)? How do you go about using the product? What is the killer feature of your product that will allow a user to switch from their current method?

For reference, a link to the hn thread discussing the session as it went live: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2988407" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2988407</a>

I understand that people get nervous when the pressure is on, but I can't believe how many times I thought to myself, "Answer the damn question!"<p>This whole video served as a reminder to me to slow down, listen to what people are asking you, and give a thoughtful response. I'm not claiming I'd do any better in this sort of situation, but the amount of marketing speak coming from most of these guys' mouths was practically dehumanizing to PG and Harj.

Its awesome for us to see how PG conducts office hours, but it seems like a bad idea to do this in front of so many people. I can imagine how hard it would be as a founder to answer these questions so publicly.

Is this a one-off type video, or is there others with different people too. If so I'd love to see more!