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Six days before the interview, my laptop crashed and we lost our entire demo.

Brandon: THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU.

I'm glad you mentioned how you lost your work because of lack of a backup. There are quite a few snarky comments here about it, mine won't be one of them. Instead I thank you for your candor.

There are some cultures where mistakes and failures aren't explicitly mentioned; they're swept under the rug (wouldn't want to lose face!). I hate that. Instead I think we can all learn a great deal by reading someone say (in not quite as vulgar words): "I fucked up. I made a very simple, stupid mistake". It's of course implied the takeaway is "don't be as stupid as I was".

Yeah, agreed on that one. When I read that line, my first thought was, "GAH! Why wasn't he storing this in source control somewhere remotely?!"

And then I stepped back for a second and remembered that just 4 months ago my laptop was stolen and I lost 6 months worth of photos... which of course I hadn't backed up anywhere.

We all make mistakes. We all forget things in a time crunch that don't seem so important until something really bad happens.

And thank you for this comment.

You point out one of the most poisonous things about nerd culture. By pointing out when people are doing something that is in retrospect stupid, we train them to hide mistakes.

I've done it plenty myself, so I'm casting no stones here. But there's a giant gap between appearing smart and being smart. We rightly value smartness, which is great. But by playing Nelson to stupid mistakes and stupid questions, we encourage the appearance of smart over actual learning. To keep getting smarter, you have to be willing to look stupid sometimes.

I don't know when all this happened, or when this interview was, but while I'm certainly not always 'backed up', there really is very little excuse for loss nowadays.

Between Github, S3, Dropbox, etc., it just about takes effort to be in a position to lose data.

That said, I don't mean to fault the author as much as I want to encourage everybody to start using the tools available as part of their every day routine. If you're in a position now where catastrophe to a hard drive or a stolen laptop could affect your business in any way, you're doing it wrong, and it takes practice and regiment to correct, so start correcting it now, or you never will until it's too late.

Just to let you know there companies with cleanrooms that can get back the data of your HDD. You will have to pay a big bunch of money but in these cases it worths it. And they are really efficient. I saw a guy doing it for the cloud of his company, almost all HDDs are saved even one that was burned by a lightning strike.
I'm the OP. This happened two years ago, but I figured I'd post it now since YC interviews start tomorrow, and I already heard of one person in this batch who's going through the same thing. Good luck to everybody interviewing! If you have any questions, I'm game.
Six days before the interview, my laptop crashed and we lost our entire demo.

I am constantly shocked how intelligent technology people frequently fail to make backups.

Backups are so easy today - USB sticks, cloud backup, server backup, etc. Why do so many people ignore this basic step?

Are you the dude who did the "we're going to make it so nobody's going to fuck with our customers" line at demo day? Cause that was awesome. :)
Looked at your website, wish I could see some kind of demo or case study.
What was the original idea that got you into YC?
This happened to me too.

My cofounder quit the day we got our email to interview and wouldn't budge no matter how much I tried to reason, cajole, or beg him to change his mind. At the time I played a weekly poker game hosted by a bunch of YC founders and I still remember walking in with two bottles of champagne in my hand that I bought before I got the breakup text and announcing "guys, I've good news and bad news and reason to drink either way".

I don't blame him at all. We had built up a ton of great chemistry working together for 6+ months but it was on a startup that flamed out with a firesale acquisition and he wanted more stability, especially with his wife grueling away at a residency to pay for their mortgage.

I still think it was a mistake though and not just on his part. He was my Woz and I would've gone to greater lengths to get him to stay if I truly had the Jobs zeal.

I bet you'll never forget the memory and ironic imagery of walking in with celebratory champagne for a startup that lost one of its founders to a room full of founders.

Also, would love an opportunity for a seat at one of those poker games.

This is one of the most inspirational posts I've read by any Entrepreneur and it's the character that you show by being able to follow through with the interview and then to write this post that tells me they made the right decision in picking you.

I happen to know of Sift Science and I feel its one of the stronger products in the valley today, but that said, even if I did not know your company at all I'd be rooting for you even more after reading this.

The good ones know exactly what to say ... The great ones say exactly what should be said, mostly without even knowing it.

Thanks for this post Brandon

Is this what HN has become? Almost the whole lot of comments concentrated on the lack of backup, and how he should have used dropbox or a USB Stick etc.

Come on folks, one or two comments are probably enough. Lets move on.

Nice story but seriously ?:

> Six days before the interview, my laptop crashed and we lost our entire demo.

No backups, svn/git/vcs, Dropbox, a USB drive?

Losing a partner is a difficult thing in business. Losing your code is just silly.

Yeah, not having a backup was totally stupid. Although, to be honest, it probably wouldn't even make my top 10 list of mistakes nowadays. Starting a startup tends to increase the number and magnitude of both your successes and failures.
That's what stood out to me also. This wasn't bad luck, it was stupidity.
Kudos on not giving up. I've had our co-founder/CTO quit on us t the day we were expecting term sheets. Pretty bad timing and I was freaking out a little bit.

Investors have seen it all. While I expected this setback to screw up our funding, it didn't make a difference in the end.

When this kind of shit happens, just carry on.

The thing is, if he was shaky, the earlier he disappears, the better. And if you can show you can go on even when losing key people, that's a good sign, because chances are high you will lose key people.
Hmmm I was rejected this past April and then sent a reply back saying something like your loss.

Miraculously a week later I was invited out to Silicon Valley to demo our novel tech, though not to Y Combinator but one the biggest tech firms out there. Not sure how that happened ... people talk, I guess.

So if you don't get in to Y or others I say send a reply making them doubt their decision. This worked for me this past April and more so in 2008 when I was accepted into another popular incubator program.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that sour grapes probably had no bearing on your further success.
> Hmmm I was rejected this past April and then sent a reply back saying something like your loss.

Not exactly an attitude that will impress VC's, and you'd be surprised at how small a world high tech is.

I had zero help and made the mistake of a lifetime with my co-founder. My application to YC became fodder for landfill. After the YC door closed, something miraculous opened. I have now in my lap an opportunity that would be unbelievable even in a movie script. YC is a guidepost. Whether you go or not. The basic resources are all here on HN--excellence and a friend or two.
Great story. I was a bit astonished about the lack of backups as well, but I'm way more astonished that nobody seems to be astonished about the fact that the break up was sent by email and it didn't really contain a reason except for "I don't want to". which is only okay if you're under six years old.
As an adult you're not beholden to anyone to justify your decisions. It's more courteous to explain yourself, but it is not a requirement. I am sure the two of them have discussed it in detail since, but in the moment the important thing was that he was sure.
Are you still at Sift Science?
I'm not (that's a whole separate topic), but the company is still going strong -- if you happen to run a site that accepts payments, and you're dealing with fraud, you can try it here: https://siftscience.com/
I'm glad it worked out for you! Your product looks solid, and I like the idea. I think one of the key takeaways from this (for me at least) is to have a solid support network.
Thanks! Yeah, part of the reason YC has founders from previous batches hanging out in the main room is to provide a little support to all the nervous interviewees. It definitely calmed me down.
This is a fantastic story. Thanks for sharing.
I like how about 15 of the 30 or so comments right now are about the lack of a backup. This is something that stood out to me too, and I'm happy to see people at least in the tech sector are taking it more seriously.

If you have car/health insurance then paying for backups should make sense to you... if it doesn't your data is clearly not very important (to you).

Just emailed the story to my cofounder to scare him off a little.

Thanks for sharing.

Great post and thanks for being open to what happened. I'd say it's actually a good thing that your would-be-cofounder quitted early thou. I think it'd be worse if he quitted after getting in YC OR right after getting investors' money.
Hey Brandon, I would be really interested in the FAQ questions that you prepared for the interview! Any chance you could publish them (omitting the answers if that's sensitive information)?
Sorry for the delay -- it took me a while to dig up a version. I posted it here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hiLQjlCIfBQobLwj2lecohUq...

These are raw, rough notes -- we didn't bother to polish them much since they were only for our own usage. But hopefully they're still useful as an example of how one team prepared for the interview.

It's surprising to see a person who has rubbed shoulders with the best (At Google and UWash) still feeling nervous before a demo. Could you elaborate on that ?
You never stop feeling nervous when something important is on the line.
Ex-Googler here. Working at Google is very different than making a presentation representing your own idea. At a big company, assuming a collaborative culture, your teammates are rooting for you to do well and you don't go into a meeting expecting that to be the last word if they don't like your idea. OP had already quit his job, staked his reputation/ego on his demo, and had to speak for himself in a tough room, so I think it's reasonable to feel some level of nervousness.
Great story! btw - chess is a lot more about confidence & psychology than purely intellectual
> Six days before the interview, my laptop crashed and we lost our entire demo

ALWAYS use source control!

Very inspiring. I have no interest in start-ups and that sort of thing, but I do admire your intestinal fortitude. You hung in there and did it. And really that's all life is about.
Really inspiring story. It reminded me - it's time to make backup!
Awesome story, even if it's old!
> Six days before the interview, my laptop crashed and we lost our entire demo.

Wow! Backup much?

really inspiring
- This is a great story, Im happy that you held it through.
> Six days before the interview, my laptop crashed and we lost our entire demo.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement of the qualities of the poster as a software engineer. You'd think that for a project that might change the rest of your life, you'd spend some time reading up about back ups or source control.