I find it hard to concentrate on videos of people talking. I have no problem sitting in long lectures or conferences, but I get fidgety and distracted trying to watch conference videos on my laptop.
I'm used to thinking of video watching as being a low value activity that should not be optimized for, but there's an increasing amount of professionally necessary video watching.
Maybe I should build a dedicated video room, like a home theater but for work, with minimum visual distractions.
1.5x or faster speedups, turn on CC for the unintelligible speech. I really appreciate it when there's a transcript available in addition to the captioning.
Taking notes / creating Anki cards helps with focus.
I use noise-canceling headphones (inexpensive from Taotronics) and the DFX plugin [1] for audio clarity. The plugin has a Dialog Boost setting intended for transcription. It goes a long way to improve muddy audio.
In case some are wondering, "Video Speed Controller" extension can speed and slow down videos by pressing "d" or "s", respectively as much as you want with steps of 0.1x, instead of the non useful Youtube click and select a speed with a quantum of 0.5 and a max of 2.
If a talk is 40 minutes and there are no slides available and the author goes through the slides in the video, I'll play the video at 10x or more just to check out the slides and see if the talk addresses the points I'm interested in. 40 minutes at 10x or faster is around 4 minutes. It helps me decide and avoids me wasting 40 minutes on the wrong talk.
I found it very helpful to have your own rituals for the task you want to accomplish.
I create a spreadsheet with every startup before I start watching anything.
Then I start rating startups and comment on founders on my sheet while watching the videos.
I focus 100% on the first minute of any video, sometimes founders are so good they completely get my attention, sometimes I lose interest and just go back to my sheet commenting.
My sheet/notes are my starting point, if I’m bored I fix it there..I found out that I get bored when I hear a pitch that solves a problem for industries I’m not interested in.
I attended 4 online demo days, and every time my sheet gets improved.
I cannot watch these videos without a spreadsheet..and now my team asks me to send them the spreadsheet before every demo day.
I think YC should add a sheet for us to write our comments/ratings and decision.
The data from these sheets will be so helpful to understand how attendees perceive each pitch, how founders can improve it
I've been making investment mistakes and trying to learn from them for 15 years now. Recording a couple sentences about your reasons why or why not helps a lot. People aren't naturally good at learning from decisions with long feedback delays -- you have to keep notes.
I wish I had decision notes from earlier life choices, like why I studied EE instead of CS, why I chose my PhD advisor, why I joined companies, got married, etc.
I keep track of investment decisions, but not life decisions...life is too big for me to have it tracked on excel.
But I hear you...sometimes you lose sight of your big goal. It helps to have your goal/vision engraved in your mind, it helps to write and dream about it.
My current job has a lot more video calls than prior. It took some getting used to. I find the biggest challenge to be the urge to do some low-quality work simultaneously. What's helped me on that is:
- Use a good monitor or TV. Ideally not the main one you use to work.
- Move, physically, from my desk to a place I take the calls in. Enter 'meeting mode' not 'desk mode'
- Close all other applications. Full screen video.
- Turn off other monitors
- Take notes via notebook
I bet building a room would help, but these things worked for me in an apartment where that wasn't an option. Still takes energy to focus on it though.
Same here. My problem is allocating dedicated time to sitting and watching these things. I'm fine with meetups and conferences, as I commit to them in some concrete way. I stash my devices and give the speaker my full attention for however long it takes; but for videos, at best I start it in a browser at work and within 5 minutes it's just running in the background and within 15 minutes I've usually been pulled on enough work-related priorities that it dies, paused, in its browser tab.
Perhaps you’ve tried this already but taking notes with pen and paper might help you to focus. I like doing that during meetings at work, in order to help me keep focus and prevent my mind from wandering away.
What works for me is using my headphones/earbuds on a laptop in a room that doesn't have other distractions. The audio quality of the recording makes a huge difference. Bad audio is a killer.
I will always look for a written alternative if there is one, but if forced to watch a video I'll speed it up at least 2.5x, sometimes more depending on the video, and use captioning. For me it's the worst possible medium in general though.
Tangential: I know Sam Altman has expressed interest in the real life phenomenon. Recently I was thinking it had to do with human perception. Video is a substitute for authentic cues of reality.
A solution that would be up your alley for experimentation is getting curved LCD display and putting it on a humanoid^.
I think getting some sample audiences would allow for iteration to a decent remote solution. It may be awkward at first, so bringing back cohorts may help them adapt to the robot.
^I think it would have to be more nuanced, but it is a start to engaging with real depth perception.
The discipline to maintain focus is a skill that requires practice. We practice "multi-tasking" a lot more than we practice single-tasking. The problem is not the environmemt or the medium or the technology.
A good way to practice paying attention to video is to take notes while watching. And use pen and paper! You don't need the notes later, they are just a tool to help maintain focus and process as you listen.
Hey, we're Supermedium, a YC company exploring building a VR home environment for utility and productivity (which includes focus). If anyone is interested, subscribe to our email list at http://supermedium.com to get updates, we'll be slowly releasing apps and experiments to try.
I think it can help to put yourself in "prosumer" mode, produce and make it an interactive experience, instead of being a 100% consumer. Get on the back-channels - Slack, live-tweet about it, make a buzzword bingo card etc.
The suggestion here about making a spreadsheet is good too, it reminds me of people who keep records while watching sports.
I do the same. I listen to a tutorial or tech talk, and find myself wanting to keep my hands busy. So I start messing with causal games on my phone. Some stuff I can still follow like a tech talk but If they show actual code or something I find my self either pausing or rewinding.
I have a ritual of watching through my queue of Youtube videos (on many topics) when I am preparing and eating breakfast each morning. It works well. I've been able to churn through so much useful content over the years that I wouldn't have normally watched.
Try running the video stream (YouTube has VR mode) in something as simple as cardboard/daydream. There’s something calming and focusing when your peripheral vision is silenced.
Treadmill desk. It's on the edge of being too difficult to walk and do real work, but you can walk pretty fast (for a decent amount of exercise) and watch videos easily.
This kinda sucks, but as someone who was in China for Chinese New Year (when all large gatherings were banned), I understand the reasoning.
That being said, I think we at Wanderlog (W19) would've needed much longer to raise if not for a chance in person meeting at Demo Day.
We were encouraged to cold-pitch investors in person in the halls during breaks at Demo Day. For one of those pitches, I found an awesome investor who'd heard of us through a friend. While he'd thought there was a gap in travel planning tools before, this chance encounter gave me the chance to sell the company a lot more than we got from the super-brief Demo Day presentation. We had a handshake deal 3 days after that.
We wrote more about the lead-up to experience in our blog at https://wanderlog.com and my conclusion is: it's harder to forge that quick trust and connection anywhere other than in person.
That being said, I do realize we were very lucky. This change could be good for some companies and worse for others, as it rewards solid businesses more than charismatic pitchers. I'm looking forward to seeing the Demo Day pitches for this batch!
I am curious if there are other YC founders in the crowd -- did you find the in-person part of Demo Day very helpful, or did more happen online before/after?
I wonder if it would be helpful for YC to set up a chat room/discord (twitch?) like environment for non-anonymous founders and investors to hang out during an "online" only demo day?
It won't "completely" capture the face-to-face meeting experience, but perhaps partially?
I understand the precaution but do feel bad for the W20 founders. The energy and buzz of demo day is really great. I am curious to see if this lack of dynamic face to face time after their demos will impact the fund raising of this batch.
That seems impossible to measure, it'll be confounded by the current slowdown in the markets which seems likely to make fundraising harder regardless of whether meetings are in-person or not.
If funding is similar or up compared to previous Demo Days, could one not assume some measure of success? And only if funding was lower, the conclusion would be murky (whether "remoteness" or COVID-19 was the cause)?
It's going to be a great experiment IMHO. If successful, it demonstrates how unnecessary it is for these in persona gatherings are for demos, interviews, and funding, and lends even more credibility to operating remotely (not that YC is adverse to remote portfolio companies, but every little bit helps; I keep seeing more and more remote-eligible roles showing up as jobs on the front page of HN, this is good!). Being more remote friendly in the future opens YC up to founders who previously would be locked out of the experience, and YC gets exposure to startups they otherwise might not have. Everyone benefits.
Yeah and not everyone really wants to move to California either due to cost of living or other reasons. Always found it a shame tech is so centralized in a few cities. But it seems even places called the next Silicon Vally like Austin, all the tech people moving there has raised the cost of living too. So similar effect California is struggling with. Seems Dallas is more affordable but not sure if it will go up as tech comes there too and also sounds like you need a car too. I think I’d be cool if some warm paradise walkable, live somewhere close to the office and restaurants and shops. Seems less stressful and also probably be healthier if you are more active instead of driving everywhere.
TBH demodays are very hard time because of this buzz, i can see how going online only will improve things a little to save more resources to fundraising itself.
Yeah, I think virtual world could make a cool virtual office. I know most focus on social and gaming though and I have some ideas in this space. I was thinking if I did end up building something, early on develop it with a business version in mind and actually use it for the company itself developing the world where it can have more account controls and own private space where they can limit access. Then could license and host a business version of it for companies and offer productivity tools when ready to polish it more for that market, However I see going first to market with the consumer version, but that might help too if you got popular and later pitched the business version since people would already be familiar using the virtual world and interacting with it.
Education is another use case too, I know there's already online schools for college and even K-12 has online schools. Florida I guess there's a popular one, Ohio had one called ECOT but they ended up shutting down due to an issue with tracking attendance but some feel it was more political attack on school choice. But usually there's what called a learning management system where you can mail your teacher, view grades, submit assignments like uploading a DOC or Powerpoint, do quizzes, read and watch material. Then once or twice a week there's a live session that was optional which uses software that the webinar people use with chat, voice, screen sharing, whiteboard, etc. So I think a virtual world could replace the meeting software maybe, but I could still see the school wanting to use their own LMS.
However I think some regulations will slow the adoption of working remotely which I commented about yesterday on another post but it was a bit long and not sure if stuff people actually are thinking about. For example if a company in California wants to hire someone in Ohio to work remotely there's extra red tape to deal with. Because the company is then considered doing business in Ohio and not only California so creates paperwork and expenses for compliance. Plus if the business doesn't have an address in the state, that can also complicates things and then other questions come up too since the laws were written considering everyone commutes to work instead of working remotely for a company across the country. So it's not usually worth the extra burden to hire only a single person in a state or even some stuff is county or city by county or city. So sounds like remote would be easier if they report to a regional office instead of being fully remote maybe. So if a company in San Francisco wants to hire people remotely, they might have to limit it to residents of the area they operate in.
I remember reading once on HN but forget where someone was already remote and wanted to move somewhere cheaper but was told no due to legal reasons. Actually wouldn't surprise me if a lot of companies are already breaking these employment laws. Like some startups offer unlimited vacation but expect people to still stay in touch or maybe they'll spend a hour or two doing some work from their hotel room... If the company is based in California and they took a ski vacation to Colorado, the company could be creating obligation to Colorado for different taxes, insurance requirements, etc technically. Same with trade shows or conferences for example worker compensation not every state has reciprocity, and some funds are state ran too without allowing a private insurer. So if you send your team to a conference for a few days, that could complicate things especially if it's not a state you already were doing business in - like someone was doing something in Washington State and some forms online wouldn't let you use a out of state address. There's a list somewhere, some states want you to do this on the first day while other states are more friendlier (maybe they are hoping to attract events and conferences to their state!). Then was reading states like New York will even consider a layover during a business trip, so check your employer email on your blackberry and New York wants a slice of the pie. Sure this is how some lawyers and HR people interpret this stuff, but in reality not sure if NY will really follow up just for checking your email but in theory it's a possibility.
Then a few states like NY, NJ, PA, DE, NE has rules on telecommuting too, apparently someone who worked remotely for a company located in NY from his home in TN ended up owing income tax to NY even though he performed the work in TN. However if the business created Nexus in TN by hiring someone from there, sounds like a huge conflict of law with TN and NY, so maybe those states are bad to base your company from if you want to allow remote. Sounds like though if that company had an office in TN, they could have assigned the employee to report to the TN location instead of NY and wouldn't of been a problem maybe.
This is a welcome development, not so much because of the loss of the face time, but because of this:
> We will also provide additional written background information on each company and access to their decks.
I can do triage on decks a lot faster than I can on pitches. When there are 100 companies to go through, being able to quickly eliminate companies that I know I'm not interested in is a huge win.
Can you elaborate? I'm skeptical that better/more efficient investment decisions can be made by looking at the pitch decks first and then watching the pitches as opposed to the other way around.
It's not that I want to read all the decks first and then watch all the pitches, it's that I want to look at the decks in order to decide which pitches to watch. S19 demo day had 197 companies. I don't know how long the pitches were (I didn't go) but if each one was 5 minutes that is 16 hours worth of pitches without a break. I'm not capable of maintaining focus at a presentation for much more than an hour or two at a time. If my attention wavers at the wrong moment during a pitch I might miss something important.
If I can look at a deck, then I can do two things that I can't do during a pitch. First, I can close my eyes and take a deep breath for a minute without missing anything. And second, I can see right away that, for example, this company is in a sector that I am not focused on (because I don't know anything about it) and so I am not going to invest in it even if it looks like a great opportunity. I am an individual investor with a very narrow focus (I look for companies in particular technical niches) so I can eliminate 80-90% of opportunities just by knowing the market segment they're in. A company might be well positioned to revolutionize (say) fashion design, but I'm not going to invest in it because I know absolutely nothing about fashion design, and I don't invest in things I don't understand. With a deck I can figure this out an order of magnitude faster than if I have to sit through a whole pitch.
I'm the wrong person to ask. I'm not interested in either ads or gaming.
Two suggestions:
1. Post this as an ASK HN so that you can get feedback from people who are a better fit for this sector
2. Just build the damn thing. How hard can it be? (And if the answer is "really hard", then your deck should explain why, and why you are uniquely qualified to do it.)
I've attended every demo day in the past 5 years. It's of course a much better experience in person — but this was the right call. Large events should not happen especially during the high-exponential-growth phase of this pandemic.
A great example from history: compare Philly to other cities (e.g. St. Louis) during the Spanish flu outbreak — they held a major event in that phase and that single-handedly turned it into the worst hit city of the epidemic with almost 1% of the entire city population perishing as a result.
No founder would be willing to pitch to the general public. Companies are providing very private information (economics, stats, etc) that should not be made public.
I and several other founders are doing this on the Pioneer livestream next week. It's earlier stage than most YC companies but not afraid of a little transparency https://pioneer.app/livestream
Sounds interesting. I think live audience and energy could be feedback but I could see how this could be a pro for shy people. I think starting out I’d be more comfortable to talk to a camera. But I’d be worried about the video and audio quality. Bad audio is a huge killer!
Maybe you could talk in front of the camera in front of a green sheet with your team and then screen record to sync up with it since not in a big room with a projector or maybe simpler if don’t have the equipment or space is just do like game streamers do and screen share with your face overlaid your desktop or switch back and forth. Sounds like doing a startup got to wear multiple hats including some video production.
For example there’s some YouTube vloggers who can talk to the camera like it’s natural but if they have to do any public speaking it feels different. I remember some channel I follow travel related was asked to speak at a meet up and then another YouTuber won a award and flew to New York to accept it. So you can talk to millions though the camera, but talking to a room with a few hundred or thousands is a bigger deal for some reason. Maybe because online more control and editing though... if you get sick or pronounce something wrong you could just edit it out and jump cut between
Nice! I kinda figured each startup would have to produce their own, kinda like how some talent shows have you produce your own video to audition. So sounds like they won't have to worry about that all.
I've always had an interest in video production but never had the chance to really express that. I think one thing I'd recommend is when demoing maybe create a fresh separate user account, so less distracting when demoing with other programs or a clutter desktop. Also probably makes it look more professional too. I've figured if I ever made something with video tutorials, that'd be a little improvement maybe.
Interesting... I wonder how the synchronous -> asynchronous switch could impact the amount of attention given to presentations for non-flashy companies. In the in-person model, investors sit through the whole presentation. In this one, they could turn them off and switch to another half-way through, whereas maybe if they had watched it all they would have seen some otherwise compelling information. (in theory)
The ability to record (and edit?) the pitch before sending it to investors seems like a great way of leveling the field between natural public speakers and terrible ones.
Obviously public speaking is a great skill to have, but having so much money and time hinge on a 10 minute speech you can simply flub (through nervousness, poor sleep, etc) can't possibly be the most efficient way of allocating startup capital.
I think you’re onto something. It takes time to get used to public speaking and even when you’re moderately good at it, there’s always some initial anxiety and nervousness.
If the point of demo day is to explain your idea in an efficient and understandable way, it seems like video would be the way to go.
I think there’s a lot of benefits to meeting in-person, some of which are hidden and you can’t anticipate. A lot of deals have probably been done due to serendipity and chance in the hallways so I wouldn’t want to discount them entirely.
But I like this. It feels like at the very least, there’s an opportunity to experiment with something new.
You could do it. I'm a Latter-day Saint (Mormon) and there is a group called "Leading Saints" https://leadingsaints.org/ that does 'Virtual Summits' since there are many (more) members of the Church outside of the 'Mormon corridor' (Utah, Idaho, Arizona ish areas) than there are in it.
You could reach out to Kurt Francom and ask him what mistakes they've made with their virtual summits to try and avoid and then apply a more tech-knowledgeable approach for a security virtual conference.
Is the demo day website going to be available for investors/ media alone? I wish YC made the presentations of all the startups available online for everyone. I’m sure it would be super-useful for connecting jobseekers with interesting startups, decision makers at enterprises interested in connecting with founders, developers to discover interesting tools, etc. I understand that certain startups upload their pitches online. I just wish there was a better way for interested parties (other than investors and the media) to look at all the pitches in one place.
Even if they sat on the for 6-12 months before releasing them, it would still be a wonderful resource for other startups and just of general interest to people like myself.
Wow. Good for YC for making this decision. I'm sure this was a very tough decision. Also, would have been cool if they stream the presentations but oh well :p
I haven't seen any discussion here of the actual virus risks in these large gatherings, so I thought I'd bring up the question. I admit I haven't read too much about this particular virus, but my belief is that the average demo day attendee is much more likely to die in a car accident on their way to the event, than from a virus caught at the event itself.
I'm personally doing plenty of traveling this month, taking advantage of discounted flights and hotels while lots of people rebook.
A single person can do whatever and no one gives a F.
As to the health authorities - they are acting responsibly.
It is in the best of interest to delay, manage and contain the virus spread, even though it's probably impossible to stop, because no country is in such surplus of medical resources to be able to admit hundreds of thousands of patients with severe respiratory issues. And the collapse of some local medical systems will incur mass hysteria which will make managing the crisis really difficult. So distributing the infections is really, really important, and will save many lives.
The risk isn't the virus itself. It's our social structures breaking down: grocery stores, public transit, hospitals. If 1M people catch the virus, who will care for them?
R0 is the number of people infected on average by each case of coronavirus. These measures are designed to get R0 as low as possible, since that will greatly reduce the spread.
The risk isn't attendees dying, the risk is spreading a disease faster that we don't have the medical capacity (as a country) to handle. It's roughly like getting a vaccine, slowing the spread will help vulnerable people.
And ongoing risk of an endemic new virus even after a vaccine is developed. Even though we have flu vaccine, it still takes its toll every year and is probably here to stay.
I'm used to thinking of video watching as being a low value activity that should not be optimized for, but there's an increasing amount of professionally necessary video watching.
Maybe I should build a dedicated video room, like a home theater but for work, with minimum visual distractions.
Do people have advice on how to focus on videos?