Sorry about that! I think the "Secure" copy is a bit misleading. We'll take that down.
What we meant to communicate with "Anonymous and Secure" is, "Feel free to be completely honest because we won't show this information to anyone else, and we won't even ask for your name or identity!"
It was a weekend project finished on little sleep. Sorry abou the "secure" bit.
Haha, I'm sure. As far as product design goes, I think you've done a bang-up job. Individual branches are easy on the eyes and comfortable to consume for extended periods, and the primary actions are easy to identify. congrats on the launch.
Out of curiosity, where does it fit into your workflow specifically? Do you find yourself using either/any of Facebook, Twitter, Email, etc. less in particular?
Sorry for the confusion! We should be more clear about our intentions. We need write access so when you do get an invite, you can invite your friends to branches (via DM or @mention). But we'll never send anything without your explicit permission.
Thanks for the explanation! I would suggest telling users this during signup (right before they auth).
Word of warning to everyone: when you request an invite, there's a pre-checked checkbox labeled "Follow @branch to find out about the best new branches." I like that it's easy to see, but I don't like that it's opt-out.
Loving this product. Especially the fact that you jump right into a lesson when you arrive at the homepage. Deliver value before asking the user for anything. Awesome.
Maybe this is just me, but it would be nice to have an indicator (perhaps changing the color of the text box) to show who's leading the conversation/asking the questions.
I know not all of the roundtables will be in this format, but having it be an option when starting the roundtable may not be bad.
I tried to comment as a fellow YC S11 alumnus but got a message saying "You are not a participant in this round table." It seems like an invite only thing. Anyways, so I'll put in my comments here.
Before we interviewed we had been pitching to a lot of people including other incubators etc. This was the only preparation we made. The questions that YC partners asked were similar albeit more pointed and direct. We showed them a demo that we had created and basically told them what we do. There were a lot of questions about the business. A lot of them we've heard and answered before. Some were new and we were honest with our answers (more or less). I think what we did well was the convey the passion we had for the business we were building and I distinctly remember our interview ending with my co-founder's 30 second monologue about how we really aspire to help people.
I think 10 mins is just enough for people to understand what you are doing and a little bit of how you are doing it. No one should waste time in actually trying to convince the partners that you bigger than you actually are. You might be able to pull it off but it requires a whole lot of BS-ing skills.
What we meant to communicate with "Anonymous and Secure" is, "Feel free to be completely honest because we won't show this information to anyone else, and we won't even ask for your name or identity!"
It was a weekend project finished on little sleep. Sorry abou the "secure" bit.