Back to Home11/19/2025, 6:07:26 PM

Show HN: I built a YC interview practice tool (70 latest questions)

alielroby
2 points
3 comments
Hello HN, I built a free tool to help founders practice for their YC interviews. It currently has 70+ of the latest questions asked in recent batches.

The backstory: I’ve applied to YC 3 times now. I actually haven’t received a response yet (no interview invitations), but I wanted to build something useful for the community regardless.

Since I’ve spent so much time researching the process, I compiled the most frequent and difficult questions into this app to help founders simulate the actual 10-minute pressure test.

I'm wishing all the best to the people who got interviews. I hope this helps you prep.

Would love to hear your feedback or if there are other questions I should add.

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  1. 01Story posted

    11/19/2025, 6:07:26 PM

    1h ago

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  2. 02First comment

    11/19/2025, 6:16:08 PM

    9m after posting

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  3. 03Peak activity

    4 comments in Hour 1

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    11/19/2025, 6:59:27 PM

    1h ago

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Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns

Discussion (3 comments)
Showing 4 comments
frenchmajesty
1h ago
1 reply
Good platform. A similar one was made I used to use back in ~2020 but eventually I think it died.

The best addition would be to have a simple form where people can submit ideas for questions. It'll keep your site from being stale and fading out of relevance like the last one.

alielroby
1h ago
Glad you like the platform! You make a good point about keeping content fresh. I think the standard YC questions are the most high-value to practice, so I want to keep the list curated rather than open it up to the public right away (to avoid noise/duplicate questions). However, I will make sure to keep the database updated as the 'meta' changes.
plutonium3345
1h ago
1 reply
I really like this, and I think you could even add some LLM features in there for more natural conversations.

The biggest issue I have is that it is a bit weird putting our startup ideas into someone else server. Is this open-source so we can self host? The central db for questions could still be curated by you in the repo, we would just pull to update the questions on our end. For new questions we would make PRs. You still decide which questions are good.

alielroby
1h ago
Thanks for the feedback! I love the idea of adding LLM features for natural conversation, but for now, I want to keep the tool 100% free and easy to use (no API key required). My main focus right now is helping founders master the standard rapid-fire YC questions through repetition.

Regarding privacy: You're totally right that founders are careful with their data. The good news is that the app is currently entirely front-end (client-side), with no backend at all. That said, I understand that people might still feel uncomfortable entering this information, so I’ve removed it. It will also make the process faster.

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ID: 45982738Type: storyLast synced: 11/19/2025, 7:47:53 PM

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