In recent weeks, we experienced an enjoyable interview process with Y-combinator, one of the most well-known acceleration programs in the entrepreneurship world.

As Navlungo, we make the routes of international logistics companies priceable, providing comparison and purchasing services to companies that want to export and import.

In the entrepreneurship world, almost every entrepreneur team receives practical and theoretical training before establishing a startup company. They read articles, listen to conferences, and everything explained in these has actually only one goal: to please your customer.

Bearing this magical formula in mind, we witness that every applied competition or investor pitch is somehow successful. As Navlungo, the same golden rule applied to our Y-combinator application process.

Without boring you further, let me try to present to you by blending the questions posed to us during the application and what Adora (the interviewer) wanted to hear from us during the interview.

• What is the problem? Is there really a problem? Or did you make it up?

• What have you done to solve this problem? You don't expect sacrifices from me without putting your own hands under the stones, do you?

• Tell me about your customer? Who are they? What do they eat, what do they drink? How well do you know them? Which of their burning problems did you set out to solve?

• What is your customer count? How many customers did you reach in how long?

• You are trying to make a few customers very happy instead of making many customers slightly happy, right? If so, give some examples.

• Tell us about the revenue you generated? How long did it take you to earn it? What type of customer brought you this revenue? Did you sell to the same customer more than once?

• Most importantly, tell us about the team. Is everyone on the team passionate, and is there a reasonably good division of labor?

• Do you plan to grow locally? Has there been a feeling from your sales or model so far that you will go global?

Adora asked us if we would only sell to Turkey in the future.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8K89vlvujPQ

While some of these questions were asked via the written application form, others came during the video interview. Within the application form, there is also a video section where each team member talks independently for about 50 seconds.

We shot this video on the Bosphorus in Istanbul. As a video intro, we started from the best place to do logistics business, saying "Hello from where Asia meets Europe." There was no Janissary march in the background. :)

Actually, the questions above must not have come as a surprise to you as well; however, in our answers, we always conveyed what our customers said rather than our own opinion. We are not the companies that set the rules of the market.

I actually see startup ideas as ambassadors through which customers communicate their own needs. We realized that our perspective aligns with what Y-combinator is looking for, and if we are to treat this interview as a success, I can say that the most important factor was this perspective.

5 days after the interview day, we were informed that we were among the rare teams out of 5000 startups that had a video conference, but unfortunately, we could not enter the 150 startups invited to San Francisco.

It is not stated why you are not accepted, but what we felt was that we needed to show more sales volume. If we get support from you to show more sales, we can make it to the final 150 next year. You can also get an instant international logistics quote by visiting Navlungo.com.

I can no longer finish any article without writing this last sentence, please see that as my professional deformation. :)