Patrick McCarthy's failed Y-combinator interview changed his perspective on problem-solving. He highlights five common stressors experienced by ACAs and suggests developing skills to address them

In 2019, I had a 10-minute interview that could have made me a millionaire. 

Y-combinator is a business accelerator program in San Francisco famous for being early investors in Stripe, Airbnb and Dropbox. Of 15,000 applications, they interview 600, of which 50 percent will be chosen for investment. We made that 600. 

I won’t drag you through the suspense. We didn’t get in. They hated our idea (to create a Netflix for Continuous Professional Development), but the explanation of why they hated it changed the way I have looked at problems and solutions forever.

Performing under pressure… or not

Fifteen seconds into the interview, we pitched our idea. 

I don’t remember most of the next nine minutes specifically, but I do remember being really annoyed that they kept asking us the same question: “How would you create content that was broad enough for a mass audience but make it specific enough to solve the problems on an individual scale?” 

We answered it. They asked it in a different way. We answered again. They asked in a different way. Continuous loop. 

We had prepared over 50 questions, and they still hadn’t moved past this one. I felt the time passing. It was infuriating, and I wasn’t handling it well. 

A chime went off; it was the timer to signal the 10 minutes were up. They said thanks, and the Zoom call ended. 

It's not you (or me)

Y-combinator communicates the process to you ahead of time. If you’re successful in the interview, someone will call you immediately. Otherwise, you receive an email with feedback. 

We waited for the email. The feedback was painful and centred on the looping question. It felt like a personal rejection. But it wasn’t.

And that’s the key takeaway from the whole debacle. So many people attribute blame to themselves when the blame can often be inherent in a situation. 

Take our position into consideration. Y-combinator has invested in various companies trying to do what we were doing. They all failed based on the content creation for a mass audience not being specific enough on an individual basis.

Millions of dollars had been wasted. The interview panel had invested in those ideas. That’s why they were interviewing us. The obsession with that question was to see if we had some sort of unique insight into how to solve it. Without an insight, we had no chance of succeeding. 

It didn’t matter what we’d done or who we were. We weren’t special. We were just two more people with a common idea who had no insight on how it could grow apart from “we’ll figure it out”. 

I’m not going to pretend I enjoyed the experience. I didn’t. But the lessons were invaluable. 

Their rejection wasn’t personal. The problems we inherited weren’t personal either. They were situational. Anyone building a business in this space inherited the problems we did.

Why that matters to you

There are five problems almost all ACAs experience stress around. They’re inherent in qualifying as an ACA. You may not experience any of them ever, but you’d be unique if that was the case. 

I hear these problems from hundreds of people every year through my lecturing. They’re always the same. Here they are in no particular order:

• Their manager: The feeling of support from your manager is 
  one of the cornerstones of enjoying and staying in your job. The minute you don’t feel supported, you’d have one foot out the door.
• Personal fulfilment: Some people want to find a large element of personal fulfilment and satisfaction in their work, and if that disappears, they often question their jobs.
• Professional development: In some positions, competition for promotions and leadership roles can be fierce, and this can create pressure and anxiety for individuals who are seeking to advance their careers.
• Social pressure: There is often societal pressure to 'succeed' and advance in one's career, and this can create additional stress and worry for people who feel that some jobs may be more prestigious than others.
• Work-life balance: The trade-off between working hours and salary is a constant battle for most people.

Most of these problems have a large portion of generality followed by a flavour of individualism. 

For example, you fight with your manager because you format documents differently from how they do. The generality of that problem is a relationship issue with your manager (everyone has them). The specific piece is it’s based on formatting (individual part). 

It would make sense generally to develop skills to deal with these five problems instead of taking on each one personally.

What (I think) I would do

I have purposely kept this light because I refuse to give specific advice to a general audience (Y-combinator echoing in my mind). What I will do is outline exactly what I think I would do. 

First, I would evaluate my own job based on how things are going. 

Most people are quite happy in their roles. If you are one of the people who aren’t, take out a piece of paper and rate your issues on a scale of 1–10 with 1 meaning you don’t care about that problem much and 10 meaning that it matters a lot to you. 

Now you have narrowed it down to what you care about. 

Second, I would find someone a few years older than you to reach out to for advice. It may be an ACA or someone else you admire. I would ask them what they would do if they were experiencing one of your problems, or if have they any advice on how to manage the situation. 

In every situation there is an element of responsibility that has to be taken on by you. However, if this isn’t the first or second time you’ve found yourself with this issue, you may need to look at your skillset in problem resolution. 

Getting advice from an objective person can be invaluable in this context. 

There are 30,000 qualified Chartered Accountants in Ireland. I have yet to meet one who wouldn’t spare 10 minutes to offer advice to someone asking in the right way.

Navigating our growth

Ultimately, my failed Y-combinator interview may not have made me a millionaire, but the lessons learned and the changed perspective on problems and solutions have proven invaluable. Rejections should not be taken personally but rather viewed as situational challenges to overcome, and by developing skills to address common stressors and seeking advice when needed, we can navigate these challenges and grow both personally and professionally.

Patrick McCarthy is a Chartered Accountant and Founder of Performance Labs