Y Combinator Startup Podcast
00:43:38 · Aaron Epstein, Marvin Schwaibold
[00:43:38] S0: Yep. [00:43:38] S1: If the call to action is to create our own game and be game designers ourselves. [00:43:42] S0: Right. And so if that is the primary call to action, that is not what we did first. And then you probably want to actually create the game for people so that they can play with it. And then if they wanna save it Yeah. Or come back to it later, share it with anybody, then you gotta sign up, or then you gotta create [00:43:55] S1: your account. And and here also... Look. So you have create my games for you explorer. No one knows what any of that means, by the way. But if you click on any of them, like my game, for instance, again, it leads you to a sign up. Mhmm. Like, if you are not signed up to this page, you shouldn't even see my games probably. Right? Like... And have the ability to tap into something that then will lead you to sign in again. For you leads me back to the game I was just on, which I don't know if that makes a lot of sense. And explorer is basically the page we're already exploring on home. I don't even think that needs to be a new button. The only thing you've done now on the explorer page is taking the input field away from me. Mhmm. So now I can't I can't create a game anymore. So there's a few things there in the hierarchy where I would really think very... Like, put yourself in the position of someone coming to your website for the first time who has no idea what it is that you're building or selling. Yeah. How do they interact with the product?
00:43:55 · Marvin Schwaibold, Aaron Epstein
[00:43:55] S1: your account. And and here also... Look. So you have create my games for you explorer. No one knows what any of that means, by the way. But if you click on any of them, like my game, for instance, again, it leads you to a sign up. Mhmm. Like, if you are not signed up to this page, you shouldn't even see my games probably. Right? Like... And have the ability to tap into something that then will lead you to sign in again. For you leads me back to the game I was just on, which I don't know if that makes a lot of sense. And explorer is basically the page we're already exploring on home. I don't even think that needs to be a new button. The only thing you've done now on the explorer page is taking the input field away from me. Mhmm. So now I can't I can't create a game anymore. So there's a few things there in the hierarchy where I would really think very... Like, put yourself in the position of someone coming to your website for the first time who has no idea what it is that you're building or selling. Yeah. How do they interact with the product? [00:44:43] S0: It was also interesting because you went into the game, and we were like, okay. We're done with this one. I wanna get back. It wasn't obvious to me that you do the fast forward icon Yeah. To get back to the home page. Fast forward icon. Thought it was gonna take me to another game. [00:44:55] S1: Yeah. Yeah. Or it it can be misconstrued as an arrow really quickly.
00:44:55 · Marvin Schwaibold, Aaron Epstein
[00:44:55] S1: Yeah. Yeah. Or it it can be misconstrued as an arrow really quickly. [00:44:58] S0: Right. And so it's interesting. You actually click the back button to get back. Right? Because there was no obvious home to go back to. [00:45:05] S1: Exactly. [00:45:06] S0: Yeah. But this is super cool. You can imagine just getting people to put in a prompt and creating a game just like the racing game you were just doing. Yeah. People could play with this for hours. [00:45:16] S1: And A 100%. [00:45:17] S0: You just gotta get people to that value of creating the game and experiencing something. [00:45:20] S1: Once you've created that game and you're proud of what you created, being able to share that with your friends is probably a really nice growth hack for these guys. And and I think there's a lot of, yeah, there's a lot of value in in in this kind of work, so props to them. [00:45:31] S0: Yeah. Nice job, Instant Play. Okay. Next up, we have Mintlify, the knowledge infrastructure agents build on. Self updating documentation for startups, enterprises, and agents. Right. Cool. I'm obviously very familiar with Mintlify. It's an incredible company. It's been growing really quickly and is a product that tons of YC companies and other dev tools use. Yeah. Yeah. This It's a beautiful website. Yeah. This this looks very professional. Yeah. It looks like something that is trustworthy. [00:46:00] S1: It's straightforward. Clean. Clean. Yeah. The the the very nice compositions with color and typography and spacing and line heights.
00:46:00 · Marvin Schwaibold, Aaron Epstein
[00:46:00] S1: It's straightforward. Clean. Clean. Yeah. The the the very nice compositions with color and typography and spacing and line heights. [00:46:08] S0: Yeah. So let's drill let's drill down to, like, why do we feel that way? What are the what are the specific elements of this page that make us feel like this is very clean and professional and all those things that we sent? [00:46:17] S1: I I think because it's it's it's it's being reductive in exactly the correct ways, and it's showing only the things that are actually necessary to show. It's got a very clean headline, a small paragraph underneath, the get started button is very prominent. It's showing off some kind of a dashboard. You can kind of understand, okay, this is probably where where the documentation would live and where would the documentation would get updated. The the graphic in the background is actually... Is adding to the vibe rather than taking away from it. It's it's subtle, and in the background, it feels it feels like it's it's it's helping you think. It's some kind of a network or something. It it feels like they're very they're very cautious and careful with what they're building and some kind of an infrastructure intelligence layer. I I never know about logo walls, but at least this logo wall is very well put together,
00:46:17 · Marvin Schwaibold, Aaron Epstein
[00:46:17] S1: I I think because it's it's it's it's being reductive in exactly the correct ways, and it's showing only the things that are actually necessary to show. It's got a very clean headline, a small paragraph underneath, the get started button is very prominent. It's showing off some kind of a dashboard. You can kind of understand, okay, this is probably where where the documentation would live and where would the documentation would get updated. The the graphic in the background is actually... Is adding to the vibe rather than taking away from it. It's it's subtle, and in the background, it feels it feels like it's it's it's helping you think. It's some kind of a network or something. It it feels like they're very they're very cautious and careful with what they're building and some kind of an infrastructure intelligence layer. I I never know about logo walls, but at least this logo wall is very well put together, [00:47:03] S0: which is very a nice. Lot of really big credible companies, which builds a lot of social proof, which seems to be something Yeah. Like, you know, we we have that... This vibe of, like, professional, trustworthy, and part of that is communicated, via... Seeing Microsoft and Anthropic and X and Coinbase are their users as well.
00:47:03 · Aaron Epstein, Marvin Schwaibold
[00:47:03] S0: which is very a nice. Lot of really big credible companies, which builds a lot of social proof, which seems to be something Yeah. Like, you know, we we have that... This vibe of, like, professional, trustworthy, and part of that is communicated, via... Seeing Microsoft and Anthropic and X and Coinbase are their users as well. [00:47:21] S1: With so many tools flooding the market, you need that kind of proof point to be like, okay. Well, if Spotify is using it, maybe we should actually look at it. Mhmm. And then I think this is just a great example of, like, they're abstracting UI and feature capabilities into something very cohesive and something really nice and art directed that feels, you know, interesting to to to look at. I would say maybe the the the headlines here for these cards are a little bit too small. If I look at all of them right now with the background color being the same, I'm kind of looking at none of them, and they're reusing they're reusing that that kind of braided animation in the background, and that's kind of losing its magic if you if you keep if you keep kind of reusing it all over the place. So I would actually say less is more here, and the headlines could be a little bit larger. Yeah. Again, here, it's kind of like... I'm not sure if you if you need that. It's very hard to read, build on top of your existing setup, [00:48:10] S0: like Yeah. And that that actually seems like a very important point that you would want people to know. Yeah. You can control who has access. You can build on top of your existing setup.