Tell HN: Lessons Learned from Y Combinator Rejection | Hacker News Reader

Tell HN: Lessons Learned from Y Combinator Rejection

nitrogen.posterous.com

24 pointsnitrogen33 comments

> Last time, my cousin agreed to let me use him as a token cofounder.

This is interesting in that it's kind of the culmination of the 'get a cofounder!' idea from YC. Rather than actually having a good one as per YC's actual intentions, people are just dressing up a dummy in the passenger seat to try and get in the carpool lane. My guess is that this sort of thing is fairly easy to spot, though, and doesn't look good.

yes, it's easy for us to spot and will not help the application

Why do you guys insist on a cofounder. Harj, you of all people should know that alot of the coding work can be outsourced. A visionary sometimes doesnt like having an equal to deal with.

They do not insist on it: they have funded a few single founders. It's just a model they see works well, so, all other things being equal, they go for it.

Dude you potentially miss a lot of opportunities when you filter on the basis of having a cofounder. PG claims a startup is too much work for one person. duh. Thats why you hire employees.

And things are never all else equal.

Well, it's their money, they do as they see fit. If some other, similar seed-funding group accepts lots of single founders and does better than YC, maybe they'll change.

It's not just them saying this, though. I really wish I had someone to work with myself; it would help things a lot.

well we fund single founders, the bar is just higher. and since the bar with a co-founder is already high, that becomes a very high bar.

and yes you can outsource development but boy were we infinitely more productive once we had a tech co-founder and i started doing front end dev.

Maybe a better lesson is - screw YC, who needs them? Honestly, if you need the money to bootstrap, freelance. If you need the connections, go network.

Think of it positively - this way you get to keep 100% of your equity.

I would go for YC if they can make me a Visa to USA (or just the Bay Area). But since they can't, what's really their role?

Everything can be learnt: You can read articles, papers, books and learn how to manage your company, deal with legal issues...

Once your company is profitable, you'll have the choice between fast expanding or remaining in steady growth.

If your idea is genius, successful... you don't need YC to sell or get money from an investor. Example: Admob.

No one can predict the future of a startup, so applying to YC won't really make you successful. It's you (the person) who predict it ;) just go with it.

The network could be useful.

> Everything can be learnt: You can read [snip]

You can't read the experience of actually being in the Bay Area/Silicon Valley and meeting people face to face.

That said, you don't need YC to enable you to visit the area either. Go visit, meet people, chances are those contacts might lead somewhere...

There is lots of venture capital in the bay area, but there are successful companies all over the world, not just in the bay area.

And success can be defined in many ways, I think that 'what makes the founder of the company happy' should be a good start.

That's not a good lesson at all. YC offers a good deal of value for 6% equity in terms of connections, encouragement, advice, some money, and so on. Why apply in the first place if getting rejected is considered a good outcome?

The "Screw YC" attitude is a silly rationalization, if you ask me. And this comes from a guy who's bootstrapping and has never applied to YC.

I too have built a company bootstrapping and I've never applied to YC.

I'm not saying YC is necessarily a bad deal if you want to go through the VC funnel and flip your business - in fact, in that case, I think it makes a great deal of sense.

What I am saying is that if you don't have access to that opportunity, well, screw it, realize it's one among many and you can make things work anyway. Plus, whenever something negative happens, always look at the positive side - in this case, you get to keep equity.

Or, if you want a more Chinese perspective on the issue, an old story:

There was a farmer who lived in a village with son and they had a horse. One day the farmer’s horse ran away. His neighbors came by and said, “What bad luck! Your only horse ran away! Now how will you till the fields?” The farmer replied, “Good or bad, who can say?” The next day, the horse returned with five wild horses. “What good luck!” the neighbors exclaimed. “You’ve got five free horses!” The farmer replied, “Good or bad, who can say?” While the farmer’s son was breaking in the five wild horses, one of the horses stepped on the son’s leg and broke it. “What bad luck!” cried the neighbors. “Your only son has broken his leg. Who will help you run the farm?” The farmer replied, “Good or bad, who can say?” A few weeks later, war breaks out and all healthy young men are drafted into the army. Since the son’s leg is broken, he cannot be drafted. “You’re so lucky!” the neighbors say, and the farmer says, “Good or bad, who can say?”

Thanks for the story, that was really neat.

Lots of wisdom in old cultures.

The "Screw YC" attitude can actually be healthy. You will spend less time thinking, wondering about YC and trying to impress YC and more time on building an actual product.

This is especially true if you arnt building some lame YC-approved social networking app that no one will ever use. If you are truly buidling something people want, you already have the greatest asset.

I was surprised to read "Assuming they would read my demo page this time, I spent all of my time focusing on the demo instead of the application" given the start of the application form specifically says "We look at online demos only for the most promising applications, so don't skimp on the application because you're relying on a good demo".

Did you miss that or just interpret it differently to me?

I assumed that, since they saw the demo last time, my application must be good enough already, so just make the demo better this time.

Upvoted for publishing a very well-written self-reflection piece on the process. I feel like most people in the same situation would just write a ranting reaction to disappointing news like this, but this was very well thought-out and as such, will help others going through the application process.

I wouldn't read into the subtle differences between this application and your last - maybe they didn't have time to check your URL this time because they got a lot more applications and they were on a bigger time crunch. Persistence is key - keep on trucking dude!

If it makes you happy, I answered no to those questions and still got rejected ;)

Thanks for sharing your experience and giving us some useful insight. Just based on your whole approach to the process and dealing with the rejection, I think you will be fine with or without the YC experience.

best of luck

tl,dr: have a cofounder, remove distractions from the application.

Yes, I'm posting a tldr for my own post :).

If it's worth the read, it's worth the read. Otherwise why write it?

Good question. I wrote the blog post for myself mostly, so I could document my experiences and reactions, but with the hope that someone else might find it useful. I intended the tldr summary as an experiment, and to provide some benefit to anyone who doesn't read the full post.

Probably should have worn a shirt in the video, too.

YC is so 1999. pg thinks he can replicate his success from before dot.com bubble burst. Really, of the startups hes funded, besides dropbox, who really needs that shit?

Why are you here?

Im hoping to get funded by YC by having the highest karma (in absolute value)

right now it's -4 + 4 = 0 ;)

At the very least, YC partners are trying a novel experiment nobody has tried before, and if you're a curious person, it's interesting where it will go. If it succeeds, great! If it fails, at least it's a really interesting thing to try, and it inspired hundreds (thousands?) of people to strive to do great things.

I honestly want to know, what compels you to knock smart, energetic people trying new, interesting things? Even if the idea is ridiculous, who could it possibly hurt?

[devil's advocate]

YC could end up hurting all the founders. YC is selling a message that it's OK not to worry about a business model or revenue (or profit!), and that may turn out to be horrendous advice. In this case YC is partly responsible for the creation of a new web 2.0 no-revenue-required bubble.

So what you call "knocking smart energetic people" may just be a highly needed reality check, to keep people from dropping out of college and investing their savings and future into doomed ventures.

[/devil's advocate]

Thank you for referring to me as the devil. Thats quite a compliment.

The only thing 1999 about Y Combinator is that the application form is mostly written in HTML 3.2 ;). Also, not everything about the dot com boom was bad. It's just taken us (as a society) this long to filter through the wreckage and start using the good bits again.

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