Show HN: Rejection Conditioner for YC Applications

Dear _,

Thank you for your rejection letter dated ___. As you may imagine, I have received a lot of fine rejection letters, and you will appreciate that it is impossible for me to accept them all. I will therefore be starting employment with you on ____.

Regards and best wishes, H. Pringle

Then about a month later, a rejection still floated its way into my inbox. It really stung even though I hadn't applied that round :).

P.S. - if that rejection came from someone actually viewing it, and not some autosender, that's kind of a lightweight privacy violation, at least from a usability standpoint. Most would think that an unsubmitted application would automatically be an unread one as well. But since it was in the non-profit category maybe the screener had extra time on his/her hands.

1 - chronic disease studies for multiple blue-color workplaces 2 - never did video, so couldn't have been accidentally submitted

http://www.universalrejection.org/

This is a weekend project that drew inspiration from my own experiences of getting rejected from various applications. Although I personally haven't applied this time around, I know the sinking feeling of seeing a rejection email pop into your inbox and reading the lines "We're sorry to inform you..." I hope you find this useful and welcome feedback to improve on this.

1. requires you to fill out the YC application form to start the process; and

2. takes 7-10 days to get back to you with the inevitable rejection.

There's a whole separate psychology involved in getting over the hump of submitting the application, when you know that not only might you be rejected, but you'll have to spend a lot of effort to get rejected, and won't find out whether you have been for quite a while. That, in my mind, is the feeling you have to "get used to."

(For a bonus, let the applicant respond to the rejection email with special pleading. Auto-reject that after 7-10 days as well.)

I'm a big boy now, just "Sorry you didn't get in." Is less patronizing somehow.

It might be interesting to send the email at random times on random days so you can't get used to it, which I believe is a similar method to how games will increase your response to rewards by making them irregularly timed.

Either way, nice job!

Another way of extending it (besides the suggestions) could be making a collection of nasty HN comments. Try to match the topics and you might be into something! Mandatory xkcd reference: https://xkcd.com/810/

On the general topic, there is something called "rejection therapy". While I haven't exactly practiced it myself, I've had my fair share of rejection and I can definitely feel it is something to try out. Be it social or work-related things.

This also looks like you are doing it wrong. The mass of rejection letters have many grammar and spelling mistakes. They tend to be poorly written.

I don't even open them. The preview is all the information I need.

I got a lot of rejection in grades 1-8. The teachers believed that I was a poor student. In some ways, I was.

If only from teacher lounge gossip, grade by grade the teachers assumed I was a poor student.

Then in grades 9-12 I learned my main way to defend myself from rejection:

Main Way: Know what the heck I'm doing, have some solid ways to know I'm right, and otherwise stay out of sight so that I won't be a target.

So, right, in the 9th grade I discovered high school math. So, I did well: (A) As some aptitude tests showed, I have some math talent. (B) I found that when my math was correct, I was 100% immune from criticism or rejection. So, I made sure my math was correct. It worked great!

Did the same in high school chemistry and physics. Worked great again!

So, when I was right, the teachers were forced to give me credit and just swallow their surprise, disgust, the evidence that they were wrong about my work, whatever. They didn't like to swallow that, but they had to and did.

I still couldn't expect to please the English literature teachers so gave up on them and English literature and settled for grades of gentleman C.

Lesson for Employees: As an employee, the Main Way can be dangerous because having such solid evidence of being right can be threatening to others. Others don't like to have swallow that there is solid evidence that they are wrong. So, as an employee, might have to back off on having such solid evidence; or if have the evidence, then don't let it be known unless it is needed in some unusual situation.

In grad school, my department Chair was a straight A, rigid type of guy. His research wasn't much, but no doubt in courses he made lots of As.

Well, soon he didn't like me. Sorry guy: In a course I found a question, got a reading course to study it, and in two weeks had a solid solution with a nice, surprising, new theorem. The work definitely looked publishable and was -- later I published the work with no problems. From then on in grad school, I had a halo -- could do no wrong. Why? I'd done some rock solid, original research that any of the faculty members would have been thrilled to have done. So, the Chair had to swallow.

For entrepreneurship, try to use the Main Way again: So, have some relatively solid reasons to know you are right.

Next, don't expect anyone in business writing equity checks to accept, understand, or even consider your solid reasons. Why not: Because in all their experience, they've nearly never seen or at least have never accepted any solid reasons as relevant.

Elsewhere in our civilization, such solid reasons are both necessary and nearly sufficient.

E.g., at one time before spy satellites, the US wanted an airplane that would fly about 2000 miles without refueling across the USSR high enough (80,000+ feet) and fast enough (Mach 3+) not to get shot down and take lots of high resolution pictures. So, Kelly Johnson at Lockheed's Skunk Works came to the CIA with an armload of blueprints of solid reasons. He was right, and he, Lockheed, and the CIA all knew he was right. The result was the SR-71, as at

http://iliketowastemytime.com/sites/default/files/sr71_black...

and it worked just as planned and never got shot down. No doubt.

Same for GPS and a lot of other US national security projects.

Indeed, given the solid presentations on paper, nearly always the rest of the projects were low risk and high payoff.

So, for entrepreneurship, use the Main Way. As Kelly Johnson did, have some solid reasons to know you are right.

Then accept that none of the equity funders will pay any attention at all to your solid evidence.

So, then, also, you should pay no serious attention to their rejections. Bluntly, they don't know what the heck they are doing. Instead, they are essentially just throwing darts, in a poorly lit bar, after several beers, and occasionally hit the bull's eye.

And there's a much bigger reason to f'get about the equity funders: It has become fully clear that for a successful project, say, building another Google, that the equity funders have no idea at all just how to do that. E.g., it happens only about once each 10 years, and to the equity funders it's all just luck and never by solid design like the SR-71.

So, if your project could be as successful as Google, or even worth $10+ B, then you have to accept that none of the equity funders have even as much as a weak little hollow hint of a tiny clue how to do that or how evaluate your project to do that. So, their rejection means nothing very solid about your project, is just noise from incompetents.

"Incompetents"? Sure: Could count with shoes on all the information technology VCs (bio-medial VCs are commonly very different) who are qualified for a technical slot in a startup, for CTO or CIO, for a tenure track slot in a STEM field in a good research university, for an NSF grant, as an NSF problem sponsor, who as sole author have published a STEM field research paper in a good journal, etc. Bluntly, in technology, they incompetent. So, their opinion or rejection of a technology project means no more than the outcome of a dice roll.

So, pick a project you can bring to nice profitability with just your own checkbook, and then do that. Millions of US Main Street businesses -- auto repair, auto body repair, grass mowing, pizza carry-out, etc. -- do that and where there is more capex then needed for, say, a first Web server and router.

This looks like a email collecting tool. No Privacy Policy, no Terms page. A giant input box to add email to a Mailchimp list?

How about receiving acceptance emails? Am I the only one to think that positive reinforcement is a way better tool? How would it possibly help you to tune yourself to a negative outcome on daily basis?!