The boring truth about why groups don't get invited to interviews | Hacker News Reader

The boring truth about why groups don't get invited to interviews

ycombinator.com

89 pointspg48 comments

If you really want to do a startup then get used to the rejection thing. Even if you get into YC you will probably have to get funding afterwards. To do so you'll need to make the case that you are building a company that will eventually be valued at ~$100 Million. It's very rare that you'll be able to do that on the first shot. Or even on the 5th shot. I know a company that got rejected 45 times before getting funded. And many more get rejected 10 times. So shake it off. It's not going to be the last time it happens. And some VC's / angels aren't as nice as PG. They will twist the knife after the fatal wound.

If you think you were rejected unfairly and that your idea is a good one, then build it. PG is telling you that many didn't get rejected for any defined faults or voids in your app. There were good ideas and good applicants, and some were just a rung above you. If anything, that's more encouragement to pursue your idea.

So you got cut, big deal. It happened to me before, and it happens to hundreds every year. Just move on and be productive. In my case, I realized I needed to get more into coding, and get a better grasp of everything, which is what I'm doing.

Facebook, Yahoo!, Google, YouTube, Digg, Revision3, Ustream.tv, Qik, Meebo, Delicious, Twitter, Craigslist, HotorNot, etc. all are successful/profitable/growing in popularity and all did it without YC.

If you're confident in your team and idea, stop asking for feedback, you already got the best feedback you could get, that there's 'literally nothing wrong' about your app.

Congrats to who made it, and congrats to who didn't, it's a kick in the ass that should launch you forward.

The concept of "fair" doesn't really apply here. YC can use any [legal] criteria they wish. We're just interested in learning what we could do to improve the application, so we're asking for a little more information, if possible. It's not a "tell us why not". It's an "if possible, give us some info to help improve efficiency of the process".

You can't give suggestions on improvement if you can't pick out anything that's lacking or needs to be improved. That's the point.

Ok. Didn't hurt to ask, though :)

Except the article states many "pretty good" groups were pushed out by "stellar" ones. That certainly indicates something can be improved, in the opinion of YC.

Important distinction between "nothing wrong" (below threshold) and "nothing to improve" (at max score).

When I see some of the groups that have made the cut from past cycles, I'm boggled as to what YC was sold on.

In other words: entrepreneurs shouldn't ask for permission before building something. (legal matters aside)

> and some were just a rung above you

That's not necessarily the case. For some proposals, "[we] didn't understand the problem domain well enough to judge them". Or didn't have the time to look at stuff you've done; or your demo. Or they liked enough other proposals already that they didn't feel the need to look at your demo. The "stellar" ones were ones that "seemed better" in the opinion of the reviewers. As noted, "this process is fraught with error".

This seems to answer the recent questions about movements and competition for YC. With 200-250 rejected applications that are "pretty good", there should be more than enough material for XCombinator (where X!=Y) to work with.

I'd like to suggest that we network a bit to see what can be pulled together. I just submitted a story with some of what I'd like to see happen:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=160398

I thought pg once said that there is no limit on the number of groups they can fund in a cycle. I'll post a reference link if I find one.

Update:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31153

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9066

[ thanks to http://www.searchyc.com ]

There's no limit on the percentage of groups we interview that we can accept, but there is a limit on the number we can interview.

So this is the first scalability bottleneck you have hit?

It's the current one. There have been others we hit and overcame. We used to review applications printed out on paper, for example; now we have software for it.

We also have software for keeping track of all the startups, for communicating with them, and for generating all the documents for startups we fund. We'd have ground to a halt by now without these apps.

And Software do decide who gets accepted of not. :-)

Any thoughts on how to overcome this one?

Perhaps try to achieve better ranking before interviews? You might do psychological profiles or tests to estimate technical ability.

applying programming-talk to startup interviewing...:)

This is about the limit on interviewing, not funding. Maybe the selection process after the interviews _is_ "like a grade in a class."

Yes, and at that stage we do give detailed, individual feedback to everyone.

Would it be possible to see an example of a stellar application? You'd only have to put it up once, and it would help all of us understand what we're up against.

I think we can just look at who's been accepted in the past.

Sure, but that only gives you information about the people and ideas you're competing with. It doesn't give you information on how to present yourself on the application, which really is the bottleneck when conveying information to YC.

Good point. I think I did a pretty poor job on mine.

So why don't we tell people why we didn't invite them to interview? Because, paradoxical as it sounds, there often is no reason.

Maybe I'm trying to read tea leaves, but did the "You are the only founder" boolean play a bigger part this time around since you received so many qualified applicants?

Working full time as a solo founder for the last four months (and 13k LOC of Java later), I understand why you would be hesitant to give the nod to a solo found. The work is overwhelming, but some folks can pull it off if they have the right support network and determination.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=145749

"The odds of being accepted are much greater (roughly 4x) with a cofounder, but it's not impossible to get funded as a single founder." - pg

My prodding was more along the lines that since there was an order of magnitude more applicants this round and they only had a week to look over the applicants, was it nearly impossible to get in being a solo founder?

I'm a bit annoyed with myself since I didn't apply to the previous rounds. I first read Hackers & Painters over two years ago, ah well!

I think that figure was based on evidence from the previous 6 (?) rounds. I would guess the 4x more likely for co-founders figure holds. pg usually won't throw out a number unless he really means it.

I would guess the 4x more likely for co-founders figure holds.

Right, my guess is also the same.

My question was so pg could chime in with data since YC has gotten much more popular.

What about a simple traffic light feedback: green for the accepted ones, yellow for the pretty good rejected ones, red for the rest. At least it would help to see if someone is on the right track...

Slippery slope. Next, a score out of 100. Next, the pros and cons. Next, a full interview.

It wouldn't work in practice. There are no sharp lines between these categories, and we'd be misleading people, one way or the other, if we insisted on drawing them. It already bothers me that circumstances force us to draw a line between green and yellow, because we're probably discouraging some people who should instead be encouraged. It would be even worse if we tried to draw a line between yellow and red.

What might be useful are comments overall like "we received several applications for online invitation services but nothing seemed innovative or compelling enough to us" or "we received a handful of applications for doing x but, in our opinion, the mobile space is where we think that market is headed". I think you once mentioned that you get a ton of hotel/food review website ideas. You've also indicated that you think the email overload management is an area of YC's interest.

Doing this might help at least some of the applicants get some idea. Not everyone is covered by these comments and no one is forced to take your opinion for it but it just helps to get broad feedback.

PG seems like a nice guy and is doing something really cool with YC, but it's not his job to give people advice, beyond the people he picks for YC. Part of 'not giving people advice' probably includes statistics on what sorts of applications are 'hot' in a given time period, which might actually be fairly valuable information that they want to keep to themselves.

If you want advice on your app, post an 'Ask YC' thing here and usually, people will give you some pretty good feedback.

Wouldn't it be a bad move to do this if you are still in "stealth mode"? I have been thinking a lot about this especially after having not been accepted into YC. Half of me wants to know what people in the business think about my idea, and the other half wants to wait longer until closer to launch?

recent tweet from venturehacks: You don't need permission to start a company. From investors, co-founders, or anyone else. (including PG, Jessica, and Trevor)

Summary: The number of good/compelling ideas+team >> Available spots

Exactly. Thousands of Valedictorians don't get into Harvard every year.

I think that the reason people want to know is not that they are looking to be graded, (they already have,) but that they would like to know how to do better. They want to improve their chances of getting in next round or succeeding while going solo. It seems to me that a "why I wasn't excepted" would be the first piece of advice I'd get from YC.

"Probably the reason people expect feedback about why they were rejected is that they implicitly think of this as like a grade in a class. But a test where only a fixed number of applicants can pass regardless of the average quality is not a grade in that sense."

Actually, I disagree with the premise of this statement. I don't want feedback on why I was rejected, I want feedback on my product. Yes, I can see that it is very nuanced and difficult for you to say which idea/product is better than another, and you have your own business reasons for making those decisions. I don't think anyone really expects you to disclose those reasons, and even if you did it would be completely subjective and would just lead to arguments. However, given that, you're only addressing why you don't comment on the relative strengths of the applications and not why you don't give feedback on any individual product/idea.

Sorry but there is no logic in this article. If the top 50-60 "stellar" applications will put the other 250 down, this 250 applications are missing something compared to the top 50-60 or they are not very strong in some point, so you can at least reply with an hint, like: The idea could work but you did too little things in the past compared to the best applicants, or for example, the way the application expose the idea give us the feeling you are not addressing the problem in a way we like.

In brief once you are able to see a difference between the stellar and the non-stellar ones you know why the rest is non-stellar and an hint can be a nice feedback for a people that spent some time writing the application.

One day, you'll have a manuscript to push and you'll really know what rejection is...

PG, I have one suggestion - for many people, YC funding amount is not as important as the advice and networking they will get there.

Can you think of a mechanism where the next 10 promising or so YC applicants who didn't get funding in this cycle atleast get other benefits in return of some equity for YC?

For e.g., YC members can advice those 10 startups for weekly or bi-weekly basis. Also, these startups may get chance to attend those weekly dinner meetings or so. Of-course, this would take YC's extra energy, but they will be rewarded with some reasonable amount of equity as well.

What says? Does this make sense?

The problem is, the "other benefits" are what's in short supply, not money.

Interesting, the main thing i take away from what pg said is there's a need for more YC clones. Clones that can handle the talent that YC can not accommodate

only a suggestion but since there are many aplicants, the selection proccess could be done in more stages.

This seems like a good idea on the surface, but in practice I don't see how it would work. There are only two real categories of information being collected, the information about the idea and the information about the team. And it doesn't really make sense to separate the evaluation into two different phases since the variables are multiplicative; that is, if the value of one is zero then the value of the whole equation is zero.

true, but what i was thinking is that way you would know which one failed. your idea, your team, etc...

Next: To get into that YC clone in India. You know, the one with armed guards that make sure you don't leave your cubicle before midnight. (Shamelessly copied from the real YC.)

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