Comment by kyro | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kyro | Hacker News Reader

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.

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

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.

> 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".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com