> Would love to see the anti portfolio list of YC.
That would be interesting! I'd also love to see the list of both rejected and accepted applications that failed. BVP's "anti-portfolio" is a list of massive successes they happened to pass on. It wouldn't be as fun to look at the list of actual failures they passed on, or the failures they funded, but that might be even more instructive, right?
> YC or any other investor/accelerator should never be the make or break thing for a startup - it should be your own judgement call on whether you want to continue or not based on market feedback.
Absolutely!
Personally, early on, I made the mistake of thinking that an investor rejection somehow reflected on the viability of my ideas or my business, that they knew something I didn't.
Growing past that and realizing that investors mostly don't care about the ideas, nor do they usually even know what's viable before the market responds, was important.
It also helped me to realize that looking for money just to survive was bad for me, looking for money to accelerate before I was moving at all was bad for me, and most investors are not the right partners for me, no matter how much money they have.
*Edit: BTW, I did once apply and was rejected from YC. With hindsight, I know their call was correct. Not because YC isn't the right partner for me, but because I wasn't ready.