Small startup hits Google paydirt | Hacker News Reader

Small startup hits Google paydirt

theglobeandmail.com

157 pointsmiraj46 comments

  Today, a couple of application developers can turn around a decent piece 
  of software for a BlackBerry or an iPhone in a weekend.

<rant>

Yeah, right. I think blanket statements like these are part of the reason many non-technical people think programming is an easy (& cheap) job, and their eyes spread wide when we tell them what it would take to implement their "awesome" idea.

"Oh, I thought we could do this in a week .."

</rant>

Thank you for that StackOverflow link. I can guarantee it'll come in handy when I'm trying to bring someone's expectations back to planet earth.

Amen to your rant. We do ourselves a collective disservice bragging all the time about how we can create million dollar software products in a weekend.

Regarding the stackoverflow link: I think it's telling that the accepted answer is the one the poster wanted to hear (i.e., a very optimistic estimate). I wonder how often such things happen on Q/A sites, and how often it ends up misguiding someone.

But to be fair: the votes on the accepted answer are minus 21 and the votes on the linked answer are plus 648. Democracy works in this case.

I totally agree with your rant, and want to add more reasons :)

First, saying that a couple of devs can turn around an application in a weekend completely ignores the years of software development experience required. Second, it ignores the the specific experience required to develop for an iPhone or BB. Finally, it ignores what type of software.

I can code up a simply utility in a weekend for the iPhone, but it won't have any decent artwork or other niceties that people now expect out of iPhone software. If you look at something like Angry Birds you can see a fairly simple general concept that looks great and is executed perfectly. Something like that does NOT happen in a weekend.

Relates perfectly to the famous Picasso quote : "This doodle didn't take me 2 minutes, it was 60 years in the making."

To put it another way—it would take a week of typing, not a week of programming.

If the fresh source-code compiles, the software was made long ago.</allusion>

Though the title of this post originally claimed this startup was rejected by YC, I can find no evidence that they ever applied. Two years ago there was an application from another startup with a similar name. Perhaps that's the source of the misunderstanding.

Edit: Oops, yes, they did apply; sorry about that. Well, congratulations to them!

Its not just the title. There is a story about them going to meet you guys for the interview and then getting rejected.

Here's what stands out for me and they are lessons repeated time and again:

- The founders had experience and backgrounds. - The founders were a team. There were two of them. - The founders worked on several projects that failed. The YC application was for something before they were successful when they were young in the game and basically inexperienced. - The founders both quit their jobs to get serious on their start-up. - They were committed to starting something. - Canada is very difficult to do anything in from a scene/support POV. - SF is great for a scene/support POV. - SF didn't work out for them financially but they learned a lot and a return to Canada rescued them through RIM betting heavily on the team (which had seasoned and matured by then). - They smartly exited to better positions taking the bird in hand (Google).

This tale is a walking, talking start-up lessons learned. Be smart, know when to pivot, be committed, learn from mistakes, and never stop banging on doors because if you do all that someone will eventually let you in.

The one-hit wonders are few and far between. Most startup success stories have a long history of effort an experience that ends in a successful exit.

Single page:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/your-busin...

To quote an oft-repeated request from PG: Don't put 'YC reject' in your submission titles. You might have been not accepted, but that's quite different from being rejected -- it's a non-judgement rather than a judgement -- and it adds unnecessary noise.

While I certainly understand why PG and others feel this way; I think this title gives a good frame of reference to the story ... especially given the persistence that these guys needed in the face of being rejected for funding. As a fellow Canadian entrepreneur I gotta give these guys 2 big thumbs up! Way to go.

Also speaking from the point of view of Canadian doing a startup, I'm really happy for these guys, but it highlights the frustration I know all too well now. Not being in the Valley is a huge disadvantage, especially when you read stories on TC of companies being funded that have no business model to speak of.

Agreed. Coming from Sri Lanka where the culture is rather conservative, it's taken a great deal of perseverance on our part to get any interest at all. In the end we decided to go ahead with our own funds (and take a big risk by working full time), but things have paid off as our app is the 7th in the US medical app store now (free apps) and has had thousands of downloads in just 10 days : http://blog.medicaljoyworks.com/prognosis-is-a-success-but-y...

P.S. Our success began just after YC rejected our idea :)

Yeah, but do you want to be one of those companies? That money comes with strings attached. Get rich quick schemes are appealing and all, but you still have to like it enough to do the work and to sell it.

I'm leaning more to the Wolfram Software / 37 Signals model.

No, I'm in agreement with you. I don't think the world needs yet another way to share photos on Twitter. I'm just saying it's frustrating when you see those sorts of companies getting millions thrown at them while other, perhaps more ambitious or "deserving" (by some definition of the word) projects go unfunded.

Maybe it gets more votes that way?

Maybe it makes them feel good to have everyone know they have succeeded despite being rejected by YC?

That's just arguing about semantics. It's like the age old "it's not you, it's me" break-up line. Non-Acceptance is Rejection and everyone knows it.

While in general I'd agree that it doesn't add value to add "YC Reject" to the title, in this case the article talks about their YC rejection (sorry "non-acceptance") so including it makes sense.

I disagree. I think that the difference between not accepted and rejected is more about available slots.

Not accepted: "We would like to fund your startup, but we have x slots available and we already chose x startups that look more promising."

Rejected: "We are not going to fund this startup, no matter what".

The effect is the same, you do not get into Y Combinator. But in case of non acceptance this does not mean that they think your idea is not worth anything.

By that argument almost no-one's ever rejected for anything.

If a girl turns you down for a date, it doesn't matter if it's because she doesn't like you or because she just met someone she likes better than you, it's still a rejection.

Sure you have different levels of rejection, but they're all rejections nevertheless.

Precisely. Whether you're getting shot down in dating or "not being accepted" for the <x> slots for YC, at the end of the day it is the same thing-- you / your pitch are coming up short in their opportunity cost calculation.

Frankly, who gives a damn whether they like your idea if they're not willing to invest?

Kind words and happy thoughts are cheap.

>Frankly, who gives a damn whether they like your idea if they're not willing to invest?

I'd have thought knowing that they believe you have a good idea, just not quite good enough would be encouraging. Whilst knowing that even if there were space you wouldn't get accepted should probably be a big indicator that you should take a step back and see if you're riding a horse or a donkey.

Similarly in dating - being rejected for someone _you_ consider a better catch is not a great problem; being rejected in favour of not having a date is far worse.

>Kind words and happy thoughts are cheap

Yes, it relies on an honest decliner.

Not necessarily.

There's a difference between asking a girl out to a specific event and her saying that she's already committed that night, versus asking a girl out with an open-ended invite and having her turn you down. In both cases, you aren't taking her to the event, but in the former, you might be able to take her out the next night.

The non-acceptance of YC is like the former — it's not going to work this time, but you're more than invited to try again next time.

I've heard PG complain about using "YC" in titles (from guidelines: "In titles, please don't describe things by their relation to YC unless they're actually associated with YC.") But I didn't think the use of the word "reject" was the issue. YC even uses that word themselves in their "non-judgement" letter. ;)

"Groups we rejected will go on to create successful startups. If you do, we'd appreciate it if you'd send us an email telling us about it; we want to learn from our mistakes."

So they are also apparently are interested in hearing about such things too.

They're interested in hearing the success stories of non-accepted companies, but that doesn't mean that the words 'YC reject' belong in a HN title. There are ways to communicate with the YC principals other than posting to HN.

With HN having a high concentration of people who are in some way interested in YC or its model, I'd think the success of rejected companies would be interesting to more than just the YC principals.

the rationale behind adding "YC reject" in the original title was two-fold:

1stly, to highlight that there are success stories amongst those who are not accepted into YC.

2ndly, to point out that not getting accepted by YC may have emboldened the founders' resolve to 'go all in' and focus exclusively to make their startup a success.

i still think the extra 'noise' was a justified trade-off, given that the original article mentioned the YC rejection as additional motivation.

The fact that the company was rejected by YC and went on to get bought by google seems relevant given the forum and the timing.

Lots of people have recently been rejected by YC and hearing about people that have gone on to succeed seems like it might give an emotional boost to people that have applied and not got in. Seems like a worthwhile trade off for the extra "noise".

"It is worth pointing out that the Globe and Mail is WAY off on the acquisition price of socialdeck, sources put it at $2.5m, not $10-20m" -@startupnorth

Not sure if this is any more true, but it may not have been as impressive.

Given they'd taken $500k in investment from RIM, a $2.5 million exit would seem low. I can't imagine their board would have approved of such a low offer especially with multiple parties interested in acquiring them.

Could somebody summarize what their special sauce is/was? Were they simply good game developers, or do their games do something special?

It cost Google between $10-million and $25-million to buy SocialDeck a small Canadian game-apps maker. How much it costed for Zenimax to aquire the legendary Id software ?

At least $105 million, because that's what they had to borrow.

http://venturebeat.com/2009/07/07/zenimax-borrowed-105-milli...

I'd expect it to be a lot more than that. $25 million is a typical budget for a single AAA console title these days. Not only did Zenimax buy id's game development experience they also bought their tech, which is probably worth that on its own. Mind you, id were badly in need of a publisher at the time.

I really hope you haven't been carrying the YC rejection around with you for all this time (or maybe its a good thing as it makes you want to prove them wrong)

Congratulations Anish and Jeson! These guys are amazing entrepreneurs who executed like crazy over the past few years.

no real point in calling it a YC reject, since they were rejected for a completely different idea

we hear pretty consistently though that yc invests in people, no their ideas.

This is true, however, many times YC doesn't invest the first time a pair of founders shows up at their doorstep. Even Drew of Dropbox didn't get into YC the first time around.

I bet the most common rejection for sensible (eg: co-founders, technical, have prototype) startup applicants to YC is "you are too determined on a terrible idea"

They accepted AirBnB thinking it was a terrible idea, and the founders would find something better.

AirBnB also were friends with the Justin.tv guys so they were already "in the mafia" a bit :). Though if they sucked I'm sure PG would have said for them to fuck off.

That said, AirBnB had a large enough vision that even if there was a 95% chance of them bombing, the 5% chance of them rocking it was too big to pass up.

Given how tight the global startup community is, I imagine a lot of YC applicants are friends with YC founders.

AirBnB sold cereal. That is determined and imaginative anyone would fund them.

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