Rejected by some incubator? Prove them wrong
jacquesmattheij.com
jacquesmattheij.com
The job posting you're referring to doesn't simply say "you weren't good enough for YC, so you should come be one of our employees instead". It says, "we're a YC company with an executive role open especially for people who took the initiative to apply to YC."
For a lot of very smart people who applied to YC, this could very well be a huge win; it's a management team role slot at a company with better-than-average odds of being interesting a year from now. It's not just another job.
And even if it was, what's wrong with that? It's a job at a startup. If you applied to YC because you want the startup life, what's wrong with suggesting you get your hit of it from a company that can pay for health insurance?
If you're living your life waiting to be "accepted into the majors" before doing anything cool, you're already playing to lose. The people who are going to succeed with their own companies aren't going to be broken by offers like this. That mentality is the thing that irritates me most about YC. If getting "rejected" by YC makes so much of a difference to you that having someone else even mention it raises your hackles, then you probably ought to be working at someone else's company anyways.
The title is literally "Rejected by YC? We want to hire you."
That's about as literal a paraphrasing of "you weren't good enough for YC, so you should come be one of our employees instead" as you could possibly get.
YC is limited by the amount of start-ups they can mentor, probably not by the quality of the start-ups themselves and if you are a 'reject' then you should take it as a learning experience and an opportunity to use any feedback provided (which YC does very little of). It may simply be that YC filled their quota and your start-up idea, team and execution so far are just fine.
Those most likely to fit the job description here most likely fit that category.
"Rejected by YC? We want to hire you." is absolutely not the same sentiment as "You weren't good enough for YC, so you should come be one of our employees instead." Full stop.
There's a big difference between having your idea or proposal rejected and being rejected as a person; it's a useful skill not to get offended at the former. (Perhaps the latter as well, but that's much more advanced.)
Yes, this is true. I think you're taking what I said a little bit more literally than I intended. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that I left out some of the nuance, in the name of conserving time & space (or because I'm lazy).
Yes, there are times that rejection should be treated as a sign that it's time to stop, change plans, etc. But if I were to offer a more nuanced version of what I said before, I'd say "When rejected, it's up to you to determine the merits of your plan and your abilities, etc., based on the feedback you have received, and decide if you should still go for it or not. If you sincerely believe you are right, then go for it, and succeed so damn well that you buy the rejecting party's offices and turn them into your ping-pong room."
Very respectable.
Edit: And the cliché: if one rejection would stop you from continuing with your startup, you aren't ready to be an entrepreneur.
Don't get me wrong, I don't know anybody at YC and they're probably nice folks. They seem good for the startup community. But YC is a business, not a charity.
It's not like going to work for Comcast, dude, and you know it. I don't get why you're trying to stir this up.
Stirring things is up not the same as having a different opinion on something. Is this now your default operating mode where you will change every disagreement in to a personal attack ? Really, I gave some very simple reasons why I think this is a bad idea, whoever killed the original post apparently has reasons of their own why they think this is a bad idea (I can think of a few).
If you get rejected by YC it simply isn't the end of the world and I think that a 'co-founder wanted' post would have been MUCH more appropriate than the one with the title the way it was presented.
You can disagree with me on that for various reasons but to accuse me of trying to 'stir things up' just because you disagree is just another attempt at an ad-hominem.
Stop doing that.
I'm guessing the reason the YC company that posted the ad dead'ed it was because of posts like yours that picked up the ad and ran it all the way down the field to the worst possible interpretation of what they were saying. Personally, again, an offer of an exec role at a profitable YC-backed startup is basically the exact polar opposite of an insult, and I don't think that's a quirky way of looking at it.
And, I'm sorry that you don't like the particular ad hominem argument I made, but: it's a critique I'm going to keep making. Why did you write this post? Nobody with a viable startup thinks a YC rejection is the end of the world anyways.
You can have the last word.
You could be very good, very viable and succeed with or without YC funding (because, for instance you could get funding elsewhere or because you bootstrap your way in to a success). Without YC spending a lot more time on their rejection emails (and I agree that their current rejection letters are as good as they could be without opening the door to a lot of discussion) you can not know what their reason was, and especially the more viable ones might be hit at a time when they are vulnerable (just after being rejected).
Job postings should be level headed and not single out people that have just been kicked in the nuts at a moment when they're vulnerable by targeting them directly.
That's putting the other party at a significant disadvantage.