Haha, chuckled at this. YC was perhaps the only interview in which my co-founder and I felt like the interviewers were incredible kind – but also some of the most challenging ones. We loved it!
Our interview was on election day in 2016, they called us in for a second interview, we then went out for drinks with a bunch of other founders and watched all of them get email responses that day. We didn't hear back all day and stayed up all night watching the election results come in, then woke up, drove to the airport, took the plane back to NYC and finally got the rejection when we landed.
Is this advice to always launch sooner still applicable?
I've heard it regurgitated a few times over the past decade or so, especially here and from the YC/VC crowd, and I feel like it made sense at some point.
But nowadays do people not expect a little bit more? The field is more crowded and the bar to entry is much lower for competitors/cloners/etc and your first impression can only be made once.
It doesn't matter that it's 2021 and things have gotten more polished. If it's a painful enough problem people will put up with a shitty solution at first.