why?
They are looking for child prodigies who fit a certain mold.
People who walk, talk, think and perform a certain way.
It is more like the Iron Curtain coaches who ran schools and would look for potential gymnasts for the next Olympics.
I was about to say that all they have in common is that they all work really hard, but even that isn't universal. There are some slackers in each group.
I don't think this kind of entitlement-thinking will serve you very well. I recommend ditching it.
Not in the sense of owing him an explanation, but in the decent sense of giving him feedback so he can improve.
After all, the candidate took time and trouble - it is a kindness.
An application to YC is unlike an interview; with an interview you usually know what your weakness was, or what the interviewer's hangup was.
If you consider this to be "entitlement-thinking", then does not your thinking seem arrogant?
Actually, your thinking is a sign of weakness. When the candidate is stronger than you, or your decision was flippant, then you dont want to run the risk of being proven wrong or bested. So you choose the easy way out.
Your complaints sound more like you are sour about being turned down than anything else.
Even if you are rejected, you can request feedback on your proposal - and actually, no less than in a meeting.
Whenever I have given a demo or presentation to an angel investor or potential partner; even when it is a 'No', I have gotten some kind of feedback.
It gave me a better understanding of the weaknesses in juwo.
This is more than blindly emailing your executive summary to the VCs - you are not entitled to a reply.
When there is investment in time, effort and hopes, one does expect some kind of feedback.
It is not an application for an award, nor is it an application for employment. Even applying for a University, one has an idea of the cutoff marks and GRE scores.
The YC application is an evaluation of your small business team, and idea.
Big Difference.
ever applied to Harvard, MIT, etc? even kids with IQs off the charts, SAT scores through the roof, etc. get rejected.
It's simply the law of large numbers - YC can cherry pick the cream of the crop of the cream of the crop.
I'm not saying you are morally obliged to, I'm saying it's the nice thing to do. For me personally, being nice is part of being courteous, which is why I used the more general word before.
And I think being too specific could make matters worse. Think about dating. "You are a nice person, but I don't really like your nose" - helpful? I think not, and the next person might be just fine with your nose. I think the generic letter YC sent (I got one, too) is a good solution. And I could imagine that if you would ask them, they might be willing to give you more specific information.
see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32488
"And I could imagine that if you would ask them, they might be willing to give you more specific information."
Not so.
Companies don't tell you why they never called you back after you sent in a resume.
Why would you expect any more from YC?
"we could not understand your idea. please get feedback as to its feasibility from your local university, or someone with experience in the software industry"
http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/06/the_pmarca_guid_2.html
yc's already given you something better than what you'd get out of a canned one-sentence response: a fantastic resource in which anyone can put up their site and get a lot of feedback, for free, from a lot of smart people. 100% of the "hey news.yc check out my site" posts i've seen, including yours, have gotten useful, actionable feedback and have consequently improved.
I agree :)
I did see this in juwo http://www.juwo.com/company.html
I often do not live up to it, but this is important: The good news about Jesus can transform your life. Jesus died for our sins and rose again from the dead. If you become his follower, you will have salvation (moksha).
For a startup looking to attract co-founders I'm don't think this is very judicious. I'm not saying don't be religious just leave out any mention of it on company sites, that's what personal blogs are for.
2. The interface is clumsy and I don't know what I'm supposed to do with it. (See Also: #1)
3. I don't understand what the deal is with the examples. Why do I want to watch a BBC broadcast with a tree-like timeline? Is the purpose of Juwo to annotate videos? (See Also: #1)
4. Why/when do people want to create a tree structure and attach text/videos/sounds to the tree nodes? This is all that Juwo seems to do. The use cases you list on your website are not compelling. While the use cases listed may be actual problems to be solved, a swiss army knife tree structure isn't the solution. (See Also: #1)
I'm sorry if the above list is harsh, but my personal opinion is that Juwo does not have any clear vision behind it, or is of very limited utility (e.g. only useful for you). I don't think it's worth working on further. Try something else.
It's easy at this point to appeal to the few exceptions that made it big even though it seemed like nobody wanted them at first. But note that these guys are the exceptions, most of the time the advice that the product sucks is probably accurate. Even if you were going to say "I don't care, I want to try it and see where it goes" -- well, it looks like you already have tried it for a few years, and it isn't going anywhere.
Again, no offense, but it's in your best interest to save the time/money/effort and move on to a new project. There's a reason you aren't getting users nor investors.