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Comment by andrewguenther | Hacker News Reader

This story just really doesn't read like the triumph of will it was meant to be...

My takeaway from this is that the founders wanted to get into YC. The business doesn't matter, they just wanted to be in YC.

The business morphed around what they thought would get into YC, not what would actually make a good business. I have a ton of respect for YCombinator, but they are not all knowing oracles who get it right 100% of the time. The fact that the immediate response to each rejection was "pivot" I think speaks volumes to the founder's goals here.

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Yes your comment better captures what I was trying to say here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32772702

It's not like they're excited they get to help people do better CRM, they're just excited they got in, and (not uniquely) appear to have crafted an optimized offering designed to get into YC, which I don't think is YCs (at least initial) intention nor do I think it's desirable. It's a signal that it's "jumped the shark" and it's time to move on to a new construct

Hah, I just replied to your comment as well. I appreciate that you pointed out that this isn't a problem unique to YC. At some point, people are just chasing prestige. Considering YCs rapid growth over the last few years, I'm not surprised this is happening, but given the nature of the business it could be a long time before the patterns become apparent. There are more live YC companies today than there are exited/failed ones. I worry the time it will take for issues in the process to become apparent may be too later for them.

Exactly my thought on this as well. This line was particularly telling:

> But for the past three years, we've struggled to find the right problem to solve and gain even a small traction.

So why was this time (another CRM) the right problem? Is the team actually leveraging industry experience and unique skills in this new pivot? Looks like no, they just found the combination that YC likes. And this:

> If your users don’t pay for your B2B product, you don’t have a product –– yet.

Do you really need YC judges to tell you this? Reading Lean Startup and maybe The Mom Test should be basically mandatory for would-be founders at this point, right?

Regardless, good writeup here with some helpful advice to younger founders who want to know what YC actually values in its judging criteria for batches.

> The fact that the immediate response to each rejection was "pivot" I think speaks volumes to the founder's goals here

I would go so far as to say this is validation that YC made the right decision in rejecting them. If even the founder’s dons believe in their own idea, why should YC?

100% agreed. I think it speaks MUCH more to the conviction of founders to apply a few times and then get in on a similar, refined idea. Then your lessons learned come off more as what you've learned about building a successful business vs how to build a business that YC will accept.

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