We went ahead with it anyway.
We got rejected the first time around with Ycombinator and have now been offered funding. Thanks for your support everyone, this forum rocks.
If YC had an impact in our 'going for it' it was probably the encouragement Paul gave us in the phone call telling us we weren't accepted. pg was absolutely classy, and we really realized that YC was cheering for us even though we didn't get funding.
Definitely.
> and we really realized that YC was cheering for us even though we didn't get funding.
...Except I look more at actions than words. In these days of a pool of billions of dollars being sunk into start-ups, if an investor won't put in $15k, that's pretty telling of their opinion.
(Yeah, I know, the value is in the advice, and their limited time is the deciding factor. Still, investors who are really rooting for you will put their money where their mouth is.) Acting nice is insurance in case you do turn out to be a big deal -- always keep your options open, don't burn your bridges, it's a small world, etc.
Non-sequitur. YC doesn't have those billions.
I think my company might have got funding if I had opened the dialogue with "We have a product that will change the world and that the world needs. We are capable of developing a demo that will allow us to raise large amounts of money. Where do you disagree?" PG has said that charisma counts for a lot during a YC interview which it does because it lets you dictate the course of the discussion.
Please email me if you'd like to hear my GUI ideas/talk about simplified UIs.
My YC interview was ultimately one of the most frustrating experiences of my life. If I had an hour to interview instead of 15 minutes, it could've been different. It makes me sad that I didn't get the chance to collaborate with Blake Ross on our similar products -- he was designing an interface for 50 year olds and I was designing one for 80 year olds.His platform was a whole lot better than mine though. Of course, I think we got really lucky in getting the interview. I made a really good case for our company in the YC application and I think our idea is something that was on the YC partner's radar as something they had discussed before we even applied.
One of our partners was the absolute perfect paper candidate. He was a senior triple CS-HCI-cognitive psychology major at CMU with almost a 4.0 and a Microsoft internship + CMU research. He got an A in CMU's 15 credit "build a Unix-like kernel with a partner" class. He did it in four years. He owns Paul Graham's lisp books.
After the applications were turned in, I got an email from Paul and a call from Jessica asking us if we were really serious about committing to this as undergrads. I told Paul that we all were ready except our truly perfect hacker friend who had one semester until he graduated. Without this friend, we weren't really qualified for YC, but they were gracious enough to give us the interview anyways. Without YC's support, my other hacker friends/partners weren't willing to drop out of college. One has another year in PSU's CS program and the other is my partner on our current biotech ventures.
Perfect hacker friend is starting a PhD program at Indiana University Bloomington where his research interests lie in computerized teaching. He turned down 115k at Cisco. I am sure he would drop out if someone offered 200k/year to do something very interesting in a startup environment, which is probably a bargain for someone with his ability.
I don't think there is any business (or success story) in the world that had all the doors open at the right time. You always have to keep pushing forward.
These guys weren't funded by us.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40615
to facilitate the discussion.
blored, did you guys "cold submit" or did you have a personal intro?
Obviously it's harder to guarantee the latter, but it's what we aim for.
Sorry to be blowing sunshine. But I'm sure you thought through that application form carefully and you should know that it's effective.
I was talking more from an entrepreneur's perspective -- they wouldn't be as disappointed if they didn't expect the funding in the first place.
any thoughts or storys?C'mon, man.
Even a hypermoral person like Oprah is pure sleaze if you know what you're looking at.
http://www.cambrianhouse.com/member/scrollinondubs/
I've taken 2nd in a couple of their Ideawarz tournaments but have not won yet. They had the Dragons' Den guy (Sean Wise) join their board not long ago.
sean
William