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Comment by tsally | Hacker News Reader

Not to be an internet hardass, but if a YC rejection crushes you beyond all belief, you probably shouldn't be founding a startup. Every single successful startup has experienced at least one defeat as large as a YC rejection. A healthy dose of confidence and ignorance about your abilities is necessary. Preferably a combination of both.

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Every single successful startup has experienced at least one defeat as large as a YC rejection

A YC rejection is not a large defeat.

I'd say that most successful people (start-ups are shorter-lived and may skip this) have experienced many situations where they thought they had it all, everything was going their way, they were at the peak of their game, and suddenly everything came crashing down disastrously and unexpectedly.

What made these people successful isn't the defeat, but it's that they then picked themselves up and started again from the bottom.

Hear hear, happened this summer. The second time around I'm the founder and not just an early-employee, and instead of $3M we only had $10k to kick things off.

What's kept me from applying to ycom is having a technical co-founder that I believe in. But that hasn't kept me from launching and running a relatively successful (in 4 months) mobile startup.

I love reading HN and following the ycom companies, the quality discussions definitely impact my thought process and decisions in the company.

Four YC rejections, however, is pretty rough.

Hell no. It just means you have a ton of ideas and perhaps you don't know how many other similar projects are out there. Educate yourself a little more.

Walt Disney got a yes from the 996th bank he approached. I'm such a pussy that I would have quit after 950 attempts. He never quit. That's the point. I expect that you won't either.

Cool story, have you a citation?

not to mention, yc prolly has a ton of applicants, they didn't even see yours. I'll apply earlier next time myself, but hopefully I'll also have a co-founder by then.

YC does look at all the applications. PG has said that the majority of the apps come in in the last day/half-day and that they have accepted people who have applied then.

now I want to know why I've been marked down? I think it's a good way to look at it. my application is too far down in the pile, nothing personal, I don't think mine was worse, it just never got reviewed because there are too many applicants farther up on the stack who were just as good that there was no need to get to mine.

In a positive thinking / karmic kind of sense - that's a good way to look at it. From a TRUTH perspective - it's just wrong - the applications are all looked at.

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