Rejection letter from summer 05

"We're sorry to say that we can't accept your proposal for the Summer Founders Program. We were surprised by the high quality of the applications, and wanted to accept more. But since this is the first year, we decided we'd better force ourselves to keep the program small enough to manage.

A lot of the proposals we rejected for reasons having nothing to do with the quality of the applicants. For example, we were very reluctant to accept any proposals with only one founder, or only one who could come to Cambridge, because we think starting a startup is too much work for one person. We also rejected a lot of proposals simply because we didn't understand the problem domain well enough to judge them, or because the project seemed too big to start on only three months of funding.

It's quite likely, in fact, practically certain, that groups we rejected will go on to create successful startups. If you do, we'd appreciate it if you'd send us an email making fun of us; we want to learn from our mistakes.

If this summer works out, we're probably going to fund more startups. (Check our site for announcements.) If we do, we encourage you to re-apply in the future.

Thanks

Y Combinator"

today might be a rough day for some. but if it's any encouragement, i was rejected in summer 05 and two years later (summer 07) applied with a different idea and more experience and was accepted. yc turned out to be mostly right about the problems with my first idea, and i learned a lot in the intervening two years.

so don't think it's the end -- hang in there!