It would be one of the more difficult tasks for me to imagine ever being upset at YC for a rejection (Got my 4th tonight, no stranger to it). If this was your first or second, don't worry , it gets better.
I can honestly say I've never felt closer to success and making progress than I do as I, every six months, write up a summary of where I'm at, where I'm going and then compare it with the previous series of rejected applications. Heck next time I could see myself easily with an actual website and customer base, or, if I get lucky, with a co-founder - how novel would that be?
So grow, YC, do it in a way where you don't loose your soul. And hey, if I never get in...well I'm in enough...
I'll make it. That's one of the best feelings. I know that it may look nothing like I presently imagine, but I'll make it. That's the beauty of malleable but relentless dreaming.
Now someone call Hollywood, er Kickstarter, I've got a killer idea for a film about two co-founders in the valley, 'Dotcom Quixote de la Big Chanca' and 'Sancho "the Ramen" Panza' as they go tilting at Heroku Dynos and courting Aldonza Horowitz aka "Andreesenea".
:)
But I'm just some repeat offender/y-comb reject.
Another hint which I often receive is to always narrow your market as much as possible. You can always expand later.
Over all I think Its bad. Eventually the fact that the goals of yc aren't aligned with hn will be revealed. Then every one will disperse.
Let's not give up before the match is lost.
More than that, in YC's business model the cost of running HN probably doesn't even amount to rounding error. Until recently the website was running on a single server [it may still be, since I haven't heard otherwise since the infrastructure change to Cloudflare] and with PG himself handling a significant portion of the maintenance and coding. In other words, the financial side of a business like YC is incompatible with most people's experience in offices - it's not about profits from sales. It's about internal rates of return on working capital.
Congrats to everyone receiving interview invites.
Better to learn as much from your rejection as you can, swallow and prove them wrong.
There are lots of times when openness is a good thing, being rejected by YC may or may not be such a time, it depends on a lot of factors and if you open up make sure you've thought through the consequences of doing so.
Typically in the VC world, when a VC passes on an investment they keep very quiet about it to avoid tainting the seeker of funding.
See: http://www.bvp.com/portfolio/antiportfolio
It would be very interesting to see the YC equivalent of that!
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6673754
If you're feeling really dejected, just one positive comment can make you feel a lot better. But it's certainly at your discretion; don't post if you feel it would be harmful.
That makes good sense, failure indicates 'availability' whereas success indicates the opposite!
We just followed what PG writes in his essays when in doubt.
> We're trying to get better at this, but the hard limit on the number of interviews means it's 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 telling us about it; we want to learn from our mistakes.
Next goal: To reach the point where we can send that email!
Edit: Congratulations to everyone who got the invites to the interview. Good luck!
If it were the only factor common to all successful start-ups rejection would be a bad thing.
So go prove them wrong.
To anyone else that has not been accepted - please consider CharityCoin- we are the kickstarter for charities that helps startups raise money for Free.
Here is how it works: We ask celebrities for their permission to mint gold and silver coins with their image. We then give those coins to donors that promise money to their favorites charities. But the money raised goes to startups who promise to pay back and support the charities. This effectively is a loan and the interest is just a commitment of volunteer time to promote the charity.
Please go to http://CharityCoin.Org to check it out and contact me Ric AT CharityCoin.Org
> If the founders seem promising, I'll now spend more time trying to understand the idea.
It might be a good idea to put the applications that don't get past that point in one pile, and send them a different and more specific rejection letter. (I was just rejected and am naturally wondering how close I was, and this idea came to mind.)
Thank you so much for your help. I will see you an email tonight.
For those who didnt get in, chin up! It is not the end! Keep hustling and keep pushing forward!
Anyway, it's now like a challenge for all of the good/promising startups (including ours) to prove them their mistakes or missed opportunities resulting from undercapacity. On the other hand, I wish all the best to every accepted company! You're now on a better track to your success ;)
Good luck to everyone, Mark Bain
Mixpanel and others have offered special deals for rejects in the past. Silver lining!
EDIT- Got it a few minutes after posting.
In all honesty, I really can't blame YC because the only reason we didn't have users/traction is we only started working on our idea a couple weeks before application deadline but from the perspective of a YC partner, I can imagine their first thought is that a lack of users/traction communicates that you're not hustling hard enough.
Good luck to everyone who has an interview :)
My project is http://www.MyAdversity.com - A mock-up of how my profile would look is at http://www.MyAdversity.com/profile.htm
The idea is to have a central hub where employers with available positions and applicants looking for a job connect. Unlike current (and highly successful) services that attempt this while obeying the status quo of hiring, MyAdversity will provide two huge and beneficial differences:
(1) Employers will hire the best person for the job far more successfully. Applicant profiles will already be screened and sorted. So an employer simply has to search for qualities and skills they're looking for in an applicant, and a ranked list of applicants will appear with the best match first. An applicant's profile will provide the employer with most information that is sought by a conventional interview. Therefore, employers will be able to focus their time on conducting a better interview that likely includes a sample of real work the applicant would be assigned if hired.
(2) Applicants will have a level playing field when pursuing a position they really want. The screening process does not depend on the inaccurate filters employers use today to save time, nor does it weigh so heavily on pedigree. Applicants will be judged by who they are, what they're passionate about, and what they're capable of. Applicants should have hope that if they acquire the skills to competently perform the work at their dream job, that they have a reasonable chance to be hired.
Even though it's only an fleshed out idea with a first iteration mock-up while I code the actual MVP for beta, I'm not in stealth mode. If anyone steals the idea and executes it better than I will, then the objective will be satisfied, and I'll be grateful. That is my main goal. I greatly appreciate any feedback you may have. Congrats to all of the groups who were chosen for an interview, and best of luck!
I feel okay with not receiving a reason for being rejected. We put in effort when filling out our application, and YC put in effort (at least according to our Youtube analytics) in reviewing our application. Sure, it would be nice to get some feedback, but all we asked for was a fair shake. And because they watched our video, I feel we got it.
My startup is visual programming system ala Spreadsheets + Zapier, here is my YC application – http://spreadsheets-on-steroids.tumblr.com/post/82903500034/...
Would like to hear some feedback on my application.
Little dejected & disappointed right now.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5648760
(1) Quality of applications, as in number of people who can write and talk really well, have gone up and the (2) number of applications have gone up; means the gate is even more crowded than ever before. So the pressure to dole out a silkier YC application next time will go up.
Obviously the outcome of this cycle is that the focus of the entire selection ruckus will move towards "best of best applications written in English" and not really start-ups (which look/are bad) but have the potential to go on to become unicorns/home runs.
Meanwhile, this pressure will also give rise to energetic backbenchers. A psychology for those who feel cheated by fate to go after and kill it outside of the incubator loop. Good luck YC, no-YC both!