Ask HN: Rejected from YC? What's your startup? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Rejected from YC? What's your startup?

24 pointsderwiki22 comments

This isn't meant to be an angry discussion; simply state your idea, and wait for helpful feedback from your HN peers.

I didn't apply, but because I thought my business wasn't mature enough for YCombinator. BUT last time I started this thread, I was criticized for not being as forthright. So! my bootstrapped startup:

www.CameraLends.com, P2P camera rental. We've reached 500 users and nearly 100 transactions to date (and growing and accelerating week-over-week). We did not apply to YC because all YC alums who gave me advice said that YC is looking for "10% week-over-week growth" and our numbers are low enough to not be able to show that consistently.

Nice. I like the design and good product photos. Not sure of the market size. That would be a good part to focus on if you apply in the future imo.

Thanks for the kind words! Re: market size, BorrowLenses was acquired by Shutterfly for ~$14m in equity (http://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2013/10/25/shutterfly-a...). The market for pure consumer cameras is shrinking based on industry reports (~$100m/year and decreasing) but professional cameras aren't bleeding as bad. And Calumet (a HUGE national rental shop) closed it's doors recently, leaving a lot of photographers not knowing where to rent from.

Ya, I figure your market is the SMB that needs high end equipment. Very cool. I know guys that could use this.

But I bet you'd have great funding success if you broadened the concept beyond just cameras and became Borrow.it or something. I was recently wishing there was a service that rents espresso machines since I've never used one before and the ones I want start at $700. Similar theme but another passionate crowd :)

We're testing the waters for lighting equipment (which is as expensive as cameras) and high-end video, like the RED ONE and Epic-M. It's funny that you suggest becoming more generic -- that was specifically why we began focused on camera gear. There are existing "P2P rent anything" sites like Zilok, Snapgoods, and the now defunct Rentalic. The main problem is that most items aren't expensive enough to be worth the hassle. The frustration that lead to CameraLends was my girlfriend complaining that renting a sewing machine for a few days would require $100 and renting a car to drive across town to pick up, whereas buying a brand new one on Amazon was only $150.

Ah snap! That's good stuff right there. What else can we think of renting? P2P game rentals?

nothing in it really for the renter. you would need a decent size collection. how are you going to large advantage enough over these guys to make it worth while: gamefly, redbox, gamestop

Have you thought about letting photographers advertise their services? If some of your customers are amateur, or just need nice cameras for a party, they might be willing to pay for the services of a photographer.

Photojojo released this today as well. http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/16/photojojo-gets-into-camera-...

We had ambitious, though perhaps misguided plans to revolutionize recipe publishing across the web (and also didn't have the idea for long before applying). Since applying, and talking a few other folks, we've realized that what we really want to do is pick up the torch of the early work on RecipeML and make an open format for the web to encode recipe data in. Ideally, we'd like to see companies like Epicurious and Allrecipes.com use this format and compete on features rather than data. We believe all recipes should be open and public to the web, allowing anyone to cook anything, anywhere.

So, we're still on the task, but maybe this is about creating a consortium to manage an open format / standard, rather than a company... though I certainly think profitable companies could come from this.

You can view our submission here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/n99prz9wkxjb223/s2014form.htm

Just open in a browser (or text editor, if you really feel like it).

What's in it for Epicurious and Allrecipes, considering they currently own the data and competing just on features probably means they lose market power?

Well, one of them would have to race to have market dominance, but imagine being the publisher / host for every recipe on the web. You could really only achieve that by opening in your platform / format to 3rd party devs and other services, to allow other tie-ins.

So... Instagram didn't invent JPEG... they just made it really simple and easy for everyone to share images, and the 3rd party services that have sprung up around it have strengthened their ecosystem. That's a bad example... but... you get what I'm saying I hope.

Hi guys we have built a search engine for local apps, 98% of the apps in the stores has less than 50.000 downloads, that is not a healthy ecosystem. For us each application has a place and each location is a store. Is no the first time we got rejected ;) Apple did not allow to publish our search engine back in July and later on they publish "Popular" Near me. We will keep fightint for a fair store and organic positioning for every indie dev. Hope you like what we are trying to do. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.mapplas.co... www.mapplas.com

I just want to warn you, google will also remove your app once they notice it. Apple & Google do not want anyone competing with their stores.

thanks mate, hope for the best prepare for the worst.

What are you talking about? Quixey.com is an app that let users discover apps and hasn't been removed from the android app store. Plus it has raised millions from Eric Schmidt's fund, Innovation Endeavors.

And xyo.net has an app aswell, google is not apple.

My startup is visual programming system ala Spreadsheets + Zapier, here is my YC application – http://spreadsheets-on-steroids.tumblr.com/post/82903500034/...

Would like some feedback on my application.

Applied, but didn't get invited for an interview.

We are creating a door to door travel itinerary search engine. (www.travelmacho.com) Currently, most of the travel website only provides you with one leg of the travel such as flights, but there is still the problem of figuring out how to get to the airport. So what the users typically do is open up multiple windows to plan their travels.

We would like to create a platform that aggregates all modes of transportation (bus, train, flight, airport shuttle, taxi etc) into one search engine. The users will be able to find the best way to travel in one website.

Let us know what you think! http://www.travelmacho.com

Hi all, 4th attempt w/ recommendations from YC founders and no interview this time. I think I know why (single founder, little traction).

My company, Stirplate.io, is an app for scientists to store, share and analyze their data in the cloud.

Science needs help managing it's data, so my company helps with that process. We also automate data analysis for scientists, making hours of excel work take about 15seconds.

http://www.innGrid.net 4 months old. 100 sign-ups. 10 paying customers.

Fyi, the smooth scrolling JS you use on your homepage is very awkward with a Macbook trackpad (in Chrome). It kind of accelerates erratically.

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