Our Journey to and Through YC | Hacker News Reader

Our Journey to and Through YC

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The difficulty is in not thinking you're a loser just because the smartest people in Silicon Valley (some of your heros to be honest) have repeatedly looked you in the eye and thought to themselves "Nah."

Or in my case having one of the YC partners say "Oh, you guys are back? You're a shoo-in this time." only to be rejected again that day :-)

Here's a tip most people won't need: do not reply to the rejection email 30 seconds later with a petulant rant. It's not fair, it marks as an untouchable crazy person, and you'll regret it.

My company likely would have failed even with YC's help. I learned a lot in the two years working on that startup. I'm the kind of person that tends to learn things the hard way and I probably had to in this case.

Sorry, there's no triumphal story of my own yet. I'm still working on it! :-)

You'd be surprised by how many founders were accepted after multiple applications. From an anecdotal perspective, half the current class had applied at least once before.

I'm starting to suspect that YC biases toward repeat applications, as it illustrates a number of useful things about a startup (strength of the team, proof you can get traction, you didn't do this just for YC, etc).

Don't let prior rejected applications deter you. That is, unless you've made zero progress between now and then. :D

> the smartest people in Silicon Valley

It helps not to put them on a pedestal as well. It is highly unlikely that they are the smartest people in Silicon Valley by any measure you can come up with.

> It is an army, a cult, a family.

As an outsider, this make Y Combinator seem more creepy to me than welcoming. (especially the bold bullet-point list of what the YC partners do)

The problem with this "cult of personality" is that it takes away from the product. While well-written, the article was more about "How do I please the YC partners?" instead of "How do I make Shout the best it can be?"

I think the point of the article was the opposite. The first two times they applied, they were focused on YC. The third time (the time they got in), he says:

"Nothing else mattered, including YC. Application time came around and we thought about not applying. It seems a bit silly to say now (to us), but it is true."

They'd become focused on the business and product, and that was the key.

I would disagree as well. I read the story of two young co-founders managing & learning through their failures of applying to YC & eventually getting thru, made them stronger, and building some solid foundations for working again together in the future. When the going gets tough...

Lol not everything is a white paper. This was simply a "don't give up" story that I think MOST of us found encouraging. But everyone's allowed to be a critic I guess.

I think that sentence was a poor addition, but my impression of Y Combinator from the author's entire post was that the author most highly valued the social experience ("It reminded me of my first night at Columbia. My new friends and I sat on the hall in our dorm and talked. As we shared our first night exchanging childhood stories..."), which seemed to take on metaphysical properties ("we were somewhere truly special").

For all of the exuberance about the experience, however, I found a stark contrast in the final sentence of the post:

> We aren’t sure where things will go from here. Shout may or may not succeed. But I know Henri and I feel fortunate to be a part of YC.

Obviously, new business ventures always face a level of uncertainty, and the risk of failure should be acknowledged. But it's kind of strange that the author seems so detached from the success or failure of the business and so resigned to going wherever the world takes his business. In short, it reads like the author was a lot more determined to get into YC than he is to take the bull by the horns and try to make his app a success now that school's out.

We realize that uncertainty exists but we are hardly detached from it. Our every waking hour is spent fighting it, in fact. I reckon the point was rather that in spite of that uncertainty, the experience, for us, had intrinsic value.

We also believe our experience leads us to a better Shout!

School isn't out, it's just begun!

The put in a tremendous amount of effort and it paid off in the end.

However reading this I was thinking "what if they put the same dedication and effort into doing a more traditional business endeavor. Kind of in the same way when you see a "successful" criminal you might think "wow they are smart, crafty and energetic they could make a good legitimate living".

For precisely the things they list at the end of the article of what it was like during and after Y-Comb..."traditional" be damned. I like it.

Great read, thanks for sharing the story.

I think I echo the others here, four rounds isn't bad at all. Not exactly the same thing as a YC application, but raising our seed round @ Dasher we were rejected 48 times from angels and VCs before we got our first "yes." Startup myth goes that Pandora's founder was turned down 300+ times.

I'm also very impressed with the specific attention YC paid you when turning you down. Rather than a generic answer, they took the time to give you very thoughtful reasons and things to improve. I really wish we had that much care paid to us by anybody during our earliest conceptual days.

Hey Jesse! I completely agree. Henri and I were both impressed with the level of specificity, even while getting rejected.

Also, throughout the raising process, it has been interesting to see how people say no in general. It says a lot of about a person or an organization (both how they deal with rejection and issue it).

Hope Dasher is going well! Let's catch up soon.

What were they doing for work at the time? Was this a jaunt financed by savings or family wealth, or was it balanced with gainful employment the whole time?

College.

Great story of perseverance but applying 4 times and getting interviewed 4 times on 3 trips is hardly embarrassing.

I'm working on my 7th YC app with no interviews to date, but I've used every one of those rejections to become better as a founder and advance my startup, tinj. The reality is that all the previous rejections were deserved, YC would have hurt more than it helped because we would have accelerated in the wrong direction.

Rejection for founders isn't embarrassing, but not learning from it is.

Good luck on the app - hope you make it and make the something delightful that will change the world even if by a little bit.

that's the idea ;)

> Later, I thought of Dr. Venkman in Ghostbusters when they were zapped by a demon after replying “No” to the question of whether the Ghostbusters were gods. He said, “If someone ask you if you are a god, you say yes!”

That was Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson), to Ray Stanz (Dan Aykroyd). Venkman (Bill Murray) was not party to that exchange.

Really cool write-up and awesome to see a really soft consumer product in YC. It looks like you actually want to take on Craigslist. I think it is definitely possible, however, it would need something really strong like YC behind it, but if you have YC behind you, it should be possible!

Great story, however, it's dangerous to pin your hopes on 1 single event: acceptance into YC.

Doesn't seem like they are too me– he called it an inflection point. There can always be another inflection point later on that takes them in the wrong direction. And that single event is pretty powerful event nonetheless. Being YC alum is going to be an advantage in tech/startups for a ways to come.

Great story guys! Best of luck in the new phase!

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