nisthana

thanks all for encouragment. I will apply :-)

I am talking from a founder's perspective. I am building a new dev tool and trying to seek channels where I can show case it to engineers to have them try it.

BTW - today I tried your idea of posting the text on IG. Thanks for the idea :-) I also changed the website based on your suggestions. Hopefully its better than before

FYI - I have redesigned the website based on all the great feedback received from everyone. http://mentr.io

I changed the image from stock image to image of a real student. Thanks for your candid feedback

Ok this I feel is super useful for me. You gave me actionable feedback and I am super thankful. I will definitely improve upon this. Yep I get defensive, thats something I am working on. I took all the feedback to heart. The person who commented on the "fake testimonial" did change his statement (check it out). I tried to find a real user image but I felt I cannot use any user's image without asking them. So I am trying to internalize all comments. I also replied to everyone who took time to help me. I have not used this site much. I have been active since the YC application days. > Why on earth would you get yourself involved in a petty fight over people writing comments that aren't "useful" on your post? - Yep I should not have. It was not worth. My bad.

> Have you never used this site before - Only sometime

> You're not internalising it, you launch straight into a hurt defence - I will improve

> Someone quoted from YC policy, presumably to shed some light on the situation, and you dismiss it as a stock response written by a lawyer - I still think its a stock response. YC should do what it should. I don't expect everyone to agree with me (hope this is not attitudish, i am simply narrating my stand on it without being influenced by anyone)

>start praising a competitor - Whats wrong in praising a better service? Isnt that the freedom of such forums that people can express their opinions?

> if you already have all the answers, what do you need YC for? - I don't have all the answers. I still need to find out the answer to my original question - why did YC reject me twice. Some folks have helped me by telling me that its combination of team/domain expertise and traction. But would have been nice if YC could have told me that themselves. >1: Frankly, your apparent confusion as to how commenting works is a bit jarring - it befits someone asking for help to acquaint himself a bit with how things work, but that's the least of your problems - I am not sure if I understand.

I accept all opinions - but not the ones that are not useful. For example someone said something about roulette. How is that useful? Why did they even spend time to write that statement? I love critical comments, I really love them. I have replied to each comment above. What I can't take is sarcasm. That's it.

I disagree. An answer such as "Ask them not us" is not productive either specially when I am talking about a serious matter. There are so many people who answered in a useful manner. I accept critical comments but can't handle sarcasm. Sorry.

I don't think so. YC values idea, team and traction as someone mentioned here. I guess we lack on all of these fronts and hence did not make it to YC

Thank you so much for your comments. Coudnt agree with you more specially the last part :-))

These are some awesome feedback. Thanks for taking time. 1. Very good feedback. The app is designed by me, I am no designer, but we could not afford a designer as we are bootstrapped. So I took the lead and designed it. Given a chance, I would definitely hire the best designer but need to live with it until I can raise funds

2. Makes sense. I will work on it

3. Great thought. Currently we leverage some college students to manage the Instagram account. They are not designers, but very enthusiastic about social media. Point well taken!

4. Thats awesome idea. I will implement it for sure.

Thank you so much for your time. Loved the feedback

Thanks. These are very useful comments. Thanks for taking time to respond. I agree there is lot of things we can improve in the product. The product has not gone viral so I am experimenting with few ideas. I am the technical founder and CEO. My co-founder handles product. Domain expertise is certainly lacking because we are not in college or high school. Had this idea been done by a college student, I agree this would have had better possibilities of making through.

Well thats stock statement written by a lawyer. YC should spend time letting founders know where they failed, and what can they do to improve. We spent days to write the perfect application, why cant they spend few minutes for the feedback? StartX does it. They called me for a 15 min feedback and told me where I was wrong. I loved it because I came to know my blindspots.

Lol. So true. I might use it for my marketing purposes :-))

Are you saying startups that are from countries who don't speak english are not eligible for YC because they cannot speak perfect english?

These are good questions. Thanks for asking them. 1. Why not go to r/nyu - I never said Mentr is the only place to get into but Mentr makes sure the students are real, and we verify their identities. Not sure if reddit does that? 2. Money is made when mentor renders a service like reviewing someone's college essay, or hosting someone for a campus tour. They make 70% of the transaction 3. They are qualified because they made it to their school. Also as I mentioned, the platform is for peer to peer communication. As long as the mentors have relevant experience to share, and are willing to help someone we will accept them as mentors. We also personally interview every mentor to make sure they are a good fit. 4. Thanks for the input on the website. We are struggling for resources to make a top notch site and that's one of the reasons we really wanted to be in YC so we can fix these loose ends. Really appreciate you asking me these questions!

@hluska if Y Combinator cannot deal with the speed that a startup needs to move, which means things cannot be perfect, then my startup is not a good fit for them really. But as far as I know YC, they love scrappy people who put together things people love. My company is already changing people's lives by helping them get to college and thats all what matters. Screw "good english"

Wel thats entirely your opinion. Yale has loads of students who do not know perfect english. There are international students as well. Is your point really about "proper English"? Really?

No need for your respect. Visit this post https://www.facebook.com/mentrapp/photos/a.1160039210690959....

It shows the actual email that another student sent me. As I said, photo is stock, testimonial is not.

Sorry, I should have replied here-- @kifler - Mentr is a peer to peer mentoring platform for college and career advice. It lets high schoolers, who are unable to find any help related to college (except for factual info available on google), with real college students to get college advice. It fosters peer to peer communication, which is exactly whats happening right now. It does not mandate someone should have a degree in "mentorship" (if there is anything like that) but allows free information to be served. In the example below, the NYU student just felt like "fucking suburbia" and thats what she wrote. Moreover, as a company, we love when such "open" discussions happen and not afraid to hide it. Thats why you see this is as the top thread. If anyone feels all the communication between peers should be professional or highly intellectual, they need to hire professional college counselors. Was I able to answer your question satisfactorily?

@kifler - Mentr is a peer to peer mentoring platform for college and career advice. It lets high schoolers, who are unable to find any help related to college (except for factual info available on google), with real college students to get college advice. It fosters peer to peer communication, which is exactly whats happening right now. It does not mandate someone should have a degree in "mentorship" (if there is anything like that) but allows free information to be served. In the example below, the NYU student just felt like "fucking suburbia" and thats what she wrote. Moreover, as a company, we love when such "open" discussions happen and not afraid to hide it. Thats why you see this is as the top thread. If anyone feels all the communication between peers should be professional or highly intellectual, they need to hire professional college counselors. Was I able to answer your question satisfactorily?

Thanks everyone. I love all the comments below, and let me explain them one by one.

These are no made up quotes, they sent it to me. The only conflict is that I had to use one stock image because that student did not send me her profile pic.

Thats not true. All the students are real, except the one who did not send her profile picture. I could have left it alone, but she is one of the best student success stories. I did not lie, I can share their emails. Also not sure if you ever ran a company, but many times in business you need to take these risks. You need to work with whatever you have.

@everyone - If you cannot help, I dont need your sarcasm.

@smt88 - well said and every entrepreneur knows this goal. However in order to make a sustainable business, it needs initial capital and marketing investment to be able to reach a critical mass. Without that, the product will not have enough usage to go beyond its current state.

I did not apply to YC for investment, it was for the network they brought with them. They could connect me with growth hackers who can get the marketing done with smaller budget. Their mentorship would have been beneficial to take the business to next level.

I can get loan from the bank, but that does not mean its valuable.

Been bootstrapped all along.

Thats awesome advice. I definitely want to keep on doing, I am very passionate. Heck 2 of my students who used my platform got into good schools (one in Yale and one in UC Davis). They called me and thanked me. I know this thing is useful but I need to reach out to millions of people to make anything substantial out of it. And I just don't have the money.

I am thinking of getting a contracting job so I can keep working on it on the side. I have been out of job for a long time so I don't even know where to start from.

I have the data, lots of it. I have lots of learning. What I built was to help people get into college and career by connecting them with a role model in college or companies. It's a mentoring platform.

What I found the hard way is that I cannot build a long term sustaining business out of mentoring. So investors did not want to get into it.

The users used it only for to get one time advice from mentors and then never came back. There was nothing viral about it.

I developed a good strategy to increase awareness of the product locally but failed to distribute it to the masses (I used Facebook Ads). If I had funds, I could have hired a growth hacker or a good marketing person to at least make people aware because if people don't know about it, they won't use it.

The product is still running. However I cannot invest my savings any more on it. Job is an option (I am in Silicon valley so there are plenty). But its so hard to leave everything I've built behind and go back to working for someone else :-((

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I think I got my answer. This is not a viable business idea so I will not spend anytime thinking about it :-))

Agreed! Thanks for your feedback!