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Ask HN: YC interview invites are sent. What's up now?

9 points by Danilka ↗ HN
YC application and interview process could be tedious for founders.

I am curious which companies got selected, which didn't and why? How do you feel about it and what you are going to do?

30 comments

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taheca
My startup was not selected.

This was the first accelerator we applied to, and I of course obviously hold no ill will. I may try again in the future. I do appreciate that they said I would have an answer today, and I received an answer.

We are in the process of having our MVP built (finalizes in November), and will continue on as we have been.

In one way I am kind of happy. This is the first rejection to overcome.. who knows how many more we have ahead of us, but our passion to bring opportunity to every person who wants it will not be stopped.

I wish every company selected this year nothing but the best of luck moving forward.

impactthat
Great attitude! That's our attitude too. Best of luck!
elainelu
Got rejected. In a painful process to figure out why. It will be fine if YC didn't carefully read our application. It won't be if they did. We will continue carry on, toward our roadmap, try to prove ourselves by product performance as soon as possible, and meanwhile think through what we might be missed and how can we do better.
Danilka
Do you mind sharing a link to your product?
elainelu
Sure. www.visbit.co. Appreciate any thoughtful feedbacks.
elainelu
It's solving overwhelming amount of photos problem. Many people think it's a very competitive market, some even said "saturated", but look at users and current players, no solid solution yet. We don't want to avoid competition, instead, we want to provide a really working solution. It doesn't sound fancy, but it could be useful to many people. The user pain point might also not so obvious at this stage, but it will be more obvious along the time. Also, this is a "Vitamin" type of product (Refer to the "The Hook Model"). That's my thinking process. Please tell me where could be wrong. Thanks!
philipkuklis
Hi! I like the concept but by looking at your website I don't know (1) what problem you're solving and (2) how you do it.

How does the "Intelligence" work? Why should I auto-generate a collage when it's more fun to create one by myself?

At the moment it seems like it would be a nice automated addition to other apps (e.g. Instagram generates "moments" from last week automatically and lets me share them with others, etc..)

Would love to hear your thoughts! :)

GFischer
I thought the same thing, it's not at all clear what it does or why I would want it.
elainelu
You might want it for: 1)all photos organized by moments/events instantly, an effortless while fresh way to consume your own photos and digest your past experience; 2) with our app, you take 10 second to share a collage instead of 10mins, while you are still in the moment. 3) For those who enjoy the editing process, you still can get inspiration from what we recommend to you as a creation. Plus, we are fully editable and you can just further customize based on what we drafted for you. -- Let me know if that is not convincing. :)
philipkuklis
That sounds awesome! As you said, it's definitely some kind of vitamin/aspirational thing but there is lots of potential. Can't wait to try it out someday.

Good luck!

elainelu
Thank you! Feel free to sign up on www.visbit.co. :)
elainelu
Thank you for the feedbacks! Sorry if the website didn't explain clearly. The problem we are solving is the overwhelming amount of photos people took vs limited time to organize, create content from them, and share the the creation on time. Our solution, in one sentence is to automate the whole process. You only need to take photos and you see creations done right after you launch the app. We can almost do it in real time. So, in terms of "Intelligence", our app can understand your photos, detect when you take them, and make them into creations by event so that you can immediately share or further edit.
27182818284
> Please tell me where could be wrong. Thanks!

I've used everything from Picasa to iPhoto to some of the Linux-based solutions like F-Spot.

I have no idea what your product does. It reminded me a lot of the paragraph at http://www.ycombinator.com/howtoapply/ that starts with, "The best answers are the most matter of fact. It’s a mistake to use marketing-speak to make your idea sound more exciting. "

elainelu
Yes, I know. Paul was talking about the application. Our website is a marketing platform and mean to talk in marketing ways. I am sorry it's not clear enough for you. Anyway, we thought we were not launched yet and therefore didn't work much on crafting the wording here. Probably a mistake here.
iphoneseventeen
Not to be mean, but your About Us page is extremely difficult to read. It is just words:

"we observed an urgent need of a mobile app for easy and powerful photo management and content creation."

I am amazed that you have a whole team of people working on this and nobody has the cajones to point this out.

elainelu
Thank you! Very helpful. Sorry that we were mostly focusing on the product building, didn't spend enough time craft these marketing materials. I am kind of realizing that this is what blocked us now. I need to balance a bit. Thanks for pointing this out.
subliminalzen
The site and app look great. Very promising. I suggest going with a copywriter to help you craft your message. I'd start with your USP.

Again, fantastic job. I signed up for the Android version!

elainelu
Many thanks for the kind suggestion! OK, will look into that.
[dead] elainelu
Thank you! Very helpful. Sorry that we were mostly focusing on the product building, didn't spend enough time craft these marketing materials. I am kind of realizing that this is what blocked us now. I need to balance a bit. Thanks for pointing this out.
sikanhe
The first reason why you think they rejected you is because you think they didn't read your application?

Not gonna lie but i am going to give my honest advice here.

There is nothing wrong with your idea, I think there is some kind of need out there for photo organization because people takes so many pictures nowadays that they dont even remember they have taken them.

But when I see your team is when I went, WTF? You have 8 people working on a pre-alpha photo app and you don't even KNOW if people want to use it.

AND you are hiring? What are you hiring for? More people to argue with whenever someone think of a idea? You need speed and focus at the beginning stage of a startup and having 8 person on the team is game over for you already.

Instagram is built with 2 person only all the way from original idea to pivoting to launch, and they STILL only have around 10 people on the team.

In fact there hasn't been a software startup I have seen in YC that has that many people. Most startups had 2-3 person for the first 2-3 years.

You should really consider about the size of your team especially at mvp stage.

elainelu
Hi, thanks for your honest feedbacks. No, I didn't mean that they didn't read my application. That's a joke. You misunderstood.

We have 8 persons is because we have a seed round already and we want to run fast. I am learning how to balance the cost with the speed of development. But I don't think the amount of people directly equal to the cost you have. :)

Thanks for your information about the team size you have seen in YC. But I don't think that's the reason we got rejected. Will consider how to match the development speed with the size though.

elainelu
By the way, we love team discussion and each member is valuable to our team. We only have 2 co-founders though. More people means more help to us, not necessary more trouble as you think. At the end of day, even our product fail, we still have a great team to start the next chapter. :)
intrepidkarthi
Our application got rejected.

We are from LookMobility(http://www.lookmobility.com), developing a product on creating Virtual Reality experience for the people who can't code and design, it is going to be powerpoint for Virtual Reality.

We have no idea why our application is rejected and also there is no regrets on it. Just move ahead and think forward!

GFischer
It looks really cool, got me hooked, but it fails to explain "how" you'll archieve what you're selling :)

I'm particularly interested in that area, I'd like to be notified when you go live! You should add a newsletter :)

I hope adding a demo or video is on your to-do list, it would help greatly :)

intrepidkarthi
Thanks for the comment. We will let you know once our product is out. And other changes on website and demo video are in progress already. Will be ready in a week's time.
Stoo
I submitted my application for Storytella[0] two days late and I haven't heard anything yet. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not.

[0] https://storytel.la/

sfraise
We're working on a new sales platform called coldminer (http://www.cold-miner.com) that unifies the entire process by including millions of built in prospecting leads, virtual call center, help desk, real time communications between sales reps, optional integrated e-commerce store for both front end purchasing as well as the option for sales reps to select inventory and make the sale from the call center, mass email capability, sales rep training and more.

We've been in the prototype phase for the last 7 months with one company using the prototype as it's sole leads source and sales platform and its helped them open over 200 new accounts and raise sales by over 200%.

We need alpha/beta testers and would love to see some other startups use it to gain traction so if anyone is interested in it let me know and we'll set you up.

It does both b2b and b2c but we're still working on the b2c aspect (a lot more data points and moving parts on the b2c side, plus a hell of a lot more leads to deal with) so we're really looking for companies that sell b2b right now but will be looking for b2c companies soon.

impactthat
I'm the founder of Impact That www.impactthat.org. It's a reader engagement tool for news media. We weren't accepted this time. Watching and reading the examples I realized we're probably too early in our development, but I decided to apply anyway. Just going through the process was good experience. We're still going full steam ahead, and are going to apply again after we have our pilot project with our first customer up and running.