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For those who were rejected this time from YC, keep grinding

16 points by imjonathanlee ↗ HN
Keep on grinding. Getting rejected from YC is in no way a reflection of the quality of your startup. As they say in the rejection emails, sometimes they miss out too.

Here's are two stories that should give you some inspiration hopefully:

https://45m.ph/overnight-success-it-s-possible-4ce22f618787

https://medium.com/@imjonathanlee/how-fear-of-embarrassment-turned-into-a-11-billion-dollar-valuation-c17fae86f7a3

Keep up the good work and don't let this bring you down!

7 comments

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bbcbasic
And keep bulk-buying those noodles.
alecbaldwinlol
Obligatory post that you can make healthier, tastier meals for marginally more cost if you buy and boil frozen vegetables. If it doesn't taste good enough then add salt or whatever other freebies you can find.

You can eat for $3 a day!

EDIT: forgot to add, garlic is like 49 cents and will make the cheapest, tastiest, oil/salt free flavoring you've ever had. Chop very thin and throw it in. This isn't marketing BS, not many people are out there making money off of something that costs 49 cents and makes your breath smell like you've been warding off vampires!

Jugurtha
And there's your startup idea: Foo'd (You can have "bar" there, too). Hackers must eat, too.

On a side-note: one of the greatest pieces of knowledge I've ever found was lyophilization, commonly called freeze-drying..

Soldiers eat MRE's (Meals, Ready to Eat). The technology is just amazingly clever: they sublimate the frozen water contained in the food. The water goes from solid phase to gaseous phase without going through a liquid phase.

Isn't that great!

alecbaldwinlol
MREs are quite tasty and good for survival situations (liquid water is extremely heavy and voluminous- hard to transport).

I haven't looked specifically at the salt and preservatives inside MREs but if they have a long shelf-life without those (like frozen veggies do), then I hope the industry grows.

Side-note, I'm actually reasonably sure that McDonalds fries have their taste and texture thanks to rapid freezing and reheating over the course of multiple weeks. The starches are broken down through this process as they are transfered from farm to truck to store to table.

I wish you luck if you want to compete with those companies but at least it is better than Soylent.

h1r0
It would have been nice for them to spend more than 10 seconds (literally) evaluating our demo. Also, YC specifically requires you to have a password-less login so most types of authentication system will have to be retooled or deliberately broken for them. Just my 2c
wj
Yeah, YouTube didn't even register a view of my video and nobody did the demo. I suspect being a solo-founder was an almost automatic disqualification for me not to mention it seems as if the caliber of startups I see coming out of each class is getting better and better.

I am more disappointed about not getting a fellowship interview than a core interview (haven't locked down first customer yet so probably not ready for that stage). Oh well. Now to do my fifty cold calls for the day!

PhilWright
'Getting rejected from YC is in no way a reflection of the quality of your startup'

Yes it is a reflection on quality. They no doubt get it wrong but they have a pretty good track record so it does have some reflection on quality. They are not just randomly picking people. If you have applied 10 times in a row then stop, just stop and get on with building your business.

Getting into YC is a bonus but stop obsessing on it. Facebook and Google didn't go through YC and they seem to have done well. Concentrate on building your business.