HN Explorer

If you applied to YC this cycle, please put your email in your profile

221 points by pg ↗ HN
A significant number of applicants seem to have overlooked this part of the application instructions:

    1. Please put your email address in the email field of your profile.
If you applied this cycle, please do that, or we'll have no way to notify you later today.

64 comments

[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 121 ms ] thread
kellyreid
on behalf of everyone in the chat room who is incessantly asking, when should we expect notification (either way). people are consumed by this question and meaningful business/coding discussion has ceased.
pclark
last time we got our email 6 hours from now.
shib71
It's not often you get to say something like that outside of science fiction.
davidcuddeback
I got a kick out of saying that when I flew back from New Zealand last week. My flight left around 7:00pm New Zealand time and arrived around 1:00pm California time on the same day (crossed the international date line), so I could tell people "my flight left 6 hours from now."
[dead] addoway
Just have to pull through and get that coding done. The anxiety you are feeling right now is actually adrenaline. Just use it to your advantage to get more done. Nothing changes after we hear back. We still work whether it be with YC or not. Life goes on and so does our companies.
pg
Probably before 10 pacific.
mindsetlabs
haha, we have to make sure we keep working on the MVP even as we chomp on the nails to see if we get into YC. :)
MrFlibble
See, this is where a fake notification date for the 3rd could be useful. That way when you get notified a day early on the 2nd, you are pleasantly surprised and haven't been dwelling on it all day.
StavrosK
Yeah but then they'd know the next time. I think it would be better if they had decided by the previous day, so they could send all the emails the morning of the last day and not have people obsess all day long...
schlichtm
In the end you will either get an email or you will not. It doesn't matter when it is sent.

You will also either start a company or not. It doesn't matter whether you get accepted or not.

Most importantly though - isn't it fantastic to be worried and nervous about this? If you're biting your nails right now it's because you put yourself in this position. You worked hard and spent energy on something you cared about and now you get to be judged. Just keep making yourself nervous and putting yourselves in these situations where you get feedback and can iterate and move forward. This is our crack.

pg
10 pm is a fake notification time.
MrFlibble
Ha! I like the cut of your jib.
twitter_v2
Hey for those of you in the US no problem, it's 10pm here in London and pg said we might be notified before 10pm pt. Nails I can bite, but sleep now...you joking right!
dirktheman
Same here in the Netherlands. It's almost midnight, so it looks like I'm pulling an allnighter again. It's all good though, might as well get some work done!
twitter_v2
Good man! Good to hear from people this side of the "fibre link". We could do shifts you know!
ecargnfx
hey, where is the chatroom? I had lost the link to it
neurotech1
I received my rejection notification at 7:27PM Pacific time. I'll work on my startup anyway, and see how I go.
boredguy8
I'm curious, if you have a moment PG: how much does not doing something like that peeve you?

On the one hand, such detail-oriented mistakes aren't necessarily bad, especially in people who know how to notice when they miss them and it matters.

On the other hand, sometimes details can kill you: You show up 15 minutes late when it matters.

Does someone not including their e-mail ever push you from "go" to "no go" on an application? Why or why not?

StavrosK
I suspect that, by the time they check the profile for an email, they've committed enough to at least try and contact the guy some other way.
nkassis
Well they probably have and automated script for rejection letters. Too many applications to do by hand.
tlb
I don't think PG or anyone is peeved by it. It's just that if your email isn't in your profile, you won't get notified.
StavrosK
Will rejected applicants also receive emails?
twitter_v2
Positive thinking dude!
StavrosK
Dude I'm just worried about all the other guys!
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
dawie
I got a very nice rejection email last year. Here it is:

We're sorry to say we couldn't accept your proposal for funding.Please don't take it personally. The quality of the applications continues to increase with each cycle, and since there's a limit on the number of interviews we can do, we had to turn away a lot of genuinely promising groups.

Another reason you shouldn't take this personally is that we know we make lots of mistakes. It's alarming how often the last group to make it over the threshold for interviews ends up being one that we fund. That means there are surely other good groups that fall just below the threshold and that we miss even interviewing.

We're trying to get better at this, but it's practically certain that groups we rejected will go on to create successful startups.If you do, we'd appreciate it if you'd send us an email telling us about it; we want to learn from our mistakes.

Y Combinator Staff

twitter_v2
So how did it go go for you post YC? Did you progress? Or did you apply again?
edanm
From his profile:

"I have always been very interested in the startup scene. I have been to startup school twice and applied to YC once with Docley (I didn't get in).

I was working on something cool: http://docley.com.

I am now working on something cooler: http://tabtrick.com/

trjordan
From tabtrick's home:

"It will be simple and easily to do."

You might want to fix that -- typos on the front page aren't flattering!

dawie
Fixed. Thanks for spotting it and mentioning it.
[dead] si2
also, it says, "Your business needs be on facebook"
dawie
I didn't apply this year. Looking for a co-founder and just become a partner at my day job.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
frankdenbow
Just got mine :)

Still excited to continue working on it, though

scott_s
Observation: this is a time sensitive post by the forum's owner/maintainer/main moderator on the original topic of the forum. Yet, he did not need to rely on a "sticky" thread or any other kind of special modifier.
StavrosK
Why have a special modifier when you can just change the amount of upvotes to whatever you want? ;)
mixmax
I believe there would inevitably be some blowback stemming from that sort of behaviour...
StavrosK
I know, I was just joking...
levesque
What makes you say that?
mixmax
Well, it was kind of tongue-in-cheek, but eventually the truth would come out and users would be outraged - it's simply not worth it. Besides I just don't think PG has the mentality to do something like that :-)
levesque
To promote a message to the community, I certainly don't see why people would be outraged :P
StavrosK
We're mostly assuming pg would admit it right away ("I added 100 upvotes so people would see this"), not that he'd try to do it behind our backs :p
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
bdr
"Sticky" threads are typically seen in forums where the threads are ordered by time of most recent comment. They make more sense in that context.
scott_s
One may also assume they're necessary in a forum where new posts are buried less than an hour after they're posted.
ndl
Couldn't he have just rigged the algorithms to put this post at the top? That would be the backdoor equivalent of the "sticky" post.

It would actually be more interesting to me if pg had some quantitative way of knowing that this post would reach the top (some function of the # of YC applicants now nervously refreshing), but if I had to guess, I'd say he just knew from experience or something.

Swizec
All commenters: please stop being nervous, it's rubbing off on me and I'm supposed to get some sleep tonight.

Thank you.

[deleted]
(comment deleted)
puppetsock 

  (def check-usernames (u)
    (or (nil? u)
      (and
        (has-email? (user (car u)))
        (check-usernames (cdr u)))))
or something
goodlab
Fingers still crossed! Probably sleep with them crossed as well.
[dead] si2
Good luck to all applicants!

--tip-- Lunesta is thought to activate the part of the brain that induces sleep.

ntoshev
Why don't you validate this in software on application time? Just put a big warning on every save and don't allow final submit.
ploonky
If my team and I did not have a email address in the email field yesterday, Nov 2nd, will we not be notified at all to being accepted or not? I updated the email field in the profile to include our email, but not til this morning, Nov 3rd.
seizeyourfame
I am in the same boat. Not sure what to make of it. Good, bad, or neither.