Ask HN: Rejected from YC? Who are you?
I applied as a solo founder with my project http://www.quipvideo.com, but alas I didn't get an offer for an interview. I think a big part of that is the fact that I don't have a team behind me. I don't know too many other awesome hacker types, but maybe you - failed YC applicant - are such a person, or suffer from the same problem. Perhaps we should get to know each other better?
Let's turn this unfortunate news into an opportunity to share ideas, brainstorm and meet like-minded folk. Share your thoughts in the comments.
100 comments
[ 0.25 ms ] story [ 137 ms ] threadI would be happy to meet up in SF with fellow failed YC S12'ers.
While YC represents the cream of the crop, it's probably most attractive to aspiring founders who want to carve the path of least resistance to success.
The hard truth is that YC's format makes it the most useful for teams that have the best ability to leverage the strengths of its networks and advice. Technically savvy, with obsessive work ethic and the ability to iterate quickly and constantly.
The response was apt, others were a better fit. None of their reasoning should be interpreted as your team, demo, or product won't be successful.
Best of luck to all of you!
Actually open call here. I am very interested in hearing any ideas that didn't get accepted. I hope to modify my site in the next day to allow a discussion on this and to talk to others. Y-combinator is a great way it seems to develop concepts, but not the only way. If other rejected ones are like us then we should really talk to each other. Feel free to e-mail me at joshua.smith@i4edge.com. Better yet here post on this page http://www.i4edge.com/ycombinator-apply-list/
While 1-2 sentence answer from YC could help out your company, it could open up a whole new can of worms that causes some groups to say, "but wait.." or "good idea, we can pivot...".
Their nice rejection letter is probably the best result the non-interviewees can get.
This process forced me to ask myself the tough questions and for that we are better.
There's also user interface ways to make things less jarring.
Here is an idea you can play with: wikipedia for videos. So sometimes after you watched a video, you want to know EVERYTHING about it, and usually the comment are crap for factual information about the video. What you can do with that technology is allow users to learn more about the video when he or she pauses or when the video ends. Lots of possibilities here =).
We are building a centralized platform as a service which allows vacation rental home owners and property agents to launch and create their own marketing website which they can manage from a single location. Property owners can also receive marketing and exposure on any number of sites. (We're placing more emphasis on enterprise rather than the social side that AirBnB went down). ie Agents can launch their own marketing website, manage their own property portfolio and run their own branding. Kind of like how you can launch your own Desk.com website and create your own knowledge base... on our platform you can do the same by managing your own catalogue of properties and revenue share with other advertisers who might make a booking on your behalf.
The enquiry management, booking tools and payment facilities are all built in. We haven't launched yet. Which was why this cycle would of been the best fit for YC.
http://rentivo.com/how-it-works
We will be launching soon (so no demo is available), but in case anyone knows a designer send them to the post on Baby Unicorns and Rockstar Designers I wrote this morning.
http://rentivo.com/blog/baby-unicorns-and-rockstar-designers
Clearly YC applicants are getting much better for them not to even give you an interview.
Where are you located, and who is your team?
We're located in Melbourne, Australia. I was a senior software engineer before and so was my co-founder. We are in our late 20s and have both quit our jobs few months ago and could relocate. I think the applicants this time round were very strong!
I like the "similar to last selected" bit though I wasn't sure if it always worked very quickly.
Also, on a typical screen, it required a bit of scrolling around to see the day plus the "next day" nav. I wonder if you could tighten things up a bit for fairly busy schedules?
Showing promise though. Don't give up.
Of course being twisted in the way that I am twisted, it also generated a thought about 'real time digital signage.'
There are lots of trucks on the freeway, they drive along at night from point A to point B, so how cost effective would it be to put a very high mileage car to drive along behind them and optically stabilize the projection of signage on the back of the truck? (I saw the building projections and thought, those are pretty cool) Imagine you're driving down the freeway and you see a billboard for a restaurant which is available in a couple of miles.
Trucks could do this on themselves, perhaps it would offset the cost of gas. Imagine a unit that used GPS to know where it was and an arm that extended out the back and projected on the truck a location sensitive billboard. Either way it would be a fun hack.
If you're building a web app feel free to add it to the site.
Very nice interface. Where are you located?
Located in San Mateo, CA.
Listypedia is like Wikipedia for lists. It is a place for the users to find precise and concise information about the things they are looking for. It allows users to create and share lists with their social network. Few examples of the lists could be most scenic places on earth, things to carry for a camping trip, must have productivity apps for iphone, etc. The items added to the lists will be character limited precise answers. The users will be able to create protected lists that will be visible only to authorized users. Users will be able to create new lists or use existing lists and share it with their network to keep track of what they want or things that should be done as a group by using the list as a checklist.
There will also be curating features where in the list creators and also the curators will be able to control what goes in to only allow relevant content. It will also allow users to vote and comment on individual items.
Listypedia will bring in all the good features of yahoo answers, wikianswers and stackoverflow. It aims at organizing the unorganized content on the web in the form of social comments, blog posts, etc.
We are planning to launch soon in a month.
Are you all in the Bay area? We'd love to grab coffee if you're interested -- it sounds like we have a slightly different twist on lists than you do and would love to meet if you're up for it. My email is trippp at gmail.
It sucks to be rejected with anything in life, but you only truly fail if you give up. You all seem smart and there are some great ideas here; don't give up and I am sure I'll be hearing about you all in the future. :)
Ask HN: Rejected from YC? Who are you?
Previous title was "Ask HN: Rejected from YC? What did you build?"
2 MS's in CS that were already in a startup (<20 ppl) that sold for several $M's (as early engineers)
we are all 30-32 yo. (no family/kids yet) but maybe the age? seems like a good team (and a good idea), but oh well...
We're building mall app with indoor positioning.
One big problem is that drawing anything details is hard without a tablet.
I'm also using Node.JS on Quip. Configuring it on EC2 wasn't that difficult if you've considered it.
I am currently looking for artists who can help either write stories or/and draw. You can contact me using the web form in the site.
Saying that, it's very positive to listen to any feedback. If you continue then you have to decide do you apply for an alternative accelerator (Many great ones), bootstrap or try to raise some seed money to get you off the grond. YC is incredible but in some circles overhyped.
It's supposedly as good as people say but many of the alternatives (not referring to accelerators) are as good or proven further.
On your site, the main call to action is to post something I've bought. Why would I want to do that? I also couldn't actually figure out how to search for an item (I entered "Macbook Pro" into the filter but didn't find what I was looking for.)
http://daring.is
Congrats to YC S12.
We're making an iOS universal app (we call it Cook) that uses grocery lists and recipes to keep a current record of all the food in your kitchen. With said current record, you can do cool things like reccommend recipes you have all the ingredients for, or tell them to use an ingredient before it spoils :)
Downloaded the app. You're right, I should know about them, even if they don't relate groceries and recipes in a meaningful way :)
One thing I will so though is that the syncing devices is something we entirely aim for, as well as adding family members. Their iPhone app could use some serious help though...
Who am I: I'm getting my PhD in 2 months in applied math at UCSB. I'm always looking to meet interesting people. I think I'm interesting myself. As proof, I can show you some of my fire sculptures :-)
Check out my blog: http://www.davidvaldman.com
Keep building!
I'm a founder located in Seattle looking for co-founders. If you're around here and interested please ping me on: elkhourygeorges@hotmail.com
Didn't get in, didn't sweat it, tried other things. We haven't yet built a mammoth company or had a successful exit so I have yet to be able to take pg up on his offer to go to lunch sometime to discuss what they missed when evaluating my application, but I think it's fair to say we're doing reasonably well so far, all things considered.
YC is overrated as a gate. (I don't know whether it's overrated in general and I kind of doubt it, but too many people think "I didn't get into YC, oh no, maybe I'm not cut out for this".)
Frankly, as others have said in this thread, if a YC rejection stops you then something else would have stopped you anyway. YC is a very good first step in the right direction, but it is only a step - and there are many other good steps you can take in the same direction anyway, so failing to get into YC means very little in itself, imho, about whether you have what it takes to succeed more generally.