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Labeling A company as YC rejected? Not OK?

7 points by knewjax ↗ HN
Is this considered unethical or against the hackernews rules?

We label Bandsintown as a rejected company to show perseverance and because i think there is an interest in the companies that are applying to YC wether they made it or not. I am curious to how everyone feels on this issue.

29 comments

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knewjax
Is this considered unethical or against the hackernews rules?

We label Bandsintown as a rejected company to show perseverance and because i think there is an interest in the companies that are applying to YC wether they made it or not. I am curious to how everyone feels on this issue.

blored
Naw, I don't mind. Editors probably feel a bit protective of YC though, maybe that's why the title got edited, because the word 'reject' has some negative connotations.
knewjax
Yeah I agree. With so many startups launching it just seemed logical to highlight YC applicants here.
knewjax
Maybe in the future companies could just use "YC funded company" or "YC applicant" if they felt the need to highlight it.
pg
There was a rash of startups doing this to get attention a few months ago. After the first couple we started deleting such descriptions. It's an edge case, but probably abuse, especially considering the motive.

Which incidentally is probably also a large part of the motive for this post. If you were really just interested in the abstract question, you could have avoided the appearance of an ulterior motive by making this a straight question instead of linking to your original post. Want me to change that for you?

knewjax
That does make sense, and I think it is natural for a Ycombinator applicant to try and highlight their startups here. I do not mind if you change the URL as well. I think the suggestion to use "YCombinator Applicant" would solve it in the future for anyone else. Cool?

pg
> the suggestion to use "YCombinator Applicant" would solve it

It would obviously mean exactly the same thing.

Just describe what your startup is, not what it isn't.

knewjax
yeah I like that. Just makes it an easy way to check out the companies that have some kind of relationship with hackernews and YC.
brlewis
Where is the abuse in seeking attention by using a truthful description? I think making a title that catches the attention of news.yc readers is only abuse if it does not truthfully describe the link it points to.

If there is some other reason why you don't like "YC reject" in titles (unhealthy us vs them mentality?), why not comment on the submitted article asking the submitter to edit the title? I'm not affiliated with knewjax, but it looks to me from his comments that he would be happy to comply. I think most, if not all, previously-rejected applicants who post here would do the same.

euccastro
Where is the abuse in seeking attention by using a truthful description?

It is truthful, but it is not a description.

brlewis
If the site linked to was submitted in a YC application and was not accepted, then "YC reject" is truthfully an attribute of the linked site. It is as descriptive as, say, the color scheme the site uses. You may see it as an uninteresting attribute; others may find it interesting. Voting answers the interesting/uninteresting question. What the editors do is to answer the appropriate/inappropriate question.
euccastro
From your argument follows that any true statement about something is descriptive. Under that acception, my post is self contradicting.

I was relying on a less inclusive meaning of the word: to describe as in to relate intrinsic properties of something. Yes, 'intrinsic' itself is a sloppy concept defined mostly by convention, but that's true for most of our language. I'll leave it at that, apologize for my sloppy language, and appeal to common sense.

My point is that the "rejected by YC" tag doesn't add much information, certainly not enough to merit being in the title. Its main effect is attention grabbing. Those priorities are inappropriate enough for me, and I support the banning of this kind of stuff.

knewjax
You are right, I would comply and in my opinion the wording doesn't really matter that much. I think the readers are smart enough to understand that "Rejected YCombinator company" is the same thing as "Not Accepted Ycombinator Company" "or "YCombinator Applicant" and I do not mean any negativity with the title. It is mearly meant to highlight the fact that we are a company who submitted an application and the decision was made not to fund our company, and hopefully gain some attention from hackernews readers who might relate to that more than they would another random startup. YCombinators decision might turn out to be a good one for all I know, of course I would hope to prove otherwise by building a successful business.

At the same time I can respect PG decision to edit the title. After all one of the goals in titling my post with "YCombinator Rejected Company" is to gather more attention for our site. Can you fault me?

asdflkj
Because your selection of truths carries a message in itself. Compare "Bush, a Yale graduate, started a war" to "Bush, who didn't fight in Vietnam, started a war". Both statements are true. In our case, the message is more subtle, but it's still there, and it seems ego-oriented and unnecessary to me.
portLAN
> There was a rash of startups doing this to get attention a few months ago.

That will kind of solve itself as most of them go nowhere and nobody ever hears about them again.

cperciva
Labelling a company as having been rejected by YC is misleading, because it implies a value judgement which wasn't made. Probably 90% of the people who visit your website leave without signing up; equally, my understanding is that most startups (even successful ones) find that 90% of angels and VCs turn them down. Do you label yourself with the names of all the potential users who "rejected" you?

As Paul has pointed out in the past, there are many reasons why a company might not receive funding, and most of them have nothing to do with the merits of the company itself. Being not accepted by YC doesn't mean that they necessarily think there's anything wrong with you -- in this case, "not accepted" is not a synonym for "rejected".

SwellJoe
You're being silly and it makes me think you have nothing else worth talking about. There were 400+ apps to the most recent YC program...I don't want to know if you were one of them. It's relatively interesting when a company is a YC company, but is distinctly uninteresting that you took 20 minutes out of your day to fill out the application. That just tells us you had 20 minutes to spare.
vegashacker
I think I agree with your main point, but I object to your reasoning. Did you really spend only 20 minutes on your app? I'm skeptical that it's possible to literally spend that little time on it and still get accepted to the program. The app even says, "We look at online demos only for the most promising applications, so don't skimp on the application because you're relying on a good demo."

Spread out over a few weeks, we probably spent 24 hours on the app (this estimate includes tasks like market research, for example, to answer the "who are your competitors" question). Maybe this seems like a long time, but I think it takes a long time to come up with well-written, concise prose.

Now, we didn't get accepted, but we did make it to the interview.

nmeyer
He didn't literally mean 20 minutes. Even if he did, that's not the point he was trying to make.
vegashacker
Fair enough. I guess I was objecting to the fact that his under-exaggeration was something like 2 orders of magnitude off, by my estimates.
SwellJoe
Actually, in my case I did literally mean 20 minutes. Apologies to folks who spent significantly longer (and I'm not disparaging you for doing so). It was merely lack of knowledge on my part that led to me filling it out so quickly.

I didn't even know about the program until the afternoon on which applications were due--I had seen the Boston one come and go, but would have never considered a move from Austin to Boston...by the time I realized there was one in CA, it was close to too late. I submitted it within hours of the deadline, and had dozens of other things going on at the same time. I looked back over it later (before going for the interview in Boston), and it was pretty bad, except in a few spots where deep knowledge of our field and code overwhelmed the slapdash nature of the thing as a whole.

If it makes you feel better, we just scraped by, on the obvious difficulty of the problems that we had already solved when we arrived for the interview (and even then pg was not on board with what we were doing...I'm pretty certain we owe our acceptance entirely to Trevor and rtm, who have done system administration and recognized the pain that our product takes away, while pg seemingly couldn't figure out why we would even want to address those problems).

But, you're absolutely right: It's not the point I was trying to make.

s/20 minutes/2 fortnights/g and the intent is the same.

vegashacker
Congrats on wasting no time, then. That's a great story, btw. Thanks for sharing.
mattmaroon
There should be a special logo for YCombinator rejects to display. I humbly offer http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1169/1251010963_4787666411_m....
knewjax
Ha i like that.
andreyf
Why the obsession with YC? Are you making lists of everyone that's ever turned you down or told you your idea won't fly? If you have a good idea, that'll turn into a long list...

"We label ourselves as a rejected company to show perseverance..."

I think it shows more of either: a) taking rejection too personally, or b) mean spirited demonstration that YC made a mistake by not funding you.

Either way, I don't think it's in any way "unethical"... just unwise. If you think YC made a mistake, and you want them to correct it, explain so in your application for the next round. If you've changed your mind, and don't want their support anymore, don't dwell on it and go on with your life.

mattmaroon
It's definitely kind of neat to see companies that were turned down by YC and worked on their project anyway. If there were a list of them somewhere (similar to TechCrunch's deadpool, but a little more cheery) I'd love to read it.

I'm really curious what percentage of the submissions that get rejected go on to incorporate and put something out there.

Goladus
I recommend reading the forum and just waiting around for the next time someone asks "Have we heard from any companies that got rejected and still went forward?"