The YC Rejection thread
Just got an email informing me of my rejection to YC this summer. Bummer.
I'm still going to go on and develop my idea. It's just going to take a little longer than I expected without the money.
I'm still going to go on and develop my idea. It's just going to take a little longer than I expected without the money.
144 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 196 ms ] threadI know we could get $10k+ from other sources, but when it's not from a venture firm like YC and it's instead from our own savings and from friends/family like we have considered before, it's a lot harder to accept.
I doubt many people are just going to give up right now after rejection even (and especially) if they had a good idea, it's just that YC would have helped a ton.
It's a bit as if you're saying that it is easier to accept money from 'strangers'.
Personally I think that if your idea has merit and 10k is the big issue that you should get an extra job, save like the devil for the next 10 months to a year and then do it anyway. And face up to the fact that if 10k is the real problem that your idea may not have as much merit as you think after all.
I know this sounds quite harsh but good ideas + good teams are not going to go down because of a little bit of $.
I find any money hard to accept, stranger or not. To me, applying to YC (and all the possible consequences) was a harder decision than the decision to not accept friends/family money because it is from "strangers", and that's money I typically find hardest to accept.
However, while in a way preexisting relationships can be helpful, sometimes they can be a negative. I have lots of friends but not many that can honestly afford to chip in anywhere near that much (we're all entering that phase of student loans and new families). I have family but they usually want extortionate shares or interest in exchange (think like half of revenue for chipping in $20k at the beginning), plus the whole time provide the massive emotional burden of "you're a failure to this family if you don't succeed wildly". So given the alternatives, I'd prefer a more impartial stranger or group of strangers that don't do something like that, that can provide me with more than just money and a lot of international nagging.
That being said, I'd be stupid to think that $10k is a big issue. It's not, I hope it never comes to that, and I never have thought it to be at any point...in fact, this topic is the first time I even considered the idea of $10k or even $20k being a big issue, and I had to laugh at it. I have more than that in my savings alone, and although I like to have a little financial cushion at all times, I would consider using most of it for the startup if need be. It's just not money I can easily part with for the sake of working fulltime on the startup during the summer when the original pre-ycombinator plan was to do that anyway, just with some low maintenance/effort contract work on the side at the same time to take care of the small bills and inevitable money we'll need anyway.
That way you'll be able to do your thing
Why not just save some money for a few months (or however long it takes)? If you want it badly enough, waiting shouldn't be a problem...
I'm not sure what exactly lead up to this scenario, how MS was able to talk with IBM execs, but you have to give MS credit for securing this business deal:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcWjOodAtoE
I hope that some of those who weren't accepted will figure out a way to have a ragingly successful business. It would make for a great story.
Even if only stellar ideas were presented with great teams behind them then YC would still be able to select only a limited amount of those. Chances are that you'll make it and those chances are not that much different from the projects that did get selected.
And you have at least one extra motivation, to make whoever made that selection at YC think, oops... we should have picked that one.
Being selected by YC is not a guarantee of success and not being selected by YC is not a guarantee of failure!
Best of luck to all of you, both those selected and those not selected.
I see YC as a tool to be used in helping your startup achieve it's goals, there are many others out there of varying qualities - you shouldn't see it as the destination of it.
Personally, I'd love to hear about your startup in 6-12 months time (if you've continued with it) and how well you're doing, so if you do continue with your idea and you're a squijillionaire by that time, drop me a line. My email is in my profile. Feel free to call me all sorts of four letter words and tell me I was wrong :)
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=As+far+as+we're+concerned%2...
And I will report back about my startup on demo day in August -- I'd rather it be a "you can succeed if you weren't accepted" story rather than a "told you so" one, because frankly I think pg et al. are perfectly confident with the startups they have chosen. Unfortunately I have two very challenging startups at the same time, but fortunately both are well under way!
Edit: None of the websites in my profile are my startup unless it explicitly is prefaced with startup:.
I wasn't aware of the quote :)
But still the offer stands, I love talking to people about their startups (as well as my own) and discussing various perspectives. I think lines of communication are important!
Yes, there should be a way of communicating more easily. Why isn't chatterous embedded in HN? I've been tempted to create a portal that keeps track of startups (techcrunch and wikipedia are no good for this). It would probably be a waste of time... or would it?
http://ycombinator.com/whynot.html
Condolences to all who have to start the start-up without YC help. It can be done; best wishes.
Maybe worth a shot regardless, but from talking to other people I know applied and also rejected in the past few minutes (including myself), we seem to pretty much all fall under that "good but pushed out by the best" category.
PG: can we _still_hang_out_ with you guys on meetup nights. I'm serious.
And, if you want to get to know some people in the Hacker community, http://HackersandFounders.com gets together every couple of weeks. Let me know you're coming, and I'll buy you a beer. :)
We have guys who're working on their 4th and 5th startups. We have guys attend who have exited and are looking for the next go around. We have startup owners that have been in business for several years.
A lot of guys are just starting out on their own, and are interested in feedback on their apps, or whatever they're working on. And, people generally buy pitchers of beer, so if you're broke, you don't have to worry about it. :)
My concern is good neighbourhood, is closed to tech events and of course has to be ramen-affordable too! I know it's possible to find the best of everything.
Personally I'm partial to the Mountain View/Palo Alto area. Not exactly ramen-affordable though. Sunnyvale/Santa Clara is cheaper, but it's all strip malls and tract housing.
If they let anyone who wanted come, then it wouldn't be so exclusive and it would lose some of its value. I know I'd love to go to those meetups if I were in the area, and so would 423442342 other people.
I wish they would have included some feedback.
What really matters is your determination and team. A few hundred words hardly puts them in a position to provide you valuable feedback on those factors.
And, obviously, if I got feedback, I could always ignore it and be in the same position as I am now. I'd rather have more information than less.
All it means is that there were other start-ups that caught their attention more.
You have to remember that they look at this as a business process, and a huge part of that process is "can we make money off of this as well"; it's tough to ascertain that over a video.
Keep on trucking, and I'm sure you'll do fine. It's 90% perspiration anyways.
I was just hoping they could provide feedback, since I assume they make a conscientious decision about each application.
I don't see any room for argument here: the lack of feedback is a loss of information.
They don't provide reasons, because there probably isn't a specific reason, other than the application wasn't one that wanted to make them say yes.
Looking forward to all the "YC reject: launching xxxx " threads in the coming months!!
We got our beta up and running this weekend, and we're fixing up bugs so we can expand and planning our commercial launch, so it's not the worst thing in the world. Better to get rejected at 18 when you've never done anything web-related before than to get rejected for the same circumstances at an older age.
Hopefully I'll see all of you posting about your launches on HN! I'm certain I'll be posting in a month or so and I'd love to see everybody do the same.
I guess that depends on what you're doing. For me? Not so much as being rich and famous as it is about paying the bills while helping solve problems people have.
Also, you're making me feel older than I should. Please get off my lawn ;)
I'm one of those annoying disciples who thinks that being rich and famous is the totally coolest part of America, and I bug everybody else trying to be it. Either 7 years from now I'll grow up, or 2 years from now I'll totally be one of those hip Hollywood cats.
(Sorry, I live in LA. Can't help it.)
I've been going through some of your writings and I'm quite impressed.
Sometimes age is totally a good thing :) And btw im 24 and on my second startup so I beat you 18 year old shits.
Age does matter. People of different age have different priorities, bottom line. Our 52 year-old has children our age and is much less concerned with the exciting opportunities engendered through YC and much more focused on just getting the business off the ground with something to show for it.
I'm now experiencing a partnership with a mid-50's guy. I'm working alongside him and several others my age. What can I say? I am experiencing exactly what I speak of right now. We have different personal goals but the beauty of it all is that no matter our personal goals we are all headed in the same direction.
So no hating here. Both young and old make for great entrepreneurs, just many times with different personal goals. What exactly are we arguing?
Mine started with "We're sorry" and ended with "Y Combinator Staff" and has the following MD5: f459a7d636ac85cdcd680b135bcfc521
Edit: easy multi-line md5 here: http://www.webhost.org/widgets/md5encrypter
//edit: The website seems to strip out blank lines, while echoing it doesn't. Solves that (trivially minor) issue I suppose.
And after all, for 99% of applications there's really no need to say anything different. For the 1% where some extra explanation is useful, they can send separate emails later.
That's the significant thing I'm adding to the discussion, so please respond to that, rather than trying to disprove some other minor point I'm not even trying to make.
If I sound like I'm pissed, it's because I am. This happens all the fucking time on HN, and the snarky replies are the ones that get upvoted.
And, yet, I'm still at a loss as to why it is unreasonable to think that there could be different generic e-mails sent out to different groups.
>>If they're prepared to fund 1,000 companies they think are _really_ likely to make it, I think that implies there's no need for strata.
Only if every company not accepted was rejected for precisely the same reason, and this reason could not at all be broken down at all. Do you think that is likely?
Perhaps somebody could list out all of the YC philosophies of acceptance, and every type of generic e-mail that wouldn't make sense to send; then we could use deduction to solve this mystery of no stratified rejection e-mails.
All I set out to do was test the hypothesis: Were there different rejection letters sent, because it seems pretty reasonable that there would be. Maybe some letters would contain feedback, albeit generic? After all, they need to make a conscientious decision to accept/deny, why not have a few reasons for denying? I even proposed a method to test out this hypothesis.
Thank you to everyone who did the MD5 to verify that there was only 1 type of e-mail sent. That's what I was looking for.
But when I get in return, and not just on this thread, are people talking about the YC acceptance process as if they are part of YC, or (in this case) paraphrasing the fucking rejection letter or YC application notes, I find that to be really annoying. I can read and understand things myself. It would be a disservice to myself if I didn't express that annoyance.
They are no longer posting their numbers, so don't ask.
Source: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9066
Good luck to all of you. I think they mean well when they say they make lots of mistakes.
If someone wants to be a technical partner with me just email me digizal08@gmail.com its a e-commerce company that will make money off the bat.
Plus I at least know a few VCs if I were really serious about funding, I just need a technical co-founder which is why im guessing I got a flat out rejection.
So thanks to the YC process itself, we NOW have a presentation deck ready and a demo and can charge full steam ahead regardless. YC for us would have been a nice-to-have, not essential. We have a fairly interesting idea and a background which included two of us having founded startups in the recent past (one of them being www.alertle.com - check it out for UI design), being speakers of Ruby on Rails and AJAX at conferences, and work experience at other startups and places like Merrill Lynch. And of course, a CS background. We didn't even get an interview.
I'm assuming the calibre of teams accepted would have been pretty extraordinary this year. Good luck to all! :)