YC is Wrong About You
I’m not the type of person that you’ll hear commenting all the time here on Hacker News. Fact is, I couldn’t stop and see all these people feeling bad about them because YC rejected them.
I’m not interesting in applying to YC. Come on, you don’t need YC to succeed. You don’t need them. Many of you guys are just here because you think YC would be the salvation to your startup. Don’t kid yourself.
If you feel bad because you got rejected, because you lost the “golden mentorship” and the 10,000 grand, then you shouldn’t be doing your startup in first place.
You should believe in your idea and go on, even if the other people don’t see what you can see. Thomas Edison didn’t stop because everyone believed he was nuts. Henry Ford didn’t stop back then, the Google guys didn’t stop, and you shouldn’t stop.
Keep going, keep moving, don’t let fear or rejection stop you. Never.
25 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 33.7 ms ] threadIt's starting to feel like College Confidential around here...
But seriously -- your source of funding doesn't identify you, the college you attend doesn't identify you, and they shouldn't.
A YC rejection is not a large defeat.
I'd say that most successful people (start-ups are shorter-lived and may skip this) have experienced many situations where they thought they had it all, everything was going their way, they were at the peak of their game, and suddenly everything came crashing down disastrously and unexpectedly.
What made these people successful isn't the defeat, but it's that they then picked themselves up and started again from the bottom.
What's kept me from applying to ycom is having a technical co-founder that I believe in. But that hasn't kept me from launching and running a relatively successful (in 4 months) mobile startup.
I love reading HN and following the ycom companies, the quality discussions definitely impact my thought process and decisions in the company.
1. This is the 'gatekeeper' problem. You have a handful of people deciding if you're making "what people want". They can't possibly know what all people want. JK Rowling got rejected by, what, 20 publishers? They can't know. They can only do their best. The 'gatekeeper' problem also means you get idiosyncrasies, such as (essentially) a ban on single founders, etc.
2. Some ideas are easy to pitch, others nearly impossible. Take this year's Best Film Oscar winner, "Slumdog Millionaire", and try to pitch the plot in a way that's not ludicrous. You won't succeed. But take any cheesy, crappy B-flick and you can perfectly summarize it and even make it sound good. Now, I'm not saying there's a correlation between a good idea and difficulty in pitching it. (Ok, but I will say there's a clear correlation between mediocre ideas and ease of pitch.) So if you didn't get accepted, your idea either isn't very good or it's great.
yeah, "index all of the world's information" is such a mediocre idea, even though it is a very easy pitch, those Google guys will never make any money.
There are plenty of bad ideas that are executed well and don't succeed. There are plenty of good ideas that are executed poorly and succeed anyway.
The point isn't how they executed, it really was a reflection on the david927's assertion that there is a correlation between ease of pitch and how good an idea is, is wrong, plain and simple.
"our site is like facebook meets digg" is an easy pitch (I've actually heard this from someone), and in my humble opinion, is a bad idea
"we want to index all of the world's information" is an easy pitch, and so happens to be a good idea.
- There is no correlation between a good idea and how hard or easy it is to pitch. Some great ideas are easy to pitch, others are not. No correlation.
- There is a direct correlation between a mediocre idea and ease in pitching it. Every mediocre idea is easy to pitch.
YC has more experience than you.
YC has more success than you.
If they turned you down, listen to the "why" and make the adjustments necessary to be successful.
Consider it a badge of honor that they even gave you the time of day. Take the information, feedback, advice, and rejection to heart and grow a pair.
Success is not static, it is dynamic.
So this is also the stage where many people hang their heads down and go back to their normal routine of nothing. But this is the only flaw in the YC system. It takes people who are not entrepreneurs and wholly dedicated to their idea and gives them an opportunity because they are a good hacker. Now once it gets to the interview stage they access how dedicated you are, but who wouldn't be at that point?
So please don't make some hugely dramatic post. Paul and Jessica would (and do) say that they are wrong about many startups. Not only the ones from interviews, but even with the applications. There are so many high-level applicants that it is hard to access who fits where.
I'd say Ycombinator is more about winning the lottery, than doing everything right. I am fairly confident that YC receives far too many really good applications to be able to really vet everything. And also, to be fair if you are looking for mentorship, I can imagine this year will be a little different from normal, as the number of teams has doubled, and PG and Jessica have a new addition to the family. As for connections, if your scrappy you can make your own connections -- and $25K for 5% is really not that great of a valuation.