Tell HN: YC rejection emails have started going out
We're sorry to say we couldn't accept your proposal for funding. Please don't take it personally. The applications we receive get better every funding cycle, and since there's a limit on the number of startups we can interview in person, we had to turn away a lot of genuinely promising groups.
Unfortunately we can't give you individual feedback about your application. This page explains why:
http://ycombinator.com/whynot.html
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 the hard limit on the number of interviews means 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 Team
119 comments
[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 218 ms ] threadKeep your spirits up, rejectees, this is not the end of the world. Continue doing your thing. :)
What's even stranger/funnier is that some companies reject you without giving any specific reasons, yet they invite you to reapply for another position or the same later.
I.e. if the process aborts after a certain stage, and the first few stages are fairly transparent tech skill evaluations. If it is something as fuzzy as code on a whiteboard, that is more like a human interview, but something like progressive fizzbuzz could be used as a 1h pre-screen.
If all teammate interviews happen pre lunch, then, and you are told to go home before lunch, then it is the team interviews. I guess then exact reason wouldn't be clear to you, though.
We didn't have a prototype at all and I think even with a really strong team, it certainly has to hurt the chances.
If your video wasn't on youtube, or it wasn't embeddable, or you used a third party link shortener (not youtu.be) - reviewers had to do extra work to view your video.
One alumni told me that YC was all about picking billion dollar, not million dollar businesses. In that case, could you say juniper would scale to the billion dollar market? Could your users track their usage with a recurring Google calendar entry? (I know women that do). Why not scale to include other high usage products - toothpaste, toilet paper, etc? (I know of one startup in stealth mode doing this, so it's probably a feasible plan). Sorry for playing devil's advocate - really like what you got so far though.
YC rejection for the 2nd year in a row has done little to dampen our spirits and ambition. Here's to another rejection that motivates us to succeed!
- Proud Rejectee
Our progress so far is a huge testament to the skill, execution and resolve of our team (http://bodybossfitness.com/about).
But one thing. Your target market is "coaches and players"
Yet your "about" page is targeted toward either a) getting funded or b) people who are into tech, read HN, etc.
That's a problem. You start of with "Andrew Reifman" who is a "pixel perfectionist". This has nothing to do with anything that your target market (say the coach at my local high school team) would even remotely care about.
The one person "Darren Pottinger" who has some street cred is listed as number two.
I think Darren should be the prominent person on that "about" page with the rest of the team deprecated (smaller type) or even placed on a separate page. Perhaps get some "advisors" that are coaches, players or other users to fill space on that page as well. Give it some meat.
That page to me says "we are looking to build a company" not "we have the expertise to help players and coaches with our product".
If someone wants to invest - your team will matter. But it shouldn't be presented in a way that detracts from the product or service you are offering.
Cheers, Daryl (Mr. Business of the Body Boss Team)
1 - Some of your images are huge. The ipad workouts image alone is 300kb, which is way too big. Of course you want them to be good quality, but you should be able to cut a lot of weight without any noticeable effect. The Fireworks Export Wizard is a good tool for this.
2 - Some of your images are unnecessarily broken up into lots of separate img tags. The main landing page image with the helmets and devices has over 6 tags. You should combine images in order to have as few img tags as possible. It will reduce http requests and also give the browser less layout work to do.
3 - On a similar note, you have a bunch of small images like the player portraits that you could group into a spritesheet to further reduce requests.
4 - It doesn't seem like you're using a CDN? Something like Cloudfront or Cloudflare is quick to setup and will improve download time for your images drastically, especially for people who are far away from your server like me.
5 - You should put your javascript at the bottom of the body instead of in the head. You're not executing anything until the dom is loaded anyway, and putting at the bottom will allow the page to render before the js is downloaded and parsed, improving perceived load time. Use 'display: none' to initially hide anything that depends on the js to look right.
" We missed Dropbox, Heroku and Airbnb. " [1]
If the 3 supposed hits that presently created most of yC's entire known value got passed over by the VCs at first go.. one has to be a bit skeptical about the whole idol contest.
[1] - http://rapgenius.com/Harj-taggar-well-be-circling-back-lyric...
-- my thoughts --
I am sure it was.. but the main point is.. people attribute more rationality and objectivity to a process that frankly even by pg's own comments ( check out his essay on " two kinds of judgment ) is not so.
Investors ( even incubators ) should be a secondary thought to an entrepreneur's path.. I'd go so far as to point that its best to have a defensive approach and look for paths do not require them ( even pg has hinted many times via his essays.. including the cockroach bit ).
What happens when the first example arrives that clearly just bypassed the whole lot of the present ecosystem till a very late stage and hits the range of a Google or Microsoft ?
- Damien Katz (creator of CouchDB) was also rejected[1]. He went on and got $2 million from Redpoint Ventures [2]
- On this video[3], Jessica Livingston interviews Drew. It shows that he was also rejected the first time he tried out YC.
- The oscar of rejected but finally accepted: I got into YC after applying six times [4]
- Peteris Krumins also got rejected with his browserling idea, got rejected[5], and went on to raise his own seed funding[6].
[1] http://damienkatz.net/2006/11/how_not_to_pitc.html
[2] http://damienkatz.net/2009/12/relaxed_inc.html
[3] http://blog.ycombinator.com/dropbox-interview-now-online
[4] http://iamwil.posterous.com/i-got-into-yc-after-applying-six...
[5] http://www.catonmat.net/blog/launching-browserling/
[6] http://www.catonmat.net/blog/how-i-raised-money-for-browserl...
It's not the end of the world.
http://getwant.com/view-public?id=lqBhOgBUvIO4ZB
So we quit. We spent the summer building Meldium, reapplied for W13, and were accepted - and it was an amazing boost to our company. As a founder, you're going to get rejected a lot - use it as an opportunity to learn and grow.
Interesting that you mentioned "serious." Looking back I don't think I was a whole lot "serious" the last time I applied, but I think my application might have been better (see my comment below - got more video views last year, but that could have been an anomaly).
In any case, I wonder if being in school this time hurts our chances. Most of our founders are graduating, and the rest have signed on to jobs. But we are more serious about it this time around - hacking away on public transit, on campus and pulling all-nighters to get features out.
A long standing tradition: If you got rejected, please forward your rejection email to free@mixpanel.com and we'll hook you up with a free Mixpanel plan to help out while you're figuring it out.
- Suhail
Anyone who got rejected from YC S13 forward your rejection email to freewine@undergroundcellar.com and I'll send you a $25 gift card for free wine from http://UndergroundCellar.com
I'm not suggesting you drink your problems away, but a relaxing glass of wine can be a nice way to wind down before you get back to those 14 hour hack days.
We applied with Arro, http://arroapp.com - tells you which product to get by analyzing millions of ratings online.
email is in my profile.
So, Tinfoil Security is offering our $59 Basic plan free for life, and 50% off all other plans. Happy to keep startups secure :) Email your YC rejection letter to founders@tinfoilsecurity.com and we'll hook you up.
Don't think it means nothing, it means something about where you are in your life as a founder and how well you can communicate that (and that matters), but not anything more than that.
- 5x rejectee and pretty successful dude